Propaganda outlet One America News Network (OAN) marked one year of the January 6 insurrection with denialism and conspiracy theories.

OAN tapped its investigative reporter Pearson Sharp -- known for calling for mass executions over debunked voter fraud allegations -- for its latest rewrite of last year’s violent attack on the U.S. democracy. Contradicting reality, Sharp denied that Trump supporters were behind any of the violence, pushed false-flag conspiracy theories about outside infiltrators, and warned viewers Democrats are using a “phony narrative” about the insurrection to crack down on their rights. OAN has rebroadcast the segment at least nine times since it aired -- peppering the segment with lies about the 2020 election and Democrat-led “torture” of people detained for participating in the insurrection.

Under OAN’s alternate reality account of the insurrection, "most of the people who entered the Capitol after apparently being invited in by the police were confused and disorganized and were just there to take selfies.”

Sharp explained that the confused selfie-takers were simply caught up in violent acts by “members of the far-left radical, Stalinist organization known as antifa” and FBI-connected bad actors like Ray Epps. While such allegations help OAN dodge accountability for its role in fomenting the insurrection, there is still no evidence that either anti-fascists or FBI operatives attended (let alone planned) the coup.

Sharp concluded that in the year since the violent attack, Democrats have “still found nothing” from the “farcical trials.” In line with OAN’s other denialist reports, Sharp declared, “There was no insurrection. Democrats weaponized the events of January 6 to wield against the American people.” 

For Pearson and OAN, the insurrection is “just another boogeyman, another smokescreen to strip away more of our rights and lockdown [Democrat’s] tyrannical grip on power.”  By OAN’s telling, the real victims aren’t the congressional members suffering from the trauma of the events, the Capitol police officers, or American democracy, but the insurrectionists themselves.