Home ›› 14 Jan 2022 ›› Editorial
Last week marked the anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Congress. It was commemorated by Democrats, including a hard-hitting speech by President Joe Biden. Republicans, except for the brave but isolated Rep Liz Cheney, were nowhere to be found.
Democrats compare January 6 to 9/11 or Pearl Harbour, while mainstream Republicans such as Senator Lindsey Graham largely dismissed it as overblown. But as we now know for certain, it was the culmination of a concerted effort over many weeks by Donald Trump and his supporters to overthrow the election and perpetrate the first coup d’état in US history.
History teaches that a failed coup, especially when essentially unpunished, invariably gives rise to subsequent coups, and that successful coups usually build upon earlier, unsuccessful ones.
What’s crucial about the failed coup, the January 6 violence and the apparent comfort of most Republicans with them, is that they are the logical culmination of a long-developing but rapidly sharpening attack on the US state by the political right.
Donald Trump and his followers are often characterised as nationalists. They are certainly nativists and many are white supremacists. Though they call themselves patriots, they are bitterly opposed to the US government, the actual Constitution, and most aspects of current US society and culture.
The so-called patriots attacking the American state expressed the same irrational double-think when they attacked the Capitol police on January 6, while waving pro-police and “thin blue line” banners, used to show solidarity with the police.
Many among the January 6 mob even claimed they were attacking Congress to “defend the Constitution”. Yet they sought to intimidate and frighten elected officials into abandoning the law and the constitution.
Mob attacks are the exact antithesis of democracy and the rule of law, which are established precisely to prevent the assertion of power through organised violence.
The underlying premise of the failed coup and attack on Congress is the myth, now apparently accepted by most Republican voters, that the 2020 election was a fraud. This “big lie” means the US government is illegitimate and fraudulent and democracy is a cruel joke. It is hard to imagine a more unpatriotic or anti-American stance. Alarmingly, a “big lie” upends worldviews and insidiously persists long after its initial proponents have vanished.
Anti-state rhetoric was a mainstay of the Trump era. The former president attacked almost all core American institutions, not just elections, but also the FBI, CIA, the justice department and military leadership. His terrible relation with these “power ministries” was arguably a fatal weakness.
His fans, including some radical members of Congress and television manipulators such as Tucker Carlson, insist the January 6 attack was somehow orchestrated by the FBI.
This offensive, not aimed against political opponents but at the state itself, is the key to comprehending how dangerous and pernicious the current right-wing agenda in the US has become.
Both right-wing extremists like fascists and left-wing radicals like Leninists share the tactic of attacking, tearing down or hollowing out state institutions as they accumulate power. They then create a set of parallel institutions that operate outside state structures and beyond the rule of law, through which most real power is projected into society.
In addition to the obvious Nazi and Bolshevik historical examples, this pattern can be seen today in countries like Iran and Venezuela. When Donald Trump’s close ally and campaign manager Steve Bannon described himself as a “Leninist”, this is exactly what he meant.
