Jan 6 video shows white supremacist flag, not anti-fascist banner
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on December 6, 2023 at 20:19
- 6 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
"Someone needs to ask Christopher Wray again... Why was ANTIFA inside the Capitol building on January 6th before any MAGA protesters ever entered?" says a November 26, 2023 post on X, formerly Twitter.
Wray, the FBI director, said soon after the attack that there was no evidence of participation from Antifa -- a loose coalition of anti-fascist activists -- in the violent attempt to overturn President Joe Biden's 2020 electoral victory.
Similar claims spread across X, joining a flood of conspiratorial posts about undercover federal agents and left-wing activists that have surged since House Speaker Mike Johnson ordered hours of security footage released in November 2023. The video has also circulated on TikTok, though the original is no longer available.
But the clip -- which shows a flag waving in a distant window -- does not show the insignia for left-leaning Antifa, which US conservatives commonly blame for unrest.
The design shows the letters "AF" and stars encircled in white. It matches the logo for Fuentes's notorious livestream show and movement, experts said (archived here).
"That is the flag commonly associated with the 'America First' video program by the same name," said Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics and open-source intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in a December 5 email.
Heidi Beirich, co-director of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, also told AFP her nonprofit's researchers were "certain" the video shows an "America First" banner.
Fuentes has championed the Capitol attack, hawked Trump's false claims of fraud, marched at the deadly 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Virginia and likened himself to Adolf Hitler. His followers call themselves "Groypers," a reference to a far-right meme, according to the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League (archived here and here).
Trump, who is slated to go on trial in March on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results, drew bipartisan backlash after he had dinner at his Florida resort with Fuentes and rapper Kanye West.
"They've got this completely wrong," Beirich said of the Antifa claims in a December 5 email. "Fuentes is a white supremacist, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier who shockingly once was invited to dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Fuentes' movement is one of the larger white supremacist groups in the US. It is the opposite of an anti-fascist group."
'America First' flags at Capitol
More than 1,200 people have been arrested in connection with the attack on the Capitol, including several rioters identified in court documents as followers of Fuentes (archived here, here and here).
Among them were Christian Secor from Costa Mesa, California and Brandon Cavanaugh from Huntington Beach, California, both of whom supported Fuentes and according to court filings carried flags bearing the far-right host's "America First" emblem into the building (archived here and here).
AFP also captured photos showing "America First" flags in the crowd.
A judge sentenced Secor in October 2022 to 42 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting (archived here).
His signed statement of offense says he walked throughout the Capitol, including through then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi's office suite, before enabling other rioters to enter by helping push open doors that were being guarded by police (archived here).
Court documents say Secor was president of an "America First" group at the University of California, Los Angeles and show a photo he posted of him shaking hands with Fuentes (archived here and here).
Cavanaugh, meanwhile, was sentenced in April 2023 to 14 days of intermittent confinement and 24 months of probation (archived here). He had pleaded guilty to one charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.
A former systems engineering intern with NASA, Cavanaugh videotaped himself as he entered and walked around the Capitol, according to his signed statement of offense (archived here). He identified online as a "Groyper" (archived here).
Fuentes himself was on the Capitol grounds as the chaos unfolded.
He received a subpoena in January 2022 from the House committee that investigated the attack, with Congressman Bennie Thompson citing photos and videos showing "America First" followers in and near the Capitol in his letter (archived here).
No evidence of Antifa involvement
Activists affiliated with Antifa have been known to carry banners bearing a different emblem, seen below, which features images of a black flag beside a red flag.
The flag in the video online is "not an Antifa flag," said Rutgers University's Mark Bray, the author of a book on the movement.
Keven Ruby, a senior research associate with the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, previously told AFP his team's research has found no evidence of Antifa involvement in the assault.
"We currently have data on over 1,100 individuals charged by the FBI, DC Police or US Capitol Police for their role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. None have ties to Antifa," Ruby said in a December 1 email, adding that court documents show several rioters have personally refuted claims that Antifa was involved.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Capitol riot here.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
