Here is the latest from U of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, and his study of the now over 700 people arrested for participating in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. Here is an excerpt from an interview Pape did with Slate magazine this week, with the question from the Slate interviewer and Pape's answer:
Your initial study looked at about 200 people who had been arrested. Since then, that number has swelled to about 730. What has emerged as the profile of the average rioter, a year later? What are some of the stories you’ve uncovered, and what do they tell us about what led to this?
We’ve now studied nearly 700 who have been arrested, and we’ve brought the study up to date as of early December. What we see is, over half of those who have been arrested are business owners, CEOs from white-collar occupations, doctors, lawyers, and architects. If you look at extremist group membership, again, 13 percent of those nearly 700 arrested as of early December are members of militia groups like the Oath Keepers or extremist groups like the Proud Boys. As I said, this is very different than about half that we normally find.
If you look at their ages, two-thirds of those arrested for Jan. 6 are over the age of 34. They’re concentrated in their 40s and 50s. Normally for right-wing extremists, it’s two-thirds under the age of 34. Typically, only 10 percent have a college degree. Here, the Jan. 6 arrestees, 25 percent have a college degree, which is close to the national average of the U.S. electorate at 30 percent. About 15 percent of those on Jan. 6 had prior U.S. military service, but that compares with what we usually see in right-wing extremists at 40 percent. About 10 percent of the U.S. electorate has prior military service, so it’s a little higher than that, but much closer to the U.S. mainstream than to the usual right-wing extremists. What if we look at criminal history? Well, 30 percent of those arrested on Jan. 6 had prior criminal history, mostly for misdemeanors like marijuana charges, but with other right-wing extremists, it’s 64 percent have prior criminal history. The U.S. electorate overall has 20 percent with criminal history.
Here is Pape's initial article last year in The Atlantic. And here is an interview Pape did with CNN International later in May 202, when it was up to nearly 400 arrested. What is striking to me is how his initial hypothesis has held from the initial review of about 170 arrestees to now over 700 arrestees.
A final note: Here is Tooning Out the News interviewing five people, of whom four hit the profile Pape identified as the type of people who ended up at the January 6th insurrection. I don't have any evidence the show's show runners followed Pape's studies to find these people.
