Prospects
Quelling Our National Riot BY DAVID DAYEN
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nvoking the Nazi era in a political debate is typically dismissed as a bad-faith tactic for those without a compelling argument. But many of us, including many who grew up Jewish, could not ignore the rhyming of history after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6. When photos emerged of vandals in shirts that read “Camp Auschwitz” or “6MWE” (which stands for “6 Million Weren’t Enough”), that feeling deepened. It’s easy to point to the haplessness of the Capitol Riot and laugh at how short it fell of a real fascist coup. But the Beer Hall Putsch, an early Nazi uprising, never even got past a police cordon blocking one of Munich’s main squares. The threat was neutralized, and Hitler and his conspirators were apprehended. It wasn’t until a decade later, when the Nazis were elevated to power, that it became clear that the putsch was a beginning rather than an ending. Revolutions, coups, and insurrections often fail before they succeed. The well-documented events of January 6th have enabled us to learn a lot about the rioters quickly. There were the led and the misled, their anger stoked by social media and encouraged by a mountain of lies, from election fraud to a secret society of elite pedophiles. There were those I’ve seen described as chaos tourists, marching with their cellphones in front of them, “doing it for the ’gram,” for the refracted glory of being
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watched. There were off-duty policemen and Air Force veterans, personifying the links between cops and military figures and the far right. There were state lawmakers and corporate CEOs and dilettantes flying in on private jets. And there were very clearly organized and determined nationalists and racists, extremist leaders and militia members, sporting zip ties and weapons, explicitly seeking to do much more than scare the political class. Puffed up with decades of hate, these disparate figures lashed out with violence against the state, justifying it as the only way to save America. It was bloody and could have been much bloodier. But more chilling was how exultant the display was. People were acting out fantasies harbored in the deepest reaches of their imaginations, typed out on Parler or spoken on a podcast and then made real. They reveled in it, and just by taking action, opened up possibilities for more cruelties in the future. A taste of power doesn’t lead to abstinence. The immediate aftermath saw an end-of-the-movie roundup of the conspirators, a simple task given the ubiquity of images of the riot. Within three days, 25 domestic-terrorism cases were opened. The zip tie guy, the guy with the horned fur hat, the guy who ran off with Nancy Pelosi’s lectern, and other assorted figures were arrested. This response reveals two important things. First, we have
all the tools we need right now to bring lawbreakers who mean to tear down democracy to justice without further corroding civil liberties. And second, the brutally efficient machinery of the state has yet to be turned on those who truly led the uprising, rather than those who followed it. Only accountability up the ladder, not down, will stop short the escalating unrest, and the fracturing of the union. YOU CAN’T SOLELY describe this attack through the actions of the on-site participants. Dark-money groups connected to Trump campaign funders financed the rally that preceded the march on the Capitol. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed to have chipped in half a million dollars. Numerous spokes of the conservative machine, from Turning Point USA to Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni, supplied buses that brought Trump fanatics to Washington. Republican members of Congress, by objecting to the certification of electoral votes, raised hopes that Joe Biden’s victory could be blocked. Reps. Mo Brooks (R-AL) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) reportedly plotted with right-wingers who went on to lead the riot, and at the least psyched up crowds to “fight for America.” One hundred and forty-seven Republican House members and senators, led by self-immolating Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), continued to object to the legality of Biden’s election even after the rioters were
cleared, still pushing the same falsehoods that had triggered the sacking of the Capitol. Finally and most prominently, you have the inciter-inchief himself, who whipped his followers into a frenzy about a stolen election for months, summoned them to Washington, and set them loose on the Congress. People are searching for links establishing coordination between the White House and the rioters. But what happened during four years in public view tells enough of the story. Well before the election chaos, Trump projected a false picture of American catastrophe without him at the helm. He gave recognition to those with racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and xenophobic views; he created the space for them to emerge from the shadows. He told them his loss would signal the nation’s end. Why wouldn’t believers in this apocalyptic vision take up arms to fight what Trump and the right described to them so vividly as the end-times? Why wouldn’t they betray the country in the name of protecting it? Trump activated a long-simmering undercurrent of discontent and disunity, sending into battle those who would take America by force rather than submit to its multiculturalism and tolerance. He broadened and deepened a movement for hate. And once activated, that movement cannot be easily deactivated. But even keeping the
