President Donald Trump should be charged, removed from office and then arrested for inducing his followers to besiege and invade the U.S. Capitol. He delivered a speech to a supporters’ rally just before Congress attempted to confirm his electoral college defeat, Trump told his people Going to the Capitol to “support” members of Congress who are protesting certification. He recited his long list of lies about the elections and incited his people by telling them that Vice President Mike Pence “did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution. ” He spoke for almost two hours.
Not long after, his people broke into the Capitol, halted the certification process in the House and Senate, and forced Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be moved to a safe location.
For me, that’s enough to charge him with a crime. Trump’s speech failed.Brandenburg test”(Named after the fall in 1969 Brandenburg versus Ohio), which specifies when language becomes a warning to violent acts and loses its protection before the first change. The test asks whether the speech “was directed to inciting or evoking imminent lawless acts” and the speech must “likely incite or evoke such acts”. Speaking in “code” is not a defense. Trump’s statements were designed – and likely would – to instigate instant lawlessness.
There is also a statute: 18 U.S.C. Section 373 makes “incitement to commit a violent crime” a federal offense. The language there reads: “Anyone who encourages, orders, induces or otherwise engages another person to commit a crime that constitutes a criminal offense” will be imprisoned or fined or both.
Authorities would remove and arrest Trump – if he were black. It’s not a guess. This is literally what has already happened to Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson. During a protest following the police murder of Alton Sterling in 2016, Baton Rouge police arrested McKesson and charged him with incitement. He hadn’t said anything violent, but apparently one protester – one – threw a brick that injured a police officer. McKesson was just the most visible organizer of the event, and so he was locked up.
McKesson was eventually released, whereupon he sued the police for false arrests. The department settled down, but then the injured officer sued McKesson – again under an incitement theory. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the officer’s lawsuit to proceed, and McKesson had to go to the Supreme Court before it was finally dismissed. If a black activist can be arrested and prosecuted to the Supreme Court for throwing a brick at a rally, what should happen to a white president who encourages his people to storm the Capitol?
Nothing? Will the white legal institution’s answer be “nothing”? Leaders of failed insurrections (or coups, or riot or whatever you want to call it) shouldn’t get away with nothing.
We are here, living in a state on the brink of collapse because the authorities have done nothing for too long to stop violent white supremacists, now organized under Donald Trump’s banner, or their enablers in government and media. Right-wing media incite their viewers consistently against “The Squad” – but the prosecution does nothing. The Republican Party incites anti-mask maniacs who then go out and plan to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer – but Republican voters do nothing to punish officials. And Trump was quoted directly in manifestos by mass shooters – but the anti-terrorist forces do nothing. Nothing never happens, but the media continues to reinforce Trump’s violent rhetoric with live coverage.
Republicans actively promote the violent behavior of their marginalized extremists. It’s not just Trump, however. It’s not just Josh Hawley who reinforces Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about the election. It is also law enforcement agencies – those whose unions endorsed him – who provide help and comfort to lawless whites. It’s the Kenosha cops who gave street terrorist Kyle Rittenhouse a drink of water, and it’s the DC cops who took selfies with the people who stormed the Capitol.
Like McKesson, we know what would happen to these Capitol rioters if they were black. We have just seen a summer of protest against the brutality of the police, and time and again the police met these protesters with even greater brutality. Black Lives Matter protesters and reporters were gassed in tears and rubber bullets shot at because they were between Trump and an opportunity to take photos with a Bible. Black Lives Matter protesters were pushed, beaten in the body, suffocated, sprayed with pepper spray and beaten by police … because they were near large shops. And all summer black people were arrested – dozens of us – trying to restore order.
How many whites were arrested while taking over the Capitol? Did you get the man who took the podium from the Senate? How about whoever sat down at Pelosi’s assistant? Or the people who broke windows and rummaged through desks? Did you get the guy to walk through restricted areas with a Confederate flag? What about the people who planted explosives in the Capitol?
At this point in time, the DC police are reporting on this They arrested 12 people;; A woman was shot dead, although it is not yet clear who fired the shot. The media turns any protest against Black Lives Matter into an episode of C.O.P.S.This sent the message that the authorities were in control, but as far as I can tell, the few arrests were off-camera. Despite endless lawlessness and the first looting of the U.S. Capitol since the 1812 War, there was no dramatic paddy-wagon scene.
The double standard is not surprising, but instructive. Our society allows for white anger. This anger is constantly pampered, explained, massaged, and justified. We are forever told that white anger needs to be understood, white ailments explained, and white racism investigated because if we dig deep enough we will find that it is actually motivated by another, more innocuous factor.
In contrast, black anger is arrested. Black anger is carried out. Black complaint is rejected. It’s not that blacks have no reason to storm the Capitol and seek redress for injustices committed against us – it’s that a black person with or without a gun wouldn’t take two steps into the statue hall without being from the police to be shot down.
Talking about the coup attempt, Joe Biden said, “This is not a reflection of real America.” He was wrong. White people have always been allowed to use force to express dissent. The blacks dragged from their homes and literally toasted in the New York Riots of 1863 could tell you what a “true” reflection of America looks like, just as the blacks beaten on Edmund Pettus Bridge might say. This attempt was a perfect reflection of what has always been true in America: we have a set of laws for blacks and a different, milder set of laws for violent whites.
Trump must be indicted and removed. All of his supporters who breached the Capitol must be rounded up and arrested.
The likelihood that it doesn’t is why this country is a failed state.
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