Red hats, red blood: roleplaying the January 6 insurrection in a Brooklyn warehouse

In the center of a repurposed Brooklyn warehouse loomed a scale model of the U.S. Capitol, as imposing a symbol of empire as the real building a couple hundred miles to the south. Surrounding it stood a line of blue-uniformed miniatures — police, meant to protect the election certification going on inside. Just beyond them, an ocean of red and white, miniatures of men and women holding flags that proclaimed that the time for revolution had come; the time to make America great again was here at last. 

I knew what I had signed up for — a playtest of Fight for America! a wargame produced by Neal Wilkinson, Christopher McElroen, and Warhammer 40K designer Alessio Cavatore, depicting the insurrection attempt of January 6th, 2021 — but still, I was not prepared to relive the surreal horror that day has burned into the core of the American psyche.

A group of twenty or so stood on opposite sides of the miniature capitol hill. Divided into two factions by the designers, one in a red hat, the other in blue, the groups’ awkward, nervous energy felt more like the first minutes of a school dance than a game depicting a violent coup. Left stunned by the jarring contrast, I was ushered off to one side of the room, put in front of a camera, and asked the same preliminary question as every other player: What about America is worth fighting for? My response yielded more of an ideal than a reality — a commitment to equality, protection of the most vulnerable, and a rejection of the violent oppression the country was unequivocally built on. 

Seemingly content with my answer, the game’s organizers handed me a card. Like every player, I was embodying a real person: Adam Johnson. A QAnon supporter who you may know colloquially as “The Podium Guy”, Johnson was depicted on the card with his real-life photo carrying Nancy Pelosi’s podium. Having missed the opening rules video — an immersive, in-character speech where an actor, dressed in MAGA regalia, spoke to the players as freedom fighters who should achieve their mission by any means necessary — I was then handed a ruler with a brief breakdown of the game’s mechanics, before being sent off to a quadrant of Capitol Hill. Divided into multiple areas of combat, each section had at least two players: one representing the capitol police, the other acting as the MAGA coalition of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon truthers, and other assorted right-wing groups. 

The collected players awkwardly introduced themselves to one another (a surprisingly diverse group of people across spectrums of gender, age, and race). The two women in my quadrant introduced themselves as casual board gamers. One, overwhelmed by the rules, played an Oath Keeper; the other, facing down both of us on her own, played Eugene Goodman, the Black police officer whose mere presence diverted the racism-driven mob away from Mike Pence’s location.

Introductions were cut short when a man stepped on stage, flanked by American flags and television screens. Now dressed as Uncle Sam, the same actor who had introduced us to the mechanics of the game shepherded us through its story. 

Our mutually exclusive win states were made clear. Team blue, the capitol defenders, must hold the line and defend the capitol. Team red must stop the steal — and hang Mike Pence. 

****

On January 6, 2021, I was alone. Hidden away in the forests near Albany, I walked through the snow-covered landscape, attempting to reconcile the horror of the previous four years and process the months of protesting I’d done that summer. A pandemic had brought the world to a halt, killing millions and disabling millions more. The collective lack of distraction forced us to bear witness to the horror of the brutal, yet all too routine, murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Elijah McClain. The promise of America had been broken, had always been broken, and now it could not be ignored. 

After hours of silent contemplation, I returned to my cabin, checked my phone, and for a moment, I fell out of time. There, streaming on every possible platform, was a sea of red storming the U.S. Capitol building. 

As I watched these people mob the beating heart of the nation they supposedly love, the only thing I felt in my chest was a pit of sorrow so deep that there was no bottom. To my horror, I recognized myself in these people. I had felt the violent fury of righteousness they believed they were fighting for. Though we stand at opposite ends of a vast chasm, I knew them. I’d sat in that seat of revolution. I’d felt the fire of injustice in my soul and wanted to use it to burn down the world around me. I’d enjoyed the rush of being a single piece of a larger whole, marching forward and staring down the barrel of empire.

I turned off my phone and wrote in the cabin’s guest book to document this moment that would mark the final schism of the grand democratic experiment. 

What about America is worth fighting for?

Just before the game started, those playing capitol police took an oath to defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. They stood together as a unified front, reciting this oath line by line — one the current President recently took while refusing to touch a Bible. The MAGA coalition each took their respective oaths.

Those playing the Oath Keepers, an anti-government paramilitary group founded in 2009 by Yale-graduate Stuart Rhodes, recited the 10 unconstitutional orders they claim they will refuse to obey. Those include orders to disarm the American people, conduct warrantless searches, detain American citizens, put American citizens into concentration camps, confiscate property, or infringe on protest or free speech — all of which were sped through during the game, seemingly as a way to show the half-hearted nature of this oath, which relies heavily on exactly who the Oath Keepers deem as American enough. 

The Proud Boys, a white nationalist hate group, were told to sing along to “Proud of Your Boy”, a bastardized song from the Disney musical Aladdin and the organization’s namesake — a fact confirmed by founder Gavin McInnes. The player acting as Jacob Chansley, better known as the QAnon shaman, recited the speech he gave at the capitol to his fellow QAnon truthers, believers in the once-fringe conspiracy network with far less organization. Documented as being drunk on that day, I and other QAnon players were given a real, actual beer. The national anthem played, and I performed a heightened degree of respect, assuring my fellow players that while I would take this game seriously, above the table, we were all on the same side. 

The absurd, almost comedic aspects of seeing the insurrection’s component parts created enough distance from our current reality that I felt able to tap into the mindset of my assigned role. As the final line of The Star Spangled Banner rang out — The land of the free and the home of the brave — I cracked my beer and chugged.

And then, the game began. 

The night before, I’d seen the Dimension 20 Madison Square Garden show. I’d almost not gone to the playtest, drained from a night of euphoric communal joy that I was afraid to let slip through my fingers by once again confronting reality. I’m not our wargames correspondent, and I could easily wait for Caelyn to attend the game when it toured in London this summer.

But this felt…personal, I suppose. Days before, Donald Trump had been re-inagurated. Within 48 hours, and in the two weeks since, his administration has attempted a fundamental overhaul of the United States government. Truth itself has become malleable, and personhood a subject for debate. Each day I look at the news, facing an onslaught of horrors, and I have to pragmatically decide whether my partner and me — both chronically ill and trans — will be able to survive. 

In the eyes of the current regime, we are expendable. Drains on the system at best; enemies of the state at worst. According to an executive order banning trans people from the military, we cannot live an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle”. In going to this event, I donned a baggy sweater and a hat, saying nothing as people around me referred to me as a man. Not out of fear of retaliation in the leftist enclave of Brooklyn, but out of the reality that to acknowledge myself as trans in this space would be to recognize that the person I am portraying likely wants me dead.

It was slow at first. Units amassed on the board, two insurrectionists for every officer. Turn by turn, the capital defenders held the line, unable mechanically and morally to strike first. A resulting red wave rapidly amassed on the steps of democracy. We waited, tensions rising, plotting when this standoff could escalate into violence. We moved tactically and with purpose.

Clips began to play on screen: news anchors from the ideological left and the right (all played by the same actor as Uncle Sam) recited broadcasts from the day. The left condemned the riot, and the right blamed insurgent groups like antifa rather than acknowledging their own base’s violence. Interspersed throughout was Donald Trump’s speech and tweets — which were used as evidence in the now-dismissed court case against the President for charges of election interference — encouraging his supporters to march on the capitol. 

As the speech ended, a timer went off allowing another hoard of units to enter the field, creating an even more horrifying imbalance between the two sides. This overwhelm allowed me to distract and cordon off the police units, opening a straight path to the halls of Congress. During the game, I found myself making sub-optimal moves. I could pretend that this was in character as the disorganized, drunken mob, or that it was based in my play philosophy of prioritizing fun over winning. But truly, it pulled my punches out of a profound need to avoid a total slaughter by fascist paramilitaries, a potential reality I simply couldn’t stomach even in a game. Units slowly disappeared from the board as insurrectionists overtook police, or the blue line repelled the domestic invaders.

As the facilitators continued their immersive elements, speaking directly to either side, announcements came to the group. Updates from the government, shouts from the insurrectionists to reaffirm their righteous cause. Bear mace burned in the air, tear gas canistered deployed. And then, shots fired. Live ammo was on the field. 

Uncle Sam began a chant. “Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.” In the spirit of buying into the game, I chanted along. He handed me a card, my second amendment right to a concealed firearm.

When a fourth player joined our group, an experienced gamer and the child of a well-known game designer, the dynamics of the game shifted. I was no longer there to observe the game and guide my fellow players through this experience — I was there to win. Our moves picked up pace, and conflict broke out multiple times every round. 

I approached the Capitol and found myself staring down a half-dozen heavy tactical units. A clear problem for some, but I held the solution in my hand — my God-given right as an American to kill anyone in my way. I put down the card and fired. A police unit disappeared. What I had not realized was they had the chance to return fire. They did; one of my units, gone. My teammate and I had the choice: to return fire again and continue the bloodshed, or to stop it there. We fired again. There were more of us than there were of them. Another unit gone. Fire returned. This was no longer a protest, this was a battlefield. 

In the blink of an eye, half the people in our section had been wiped off the board. I turned to my fellow revolutionary, hesitating to continue this slaughter, and found her silently weeping. The spell broke, and I told the facilitators that we were done. As the miniature battle raged on around us, I checked in on her, assuring her that if we needed to stop entirely we could. No article was worth the lasting trauma this moment could undoubtedly bring. She told me everything was okay, that she wanted to keep playing. “I get it now,” she kept saying. “I understand what this game is.” 

For the last eight years, I have had escape routes mapped, contingency plans in place just in case the worst does indeed happen. It’s an exercise in futility, but preparation has always been my coping mechanism. Doomscrolling through the onslaught, looking at the sun hoping it does not blind me, is a survival tactic. Still, it will only buy me a little time, that much is clear now. 

This insurrection is ongoing. These factions are emboldened, celebrated for their acts of hate as immigrants are rounded up and deported, as trans people are stripped of their rights and documents, as an unelected oligarch commandeers the government’s most sensitive data and stripmines America for profit.

While the worst is yet to come, it’s clear that a revolution has already happened. It’s currently happening. But there’s nowhere to run. Even for the most privileged among us, regardless of where you are, it will find you. 

Fascism cannot be escaped, it can only be fought. 

After a pause, a moment to collect ourselves and remember exactly what this game is, my team and I continued into the endgame and stormed the U.S. Capitol. 

Once we breached the walls, the insurrectionists moved from the exterior of Capitol Hill into a scale floorplan of the building itself. One by one, we kicked open rooms that awarded us dice to add to a pool for a final roll. Our frantic, desperate search mirrored the one seen from CCTV footage: a swarm of red screaming out in search of Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. Driving their rage was an insatiable hunger for faulty justice against a system they believed is the fault of their suffering, revenge against the ones they’ve been told have perpetrated it, a vile desire to preserve a social hierarchy dependent on suffering.

As we reached the final moments of the game, the insurrectionists had an overwhelming advantage. Dice spread across the floor in a pool of blue and red blood, the answer clear. The insurrectionists had won. We had captured the vice president, who had held his oath to maintain the results of the election. It was now up to us to decide what we do with this traitor to our great leader.

Our group looked around at one another, knowing what we had to do—knowing what they would have done. Almost unanimously, some of us covering our eyes out of shame, we voted to hang Mike Pence, achieving our success scenario. Among the few who did not vote ‘yes’ was a man who’d been eager to play, but was accompanied by his young child. A girl of about 7 or 8 who was born into this broken, violent world, she watched this game removed from its reality, with an innocence only children can maintain. I can only imagine he wanted to prove to her that there is always hope for the good of people. A hope I hang on to as the days pass, and it becomes clear that they did win, even if not on January 6. 

As Uncle Sam delivered with stoic horror the decision we made, a montage of footage from the insurrection began to play. A flurry of CCTV footage, of congresspeople fleeing, of battered police dragged to safety by their comrades. We all sat in solemn silence, horrified at what we had just done, what had been done to us as a nation. Facilitators handed out a second set of character cards — this time showing the lives of these people since. 

My card, which had been drafted and printed prior to Trump’s re-election, said Adam Johnson had been convicted and sentenced to prison time and community service. On the card was a sticker, clearly not part of the original design. It was a single word, hastily laid over his image: Pardoned.

I don’t know where we go from here. No one does. But it is not over. Amidst all the noise, journalists are working to keep the public informed of what is going on, while organizers and activists show us what there is to do about it. Independent reporter Marisa Kabas’ broke the federal funding freeze story at her outlet The Handbasket and Wired has proven the strongest source of authentic reporting on an unelected billionaire’s attempts to eradicate the federal government’s ability to function, with a cadre of college-age sycophants. Protesters march in the streets as civil servants refuse to be pushed out of their jobs. 

On average, the lifespan of an empire is 220 years. America will celebrate its 249th birthday this July 4th. This is not a game, there is no win state. Only survival. Only the continuation of peoples our new rulers so desperately want to eradicate. Certain inalienable rights that have never been upheld for everyone in this country. An ideal of equality and dignity for everyone. A right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Even if the United States itself cannot survive what is to come, what about America is worth fighting for?