Since the attack on Capitol Hill on Wednesday night, we can safely assume two things: in the US, white supremacy is treated with nowhere near the same force as peaceful protest. And as a result, white supremacists behave with complete entitlement.
How else can we describe how teargas, batons and horses were used on peaceful protesters demanding justice for Black Lives this summer; and yet, when an angry white mob stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a legitimate election, some managed to make it all the way to Nancy Pelosi’s office unharmed and undeterred?
Nowhere is this double standard better exemplified than in the case of Jacob Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli. The insurrectionist, who was photographed sporting furs and a horned headdress during the attack, turned himself in after storming the Capitol, completely unafraid. “Wasn’t Jesus arrested?” he asked– while also comparing himself to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Now Chansley’s demands for an all-organic diet inside prison are being looked into at the request of a judge, who found it “deeply concerning” to hear how he went without food for days after refusing what was on offer at his facility.
“He gets very sick if he doesn’t eat organic food – literally will get physically sick,” said his mother, Martha Chansley.
Twenty-five domestic terror charges have been opened as a result of Wednesday’s violence, in which five people died. So while it is reassuring to see a judge so concerned about the treatment and welfare of prisoners, it raised a few eyebrows – as it certainly deviates from the usual treatment of suspected terrorists in the US. “It’s a jail, Jacob. It isn’t a Whole Foods,” people joked on Twitter.
But we shouldn’t be surprised. Chansley behaves with the entitlement of someone who tried to overturn a legitimate election and got called a patriot in the process.
Chansley explained to the FBI where his entitlement stems from in very explicit terms – he entered the house as a “patriot”, at the request of the president.
He is baffled by the idea he should be treated like a criminal, just like the angry woman who was part of the Capitol mob and said: “This is not America. They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.” The exceptionalism might seem astounding, but as far as they’re concerned, the president sees a group of “very special people”, on one side, and a bunch of thugs on the other.
As Chansley explained, he “walked through open doors” to get into the Capitol. Police officers took selfies with the mob, put on Maga hats – the New York Times even alleges that one officer assisted rioters on their way to Chuck Schumer’s office.
That he is now having his requests for a grass-fed chicken looked into should be the least of our worries.