This wasn’t just a protest. It cannot even be accurately described as a protest that turned into a riot, or a riot from the start. It crossed too many boundaries for that.

• Explosives.
• Vandalism of a capitol building along with theft of state documents.
• Zip ties, indicating a desire for hostages—or worse.
• Weapons.
• Specific targets like Pelosi and Pence.
• Incitement from the President, his family, and his lawyers. The language used was not protest language. It was hate speech and insurrection speech.
• Help within the administration by not providing adequate security and stymying efforts to bolster support once the breach occurred.
• The breach itself was not spontaneous, indicating an otherwise peaceful protest that devolved into a riot; the point of it was to stop a democratic process to overturn an election, again incited by the President at the start of the March on the capitol.

Protests don’t include those things. Protests that turn into riots don’t include those things. This was something more.

That said, I don’t believe that everyone there went with the intention to commit insurrection or take part of a coup. Right or wrong, they were there because they believed the election was fraudulent but without specific intent or bounds. De facto, they weren’t there not to attempt insurrection either. Failure to recognize the dynamics they were in though and walk away once the language pointed to insurrection, meant they walked away as a member of an attempted coup.

We’re responsible for our actions whether that was what we were there for or not.

Suppose I’m at a party and decide to go on a beer run with some other attendees and they decide to rob the store and murder the clerk. The moment the crime is in progress if I participate in any way, fail to try to stop it, stay with them.after the fact, and do not turn myself in for accountability and provide witness I am complicit and have committed a crime.

There is no difference.