On August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, invading British troops marched into Washington, DC, and set fire to several government buildings including the U.S. Capitol.
On January 6, 2021, in an insurrectional coup instituted by President Donald John Trump, an invading Trump-supporting domestic terrorist mob stormed the U.S. Capitol vandalizing and looting while placing incendiary devices in the vicinity, which the bomb squad had to disarm.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation defines “domestic terrorism” as:
Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
Exactly four weeks following Adolf Hitler’s swearing-in as Chancellor of Germany, the German Reichstag (Parliament) building was torched in an arson attack. The Nazi government blamed it on a conspiracy by communist agitators.
Many historians, however, assert that the German Nazi paramilitary force, the SA (Sturmabteilung) had intentionally set the fire to create further backlash toward the communists and shore up Nazi control and domination and, thereby, suspending most civil liberties and public opposition.
Many U.S. right-wing commentators, media hosts such as Fox News’ Lou Dobbs and Laura Ingraham, and Republican legislators like Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) claimed, with no evidence, that the mob was infiltrated by left-wing Antifa protestors who instigated the riot and property destruction rather than Trump supporters.
Former Alaska Governor and Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin argued “A lot of it is the Antifa folks” citing “pictures” she had allegedly witnessed.
Former U.S. Representative, Michele Bachman (R-Minnesota) indirectly accused communists of plotting the riot. Bachman, who attended the Trump rally beforehand, asserted:
You know the kind of people that we were with [at the rally],” Bachmann said during a livestream broadcast organized by a religious right group. “The nicest, friendliest, happiest people. It was like a family reunion out there. It was incredible. It was wonderful.
She then turned to her playbook of conspiracy theories:
And then all of a sudden this happens. And it reminded me of Moscow in 1917 with the Bolsheviks,” she continued, “where there were rabble-rousers who dressed up in the opposition’s clothing and had a violent event in the streets.
With no valid evidence but basing her statements on opinion only,
I’m not a betting woman, but I would put $1,000 on any table to say this wasn’t the Trump crowd. This didn’t look anything like the Trump crowd or the prayer warriors,” she concluded. “These were rabble-rousers. Paid rabble-rousers.
Like the Nazis who blamed communists for what seems likely its own acts of destruction on the Reichstag, some ultra-conservative Republicans are attempting to assuage blame for the reckless and unconscionable violence of their own supporters.
It’s All About “Race”
Let us be clear: What we saw at the U.S. Capitol building on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, was a patriarchal white supremacist attempted coup against an election largely determined by black people in their organizing efforts and enormous turnout at the polls!
From the very day Trump devolved down his gold escalator in Trump Tower, he announced the theme of his presidential campaign as “white grievance” and his strategy of divide and conquer according to “race” – all, though, in thinly disguised terminology.
Trump targeted his message, in fact, his entire campaign to lower-middle and working-class white people whom, he claimed, were in desperate and unfair competition for jobs and status with invading hordes of brown people from our southern border, unmerited priority policies favoring black people, and disloyal and dangerous Muslins.
Patriarchal white supremacy wins by building walls of division while inhibiting attempts to construct bridges connecting people. Donald Trump has dedicated his entire life to erecting walls to divide and conquer, to “win” for himself at any cost to his now non-existent sense of dignity, integrity, and empathy.
Trump’s statements, policies, and actions, coupled with his cabinet and other staff appointees have resulted in furthering the already deep skid marks across the landscape, and a historic collective fracture of divisions and anxiety on the body politic.
Trump has excited the worst in the human psyche. But Trump has merely served as a tool – a toxic elixir – that has revealed the iceberg of the not-so submerged resentment and fear of the “other.” By his example, he has given others permission to reveal their own xenophobic beliefs with strength and even with pride.
Trump could be placed into the category of “Machiavellian” in his single-mindedness, cunning, plotting, and unscrupulous – sometimes vicious — actions in advancing his power and fortune and enacting his policies. To him, the ends certainly justify the means no matter who gets hurt.
Though it may seem counter-intuitive, why would a significantly large cadre of working-class, primarily white men, support Donald Trump and a Republican Party that has long stood for enriching the pockets of the owning and managerial classes with massive tax breaks and what amounts to corporate welfare, while simultaneously opposing enlarging the federal minimum wage, ensuring low-cost quality child care, creating a fair and equitable graduated income tax rate, and providing quality affordable healthcare as a universal human right?
In other words, why are so many working-class people voting against their own personal self-interests by supporting Republicans?
President Lindon Baynes Johnson was asked this very question in the 1960s. He responded:
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t know you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
Lies upon Lies
We have long known that Donald Trump is a liar and a racist neo-nationalist. Republican leaders and their supporters who do not speak out are enablers and are themselves racist conspirators!
The Washington Post found Trump to have told in the range of 20,000 false or misleading statements since he took office.
As Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Reich Minister of Propaganda boasted:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
“Enabler” is the term given to those who fail to act to help abusers. “Passive bystander” or “bad Samaritan” is the name for people who are conscious of bad actions developing around them but fail to intervene.
Enabling and passively standing by take many forms, including literally offering an addict substances or conspiring with an abuser in a sinister plot, contributing to the denial of addicts and aggressors by asserting that they don’t have a problem, to downplaying the seriousness and making excuses for their behaviors, translating for others what the person “really meant,” downright lying, and so on.
How many times have we heard, “He didn’t mean it that way. What he really meant to say was…” and “You are misunderstanding her,” to “I got this black eye by walking into a door.”
I have been stuck time and time again throughout the post-factual campaign, transition, and presidency of Donald J. Trump of the lies, the verifiable lies, big and small that he spreads.
These include from his claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, to the “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey who cheered when the twin towers crashed down on 9-11, to “I know more about ISIS than the generals do,” to the border wall that the Mexican government will pay for, to Trump’s assertion that he appeared on the cover of Time magazine more than any other person ever, to his scathing attacks on the U.S. Intelligence agencies who he accused of leaking “false” documents signifying that Russia influenced the 2016 election, to his allegation of the past “rigged elections” and his own electoral “land slide” in both 2016 and 2020, to his oppressive characterizations of entire groups of people and nations.
Even more troubling, however, are the Trump enablers who defend and articulate more clearly what “Trump was actually saying.” These enablers include his Vice President, Mike Pence, his former counselor Kellyanne Conway, daughter Ivanka Trump, sons Don Jr. and Eric, Majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McDonald, and Republican leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and most of the Republican legislators, Evangelist Jerry Falwell Jr., and his other advisors and surrogates.
These enablers spin the facts by turning themselves into virtual pretzels in defense of Trump’s attempts make us believe his nonsense intended to give him permission to commit possible cruelties.
These enablers now also include the feckless Capitol police force, which allowed the mob to pummel, enter, and vandalize the building. We can be assured that if the majority of demonstrators had been people of color, the police response would have been much more aggressive, belligerent, and violent.
Donald Trump’s sustained and vicious attacks on what he refers to as the “dishonest and corrupt” media imperils our freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, the Fourth Estate, while making some mistakes, fact-checks itself and our politicians, including Trump, and by so doing, exposes his lies for what they are.
On the very landing of the balcony of the U.S. Capitol where Trump gave his “American Carnage” inaugural speech, Trump’s insurrectional militia conducted carnage on our democracy.
But unlike the German Nazis, U.S. fascist terrorists will fail as truth conquers Trump’s lies, democracy will survive demagoguery, our great Constitution will prevail over this attempted coup, and We the People will win over they the mob.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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