On Wednesday, a crowd of white supporters of President Donald Trump livestreamed a fascist insurrection. They filmed themselves storming the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., tossing aside barricades, smashing windows and ransacking legislative offices. They filmed themselves screaming and chanting, exultant that theyd somehow just occupied the seat of American power.

Most didnt even bother to hide their faces, seemingly unafraid of later being identified and arrested for vandalizing the very place where this countrys laws are made.

Their aim was clear they even broadcast their intentions on the internet: to thwart the democratic will of the American people by disrupting a joint congressional session in which the 2020 election results were set to be formally certified .

But even with all the warning and time to prepare, the Capitol Police were overrun. At times, and disturbingly so, some even appeared to be accommodating. Livestreams showed cops shaking hands and posing for selfies with these MAGA insurrectionists. Other videos showed the relative ease with which Trumps supporters trespassed into the Capitol, charging past police and forcing lawmakers to evacuate.

The thing is, the Capitol Police are well-practiced at mass arrests. And theyve earned a reputation for being unforgiving and cruel enough, for example, to drag disabled demonstrators from the halls of Congress for demanding affordable health care.

So why did cops appear to stand down so easily as a MAGA mob laid siege to the Capitol? Why surrender so quickly to a horde of Red Hats, leaving them to urinate on the floor and loot offices, causing elected officials to flee into hiding? Its a question numerous investigations will try to answer over the next months and years.

These inquiries will likely conclude that cops were undermanned and that the agencies involved ignored mountains of intelligence showing pro-Trump extremists openly plotting the Jan. 6 insurrection online, in plain sight. (U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund resigned on Thursday.)

But what the chaos in the capital on Wednesday has already laid bare is how law enforcement often uses a hands-off approach to white right-wing demonstrations such as the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia while being well-prepared to violently crush movements for liberation and racial justice.

(Photographs of police making violent arrests at rallies and protests from 2020 and 2016 appear below.)