Chaos agent: Right-wing blames US Capitol riot on notorious instigator banished by Black Lives Matter

Many activists have characterized Sullivan as an agent provocateur, while others have speculated that he is a law enforcement asset. What all seem to agree on is that he thrives off of creating as much chaos as possible.

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“John knew somehow that people were considering storming the Capitol,” Sacker told me. “He had had intelligence days before, and I didn’t believe him. I never thought that something like that would happen. And then when we showed up at the Capitol, there were thousands and thousands of people there. I didn’t think that we would be able to document what was going on. So when I said we did it, I was just shocked that we like got in there at all, and that we were on the front lines of being able to tell the story.”

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“He’s just angry,” she reflected to me. “And he says it in a lot of his videos – ‘Fuck the system, burn it down.’ He doesn’t think it can be reformed. Like he kind of wants his civil war. He’s a bit of a provocateur and he wants to dismantle the system, and he believes in the value of civil disobedience. And because he is apolitical, I think he feels more a sense of allegiance to anyone who shares that the values of, I guess, chaos.”

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Sean Michael Love, the BLM-affiliated journalist, offered a more jaded perspective on Sullivan’s motives: “I definitely think that mentally, he has some things he has to work out. But as far as him cooperating with the law enforcement, that has been our belief.”

Related:

John Earle Sullivan, Who Recorded Ashli Babbitt’s Shooting, Is Arrested

If he’s not an asset, how did he have intelligence about the storming of the Capitol and why did the FBI let him go?