‘Destined to repeat’: J6 documentary's stark warning as America tries to forget

Five years after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol amidst a blizzard of lies, with the president and his associates falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen, January 6th may be a story Americans no longer care to hear.

Homegrown, a documentary that tracks three members of the neo-fascist street gang the Proud Boys from the turbulent summer of 2020 to Jan. 6 2021 and the attack on Congress, has won accolades and enthralled streaming viewers in Europe and South America. But the film’s producers have yet to find a U.S. distributor.

“I really think it’s telling around the narrative, around January 6th that it’s been downplayed and diminished within our national conversation,” director Michael Premo told Raw Story.

“That implies we’re only destined to repeat it.”

‘A self-coup’

Premo, a documentary filmmaker who was previously involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement and Hurricane Sandy relief, thinks Americans have trouble coming to grips with January 6th because it runs counter to what most believe about their country.

“I think Trump is such a distillation of everything America pretends it’s not,” he said.

“That is all wrapped up in what January 6th is.

“If this was a country in the Middle East or South America, we’d be talking about a self-coup. That’s not what we’re talking about. That’s not the popular narrative.”

Homegrown has received positive reviews in Europe and South America, and Premo told Raw Story that for a time it was the sixth-most popular streaming movie in New Zealand.

But Americans who want to see Homegrown will have to rent it directly from the film’s website, from Jan. 6 through Feb.16 — the President’s Day holiday.

“We’ve talked to many distributors, and we’ve gotten confounding rejection,” Premo said.

“They’ve said, ‘We love it, but we can’t take it.’ People have been ‘counter-programming-the-apocalypse,’ is what I call it — just light, happy fare.”

Revelatory portraits

For anyone who followed the news closely from protests for racial justice in the summer of 2020 through the presidential election that November and its chaotic fallout, the feverish pace of the storytelling in Homegrown will summon familiar feelings of excitement, dread and anxiety.

But the portraits of the three men profiled in the film, drawn in full humanity, revealing themselves with flashes of violence, self-reflection and regret, will likely come as a revelation to many.

Chris Quaglin is a father-to-be who vandalizes a Black Lives Matter mural.

Thad Cisneros is a high-ranking Latino leader of the Proud Boys who forges a cross-ideological alliance against police violence.

Randy Ireland is an Air Force veteran who takes on the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes duties of organizing the group.

All are footsoldiers of the Trump movement, destined to sink back into obscurity once they’ve outlived their usefulness.

In one scene, filmed about a week after January 6th, Quaglin is seen fixing up a room for his son, who is about to be born.

“I got him to worry about,” Quaglin says. “And he’s the reason why I did go to DC — because I feel like something had to be done. But I think that all hell’s going to break loose. Sooner than later. If you think DC was bad, just wait. Just wait.”

Quaglin was arrested about two months after his son’s birth, for his involvement in the January 6th attack.

Convicted of 14 charges, including felony counts of assaulting police and obstruction of Congress, like about 1,600 other defendants, he received a pardon from President Trump shortly after Inauguration Day last year.

In another scene, filmed in Portland, Oregon following January 6th, Ireland laments that newer members of the Proud Boys are interested in “Going to streets and hunting, and they found someone that they suspected and chasing them down.

“We don’t do that,” he says.

The next moment, the Proud Boys leader is seen riding in the back of a pickup wearing a helmet and ballistic vest as others fire Airsoft rifles at a group of antifascists in black bloc formation.

‘They’re waiting’

Now Trump has returned to power, rank-and-file conservative activists who hit the streets in 2020 and up to January 6th have largely faded from view.

They’ve been rendered somewhat redundant, Premo said, as Trump has strong-armed media companies “to capitulate” and brought “universities to heel,” thereby neutralizing institutions that would ordinarily check a president’s power.

The reason activists such as Quaglin, Ireland and Cisneros were “ascendant” in 2020, Premo said, “is they were playing this role that the state is now playing now that Trump in his authoritarian trajectory has so effectively consolidated power.”

Reflecting on the past five years, Premo said he doesn’t see the flare-up of vigilante violence that culminated in January 6th as something to be consigned to the past.

His observation recalls the moment during a 2020 presidential debate when Trump was challenged to condemn white supremacists and right-wing militia groups.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said.

Premo said: “The role that’s played by the foot-soldier activist is to be proactive.

“When the state is playing the role that you wanted to play, you have to take a back seat.

“They’re waiting for when they’re needed again. Maybe that happens when Trump refuses to leave office after his term is up.”

• Homegrown is available to rent from Jan. 6 to Feb. 16, via homegrown.film/watch