By Brigitte L. Nacos
“I can’t predict. I don’t understand the resolve of the Deep State. Biden may still yet be our president. If he is, our way of life as we know it is over. Our Republic would be over. Then it is our duty to fight, kill and die for our rights.” This was the answer given by Jessica Watkins, the self-described commander of an Ohio militia affiliate of the Oath Keepers, when asked by one of her recruits after the 2020 presidential election what she predicted for the new year 2021.
Following the violent assault on the Capitol earlier this year, Watkins received a great deal of news coverage because of her prominent role in the preparation for and execution of the violent invasion. Along with eight others in the Watkin’s led group she was indicted by a Grand Jury of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia with conspiracy to stop, delay, and hinder the congressional certification of the Electoral College vote and four other crimes.
Lost in the “breaking news” barrage in the post-January 6th days and weeks was the starring role of a surprisingly large number of females among the first wave of violent intruders. Four of the nine members of the Watkins group were women—besides Army veteran Jessica Watkins who is 38 years old, the others were significantly older females: Laura Steele (52), Connie Meggs (59), and Sandra Parker (60). As surveillance video from the Capitol shows, these four women were in the thick of the crowd pushing into the Rotunda.
While important as supporting cast, women did not participate directly in violence in right-extremist movements of the past, including White Supremacy/neo-Nazi movements. That was in stark contrast to violent left-extremist movements and groups starting with the anarchists of the 19th century and more pronounced in the Marxist terrorist organizations of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the latter, such as the Red Army Faction in then West Germany, had at times more women in the leading strata than men. And females were instrumental in planning and carrying out brutal terrorist attacks. Thus, a saying in some police circles was, “Shoot the women first…”
Now, it seems that female White nationalists are no longer excluded from violent activities of their movement. On the first Friday in March, there were a total of 259 persons charged with crimes in the January 6th breach of the Capitol according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Columbia.
More remarkable, of those 259 defendants, 31 were women. When adding Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, who was shot by Capitol police as she forcefully tried to enter the Speaker’s lobby near the House chamber, 12,4% of those forcefully storming into the Capitol were females as aggressive as their male counterparts—in deeds and words as the following examples show:
Lori Vinson, one of five women who participated with their husbands in storming into the Capitol texted that she was one of the first 100 people getting into the Capitol Building, obviously proud of that accomplishment.
Californian Gina Bisignano entered the Capitol Building pushing others to follow her example. She used a bull horn to direct the crowd—at one point screaming, “We the people are not going to take it anymore. You are not going to take away our [unintelligible]. You are not going to take away our votes. And our freedom, and I thank God for it. This is 1776, and we the people will never give up. We will never let our country go to the globalists. George Soros, you can go to hell.”
Rachel Powell, a 40-year-old mother of eight from western Pennsylvania, rammed a window with a pipe and made her way inside the Capitol Building. She urged others to follow her. Once inside, according to the complaint, she gave “very detailed” instructions about the layout of the Capitol Building to other rioters and told them to coordinate, “if you are going to take the building.”
57-year-old Lisa Eisenhart and her son Eric traveled from Tennessee to Washington, D.C., where they were among rioters entering the Capitol Building clashing with and shouting at police officers and making their ways into the Senate chamber. Eisenhart told an interviewer later, “I’d rather die as a 57-year-old woman than live under oppression. I’d rather die and would rather fight.”
Not all male White Supremacists like the progress of women’s lib in the White Nationalist movement. After being charged for her participation in the breach of the Capitol one woman claimed that she was recruited by a Proud Boy chapter. But Proud Boys' social media channels called the notion of Proud Boy's Girls or Proud Girls “ridiculous” advising females to support them by getting married, having babies, and take care of your families…
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