It is tempting to see the violence in Washington, DC on Wednesday as the death rattle of a disintegrating political order – the Trump administration and the last spasmodic power grab of its most cultist followers. In truth, it is the form of things to come.
Already a litany of Elected officials and Public figures, Democrats and republican, liberal and conservativeinsist that “This is not who we are” and “This is not America. “In truth, pressure has been building on this point for some time.
The collapse of the “Alt-Right” after the murder of Heather Heyer at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville left a power vacuum that was filled by the Proud Boys – a kind of “Big Tent” organization for conspiratorial neo-fascist thugs – and a decentralized line of sects of ultraviolet accelerators that can be found primarily online. In the ideological pressure cooker that followed Donald Trump’s defeat in November, new syntheses and alliances between these elements and the president’s hardcore MAGA base began to form, which manifested itself in Wednesday’s unrest.
President-elect Joe Biden, who vowed to heal the divisions in the country and restore the supposed post-racial calm of the Obama era, condemned the uprising and urged Trump supporters who had occupied the Capitol and disrupted certification of the election results ” withdraw and let the work of democracy move forward “. The Autogolpistas who stormed the congress –encouraged to do so just hours before from the President himself – do not believe in the legitimacy of the results of the recent elections. To address a shared, principled commitment to democracy is to misunderstand the nature of the threat they pose.
The thousands who took part in the uprising on Wednesday, the tens of thousands who cheered them on Live streams and obscure social media platforms, and the Millions who support such actions Respect the legitimacy of democratic processes only to the extent that their preferred results occur. In that respect they are not that different from the more conventional parts of the Republican Party – the difference is that during the mainstream GOP undermines democracy through the courtsthe neo-fascist GOP tries to do this on the street.
During the day, photos and videos of Trump supporters arguing with police on Capitol Hill, haunted the halls of Congress and generally fair fooling around poured over social media. she raised a huge cross outside the Capitol and inspired copycats in Albany, Atlanta, Olympia, Salem, and Topeka. When asked why the police did not forcibly evict protesters from federal buildings, a Capitol police officer asked told a New York Times Reporter: “We just have to let them do their thing now.” As another cop told a Bloomberg Reporter: “We just weren’t prepared. I hope they don’t do that shit during the inauguration. We don’t have the people to handle it.”
In the light of the show of force used against demonstrators in DC this summer – not to mention the Hundreds of arrests made during Donald Trump’s inauguration four years ago – such claims are difficult to confirm. Several videos, recorded at various locations throughout the day, showed police officers abandoning barricades and demonstrators seemingly able to enter federal buildings unhindered. “We were reminded again that the designation of peaceful protest is made by law enforcement and the state. It is not a question of keeping the peace when there is only one side. ” The new republicMelissa Gira Grant wrote. “What we’re seeing in the Capitol is not a riot. It’s an alliance.” Im JacobinPeter Gowan watched: “The repressive apparatus of this state does not just happen to take different approaches for left and right-wing demonstrators. It cracks down on those who threaten the ruling class and pampers those who don’t. ”
Even though the Capitol Police showed great respect for the demonstrators on Wednesday, we should not lose sight of the fact that the afternoon was marked by bloodshed and bloodshed confrontation– Trump supporters fought the cops, who in turn shot and killed Ashli Babbit, an Air Force veteran. (Three other people reportedly died of medical emergencies during the riot.) Confusion and confusion over police resistance was heard on various livestreams from the Capitol amid curses and mockery. Hadn’t these Trump supporters just spent months supporting the blue against the Marxists, Antifa and the dreaded Black Lives Matter? Now being blocked from stop the theft was a great betrayal, and the result was a remarkable spectacle: The Base of the American Law and Order Party, which Heumacher threw at uniformed cops on the steps of the nation’s Capitol.
Those who lead the indictment to the Capitol are fueled by a kind of nihilistic ethnonationalism, filtered in some cases by popular discourses on patriotism and civilizational struggle, and in others by pseudo-mystical appeals to blood and soil. On the far right, the question is how to relate to law enforcement and the state that is capitalized: in recent years, proud boys have often been seen at demonstrations across the country wooing police officers and emphasizing their shared disdain for liberals, Progressives and leftists – insofar as they wanted to make a difference at all – while accelerating propaganda often portrays police officers as enemies of the white nationalist project.
While the old man saw that “Some of those who work are the same ones who burn crosses“Remains trueThe political currents now flowing through the American right require further analysis. Historically, rule of law actors have more weight under democratic administrations – no matter how moderate. With Joe Biden taking office, the influence of the accelerating right is likely to increase, leading to greater violence not only against the left but also opportunistically against the police and the state. The potential path to state power presented by the Trump administration has been closed so that fascist law will pursue its political goals in a different way.
On Wednesday, after hours of demands from Liberals and Conservatives, the president sent a characteristically mixed message to those who besieged the Capitol that Trump should condemn people for doing exactly what he asked them to do that morning. “We love you. You are very special,” he said in a video posted on Twitter, but it was time to “go home.” Of course, he couldn’t help but remind everyone that he was the victim of a ” “There has never been a time like this when … they could take away all of us – me, you, our country.”
Rest assured that this will be Trump’s parting message: that he has been betrayed and that the time will come to avenge this betrayal. It won’t be long before his supporters take matters into their own hands again.
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