POSTSCRIPT: BEYOND TRUMP
T
he purpose of this postscript is to consider the events of 6th January 2021 and to attend to some of the sources of rising authoritarianism to which this book, being focused on the far right, has perahps not paid sufficient attention. The storming of the US Capitol on the 6th January 2021 scandalised the libs.77 Some journalists declared it a coup. Others denounced those journalists as hand-wringing alarmists, cynically enabling a power grab by increasingly authoritarian centrists in the Democrat party. The riot was portrayed by liberals and some anti-Trump conservatives alike as proof of the finally-revealed insurrectionary truth of Trumpism. Thereafter, Trump could be placed conclusively beyond politics and into the bipartisan realm of national security threats, more akin to a terrorist than a president. QAnon’s bizarre beliefs were useful for this project of making Trump seem exceptional. They seemed to want to live in an entirely different world. It was a small step from there to to seperating them from the rest of society. Order restored. 210
