Leadership matters a great deal for motivating collective action.
I see a lot of fantastic discussions, papers, threads, and op-eds about the insurrection from experts from various fields.
As a social scientist, I want to add that it's important to understand that collective action like we saw yesterday is due to *many* factors.
Leadership matters a great deal for motivating collective action.
This came to head with the concerted efforts by GOP members of the Senate and House who tried to overturn the election certification.
This was primarily spearheaded on social media, which is why freezing Trump's social media accounts is such a big deal.
From Fox to OAN to Newsmax, these false messages were spread to millions of homes.
The people who stormed the Capitol came from racist and pro-fascist groups (like the Proud Boys) and proudly waived the Confederate flags during their attempted insurrection.
It's impossible to imagine police officers taking selfies with another group as they violently invaded government property.
This is bound up in sectarian politics, where extreme affective polarization leads people to see the election of their political opponent as a mortal (and immoral) threat.
Collective human behavior is complex and there is space for expertise on all of these angles since these (and other) factors likely all matter a great deal.
It's important to think more deeply about how they interact. In the real world, collective human action is never caused by a single factor.
Accept that these people do not all share the same assumptions, identities, backgrounds and goals. This makes it impossible to find a simple, single explanation for all of them.