Jan. 6 defendants requesting Guantanamo Bay are absolute fools

Jan. 6 defendants have requested a transfer to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay if conditions don’t improve in their Washington, D.C. jail. Along with claiming they have been physically harassed and assaulted by guards, the detainees wrote in a seven-page handwritten letter that they have been presented with critical race theory “propaganda,” “re-education propaganda” and “racially-biased information.” Straight Arrow News contributor Adrienne Lawrence believes the defendants’ request conveys their ignorance and brings up a larger point about the nation’s carceral system.

Dozens of individuals who rushed to the U.S. Capitol in January of 2021 — they’re being held in Washington, D.C.’s jail, and a number of them are complaining about the conditions, alleging black mold, worms in the food, abuse by guards and so on.

In a seven-page handwritten letter delivered to a federal court, well, some 34 apparent insurrectionists demanded to be moved to the prison on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Seriously. This request alone speaks volumes about those who participated in the January 6 insurrection and how dangerous disinformation campaigns can be.

Now these individuals, I like to call them “MAGA-minions,” they sincerely do believe that they’d be better off if detained on Guantanamo Bay. As they explained in their letter, they think that the island “actually provides nutritional meals, routine sunlight exposure, top-notch medical care, is respectful of religious requirements, has centers for exercise, entertainment for its detainees, despite the fact that those residents are malicious terrorists.”

The Guantanamo Bay detention center is not Club Med. It is a human rights violation with track lighting, if that. It’s a war prison. The detention center not only breaches that whole Amnesty International thing, but it also completely runs afoul of the Due Process Clause. And it also probably violates the Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment, given that whole torture thing.

Now over the past 20 years of its existence, Guantanamo Bay has held hundreds of people and many of them without charge or trial. As the ACLU noted in January of this year, all of the inmates there have been exposed to some physical and psychological trauma.

Our nation has an issue with its systemic carceral state. The January 6 defendants who signed that letter demanding a transfer from DC jail — they really display at our ignorance. They’re in the dark about what our government does to inmates, the conditions that individuals are forced to live in. Now this really reminds me that a segment of Americans are either not paying attention to the atrocious nature of our carceral state, or most of them are merely okay with it as long as it’s Black and Brown people suffering.

Now, even the fact that these what — one six defendants who are overwhelmingly White and male — have the gumption to demand a transfer really speaks to their sense of privilege. They are not victims, nor are they patriots. They are problematic people accused of playing a role in trying to overthrow our democracy. And they’re absolute fools for thinking Guantanamo Bay detention camp is anything but an unlawful stain on humanity.