Yeah, in April of 2020, I had actually just returned home to Paris, where I was living at the time, from an assignment in Syria, where I had been reporting on the destruction of the city of Raqqa subsequent to American bombardments. And so, I — and that level of destruction was really shocking to me, even in the context of other American offensives that I had reported on. And, you know, just over the years, there had always been this kind of troubling disconnect between the violence that I witnessed repeatedly perpetrated by the United States in other countries and the relative peace and prosperity back home domestically, where most of the country seemed to be entirely insulated from any kind of consequences or ramifications from what was really a unprecedented — unprecedented modern destruction of other societies and communities.
So, when I saw, you know, militarized groups occupying an American statehouse with automatic — or, semiautomatic rifles and flak jackets and helmets, accosting lawmakers, that seemed to be perhaps an echo of some of the tendencies in our country that I had been reporting on abroad. And I wanted to see what that was about, so I flew to Michigan in early May.
— source democracynow.org | Sep 14, 2022