Poll: More Americans want ‘Black Lives Matter riots’ investigated than January 6 riot

As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi picks members of a select committee to investigate the riots of January 6, a new poll finds that many Americans believe she’s focusing on the wrong riots.

One-third more Americans believe Congress should hold investigative hearings about last summer’s “Black Lives Matter protests that sparked violence” than think lawmakers ought to probe the riot at the capitol on January 6.

In all, two out of three likely U.S. voters say they believe Congress should open an official investigation into “the violent protests” which blazed a trail of arson and looting through major and mid-sized cities nationwide. On the other hand, fewer than half (49%) of Americans support Pelosi’s investigation of the D.C. riot in which rioters protesting the 2020 presidential election results stormed the capitol.

Support for a federal inquiry into the riots that engulfed U.S. cities after the death of George Floyd cut deep across racial and political lines. “Sixty-seven percent (67%) of whites, 64% of black voters, 66% of Hispanics and 62% of other minorities think Congress should investigate the 2020 riots in U.S. cities,” reported Rasmussen Reports. “Seventy-five percent (75%) of Republicans, 60% of Democrats and 63% of voters not affiliated with either major party say Congress should investigate last year’s violent protests.”

Here’s what we wrote in the aftermath of the riots:

Tens of millions of Americans sense that they’ve been manipulated.

Then came the January 6 rally at the Capitol. What happened then—and especially what has happened since—has been America’s Reichstag fire.

January 6 was the day that representatives and senators met in the Senate Chamber to sign their names and their honor to the certification of an illegitimate vote. It was also the day that hundreds of thousands of Americans came to Washington—in spite of social media manipulation and censorship, in spite of D.C. businesses closing their doors to them—to protest the subversion of the Constitution and their fundamental right to govern themselves through elected representatives.

The day would end in tragedy.

The Capitol riot—and how it has been manipulated over the past three weeks—reminds a lot of people of what happened at the Reichstag in 1933. Someone (we still don’t know who) burned the Reichstag, seat of the national legislature, virtually gutting it. For Germans, this was a national tragedy—but nothing like the national tragedy that followed as a result. Despite reports that he himself might have been connected to the arson, the new leader of Germany clamped down on those reports, used the destruction at the nation’s capitol building to target his enemies, and empowered his own radical movement. Those enemies were largely Jews. That leader was Adolf Hitler. His manipulation of the Reichstag fire consolidated his power over the nation.

Immediately after the Capitol riot, some Democrats claimed it was “America’s Reichstag fire.” But they stopped saying that when they realized what that implied about them.