The Most Terrifying Threat to America Is Middle-Class White Guys Cosplaying a Fascist Uprising

We have seen the enemy, and he is Greg from Accounting

Jude Ellison S. Doyle
GEN
Published in
6 min readJan 20, 2021

--

Some of the pro-Trump supporter mob who broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty

By now, you’ve seen the “QAnon Shaman.” He’s the man who stormed the U.S. Capitol, bare-chested and sporting a set of horns last seen on Hagar the Horrible, and climbed atop the vice president’s seat on the Senate floor to accuse Mike Pence of participating in an imaginary conspiracy to abduct children and drink their blood.

His real name is Jacob Chansley, and he has become the most apt symbol of Trump supporters’ attempted — and likely ongoing — insurrection against the lawful government of the United States. Details about Chansley keep surfacing in the press, each one both hilariously pathetic and deeply horrifying. Consider, for example, the prosecutorial filing stating that Chansley stashed his most prized coup possessions — including a furry coyote-tail headdress and a six-foot spear — in his 2003 Hyundai, or the fact that cops figured out he was lying about not being on drugs because he has a podcast (of course he does) on which he discusses his habitual use of psychedelic drugs (you don’t say). After his arrest, Chansley’s mother told reporters that he was refusing to eat because the detention center didn’t serve organic food.

--

--

Jude Ellison S. Doyle
GEN
Writer for

Author of “Trainwreck” (Melville House, ‘16) and “Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers” (Melville House, ‘19). Columns published far and wide across the Internet.