Interesting: Semi-Serious Social Science Study On January 6 Event

Victoria Taft wrote this up for PJ Media, but I got it through Zerohedge:

Study Shows Very Few Capitol Hill Rioters Were QAnon Red-Staters With Ties To 'Right-Wing' Groups

The study comes from the prestigious University of Chicago, and includes some interesting information about the people who participated in as well as those who were arrested at the January 6 Event. For example, the researchers were rather impressed with the level of intellectual sophistication of those involved. They also had to come up with a whole new category for people participating in protests: Business Owners! Go figure, eh? At a rally of conservatives we find ... business owners!

Read it all, but here are some highlights. The researchers labored from the usual stereotypical perspectives and narratives. What's interesting is that they found themselves struggling to come to grips with a reality that didn't fit their usual categories and stereotypes:

A survey by the University of Chicago finds that most Capitol Hill rioters had no ties to any fringe right-wing groups and were merely engaged people outraged by what they believed was a rigged election.

While colorful weirdos with names such as QAnon Shaman and Baked Alaska stole the headlines, people who were arrested by federal officials during and after the riot were a “broader core of people” with a healthy skepticism about the veracity of the November 2020 election, according to the study.

There was plenty of reason for the skepticism, considering the collusion between Big Tech, unions, lawfare, and Democrats’ combined efforts to sway the election. Those efforts were at the very least unethical.

As Time Magazine enthused in an article entitled, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” “there was a conspiracy unfolding behind the [election] scenes” of an “informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans” to “save” the election from Donald Trump.

...

Rather than being ill-informed, it appears that the Capitol Building rioters may have been better informed than most on these moves to sway the election.

... a surprising number of the people arrested at the Capitol Hill riot ... were business owners and other professionals obviously upset over election fraud.

Why was that surprising, and who did that fact surprise? I guess you'd have to be a liberal prof to find that surprising.

WTTW TV [that's Public TV in Chicago] reported that researchers hadn’t even needed a “business owner” category before when looking into protest groups. Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, oversaw the study and said the caliber of people at the riot was surprising.

“Normally, we don’t even have a category for ‘business owner’ when we study political violence [sic!], so this is a very big sign that we’re dealing with a new political movement with violence at its core [sic!!] that can’t be reduced to the usual suspects.”

In true liberal fashion, having noted that this new movement "can’t be reduced to the usual suspects", the prof nevertheless immediately attempts to do precisely that: shoehorn this new phenomenon into a category that he's reflexively comfortable with, rather than try to understand it.

Perhaps they should consider that the 2020 election was seen by half the country as rigged. Election integrity efforts, not name-calling, lawfare, and canceling others who hold politically opposing views, will be key in winning back confidence in the elections process. If Democrats pass HR 1, all bets will be off.

Interesting times? I hope so. The data in this study suggests this new movement may not just fade away in the face of DC political theater.