Seditionists identify as not-seditionists. Who are you to deny their identity?

A growing number of Capitol rioters have gone back on their guilty pleas and apologies – including one of the most recognisable faces from 6 January.

The pretend-shaman guy.

A judge called his apology “the most remarkable I’ve heard in 34 years” and sentenced him to 41 months in prison – considerably less than the maximum allowed. Now more than a year-and-a-half later, Angeli is out of jail early, and his remorse is gone. “Regrets only weigh down the mind,” he told the BBC. “They’re like sandbags on a hot air balloon.”

Some minds need weighing down. People who do bad destructive dangerous things need to be weighed down so that they can learn to stop doing bad destructive dangerous things. The classic example of course is Trump himself, who never regrets anything. He’s a terrible human being, in large part because he never lets his mind be weighed down with thinking about the terrible things he says and does.

In addition to walking back regrets, a number of rioters have tried to capitalise on their involvement in the riots in a number of ways.

Derrick Evans, a former member of the West Virginia state legislature, resigned his post after being arrested. He pleaded guilty, apologised in court, and served three months in prison. Now he is running for a seat in the US House of Representatives, and he refers to himself and other defendants as “political prisoners”.

The term is commonly used across a broad section of the right and far-right of American politics to cast rioters as heroic and patriotic.

And their glorious cause is…Donald Trump.