We Underestimate the Far Right at Our Own Peril

By Benjamin L. McKean, Jacobin

08 January 21

Yesterday’s riot of Trump supporters at the US Capitol will likely be a radicalizing event for the far right. We shouldn’t underestimate their ability to cause more death and destruction in the aftermath.

hat happened yesterday? In one sense, it’s easy to say. Trump supporters, many of them armed, stormed the Capitol Building and forced Congress to recess, delaying the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president for several hours. It was a startling spectacle, but there was never any real likelihood that they would enable Trump to remain president. It’s not clear they even had a plan for keeping Trump in office. C-SPAN footage of the Trump supporters who made their way into the Capitol’s Statuary Hall showed them wandering around like tourists, seemingly as surprised to be there as anyone else was to see them there.

The thought seemed to be that their presence would be enough to bring about “the Storm,” QAnon’s version of the millennium, triggering a secret plan by Trump that would miraculously make things right. By the time the Senate reconvened at 8 PM, many leaders of both parties seemed to want to get back to normal as soon as possible, delivering the same speeches that they’d expected to deliver that afternoon.

But even as the Biden inaugural will go on as scheduled, this day won’t go away. The mob of Trump supporters storming the US Capitol building will likely be a radicalizing event for the far right. However symbolic, they were literally able to occupy the halls of power. Now they can imagine doing it again. The photos of extravagantly dressed rioters behind the dais of the Senate or climbing the walls of the Capitol will become iconic, fueling far-right recruiting and mobilizing for years.

Yesterday was always going to be a spectacle, as Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley planned to raise theatrical objections to Biden’s electoral votes as a way to woo Trump supporters, while Trump himself rallied them outside the White House. But the spectacle took a turn once Trump directed his supporters to the Capitol, where the Capitol police unevenly resisted their intrusion — shooting a woman who died hours later — before giving way and allowing the mob access to the Capitol. Even as elected officials and reporters huddled in fear and the Capitol’s service workers continued to do their jobs as best they could, the police fraternized with the buffoonish invaders, taking selfies and gently guiding them down the steps out of the building once the fun was over.

Cable news anchors and pundits found the spectacle embarrassing and vulgar, describing their presence as a kind of desecration of the sacred space of constitutional democracy. For the radical right, however, it was a spectacle of empowerment, showing that they can throw their weight around with little resistance. They pushed the limits and found they could break the law with impunity as the entire world watched.

While early polling suggests that at least a significant minority and perhaps even a plurality of Republican voters support the invasion of the Capitol, the tableau of a mob of Trump supporters looting congressional offices may well accelerate the departure of educated, affluent voters from the Republican Party, making it harder for them to win elections. Certainly the Republican leadership is alive to this possibility. Even Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tried to defuse the mob, tweeting, “This is not MAGA” Within hours, Fox News and Trumpist Republicans like Matt Gaetz were already blaming antifa for the riot. The claim is ludicrous — Trump had explicitly been calling for this for months — but it is meant to provide permission to voters uncomfortable with reactionary violence to continue supporting Trump and backing further repression of left movements. Meanwhile, far-right figures like Baked Alaska and Nick Fuentes proudly streamed video of themselves in Nancy Pelosi’s office.

This kind of dance between the far right and the electoral right is nothing new. Right-wing political parties can deplore right-wing street violence while using the disorder caused by reactionary mobs as another occasion for extending power, justified by the need to restore order. The Capitol police oscillating between swinging batons at the Trump mob and letting them have their way is an apt symbol of this dynamic. (Indigenous scholars like Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz have documented a more vicious historical version of this phenomenon, where authorities would alternate between restraining settlers and taking advantage of their genocidal violence to expand their territory.)

While Trump supporters apparently planted pipe bombs at both the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters, the coalition between the radical right and the institutional right will continue. Institutional Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell may deplore yesterday’s actions, but it’s clear they too would have contested the election results and denied Biden the presidency if the margin was closer. As it stands, two-thirds of House Republicans voted to support rejecting Pennsylvania’s electoral votes based on the same conspiracy theories espoused by the rioters who ejected them from their chamber.

And while Trump may be leaving office, he is obviously not leaving the scene. People often suggest Trump is scary because he shows how much damage a more competent authoritarian could do. This misses how singular a figure Trump is. A long-time reality TV star, Trump is adept at spectacle with years of experience telling people what they want to hear and national celebrity that long predates his entry into politics. All this makes him particularly able to reach and motivate marginal and nonvoters — skills that credentialed and “competent” authoritarians like Cruz and Hawley palpably lack. Some local elected officials participated in the riot, but their relatively marginal status suggests that Trumpist energy may not be easily transferred to other national candidates.

That should not be much of a comfort. As yesterday made vivid, voting is very far from the only way of affecting the exercise of state power. We will see much more violence from the radical right in the years to come, even (maybe especially) if yesterday’s “insurrection” drives some voters away from the Republican Party. A reactionary right that believes they cannot reliably prevail in electoral politics will readily turn to other forms of action. Having Trump in office inspired multiple mass shooters, and his refusal to recognize the legitimacy of his successor’s election could inspire more. Violent confrontations between far-right extremists and the government, like the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016, will proliferate under the Biden administration, and the chances of terrorist attacks like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing have risen.

The generalized precarity brought on by decades of neoliberalism and intensified by the pandemic also increases the risk from the far right. Yesterday’s spectacle coincided with the deadliest day of the pandemic and came after a week that saw around a million people file for unemployment. The far right is both a partner of the institutional right that supports this status quo and feeds off the instability and misery that this status quo creates.

So what should the Left do? For starters, we should recognize the danger of yesterday’s riot without painting all unruly direct action against official representatives — particularly nonviolent action — as out of bounds. More concretely, we need to mobilize a broad, antiauthoritarian coalition that can truly grapple with the factors that enabled the far right to stage yesterday’s spectacle in the first place.

Fundamentally, the threat of the far right is not taken seriously because white supremacy and American exceptionalism obscure their power. The repeated claims by news anchors that they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, that it seemed like something from a “Third World country,” is a testament to this effect. So too was the bafflement at the Capitol police’s failure to contain the mob after a year of oppressive policing of Black Lives Matter protests.

This shock and disbelief can be an organizing opportunity. Building a movement to fight the far right requires recognizing not only that far-right politics can flourish here, but that they already have — in the United States’ long history of racial oppression, genocide, and brutal repression of the Left. Absent that understanding, it is all too easy to write off the far right as kooks and deviations from a liberal democratic consensus rather than as a dangerous force with access to the halls of power.

The Storming of the Capitol

By Adam Schiff, Reader Supported News

08 January 21

ow that the dust has settled, all too literally, on the events at the Capitol on Wednesday, I wanted to share a few thoughts on what it was like to be there, what it means to the country, and where we go from here. For the many of us that were present in Congress during 9/11, it brought back a flood of painful memories, but this time, the damage to our country was self-inflicted, and this time, we are far from unified as a result.

The storming of the Capitol was an act of insurrection, intended to disrupt the most fundamental act of our democracy – the peaceful transition of power. Both Houses of Congress and the Vice President gathered in a Joint Session in the Capitol to perform our duty under the 12th Amendment, to certify and count the electoral votes cast by the States.

In preparation for the Joint Session, and at the Speaker’s request, I had been working for months to study the Constitutional provisions and their history, to understand the role of the Vice President and Congress, and to foresee any objections that might be raised and how to handle them, and to help manage our effort on the floor along with Representatives Zoe Lofgren, Jamie Raskin and Joe Neguse.

Shortly after the reading of the states began, a large group of Republicans, joined by the leadership of their conference, Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, objected to counting the electors from Arizona and we divided into our respective houses to debate the matter.

When I spoke on the House floor in opposition to this challenge to the votes of millions of Arizonans, I wanted to emphasize that these Republican objectors were violating their oaths to defend the Constitution, regardless of the outcome of their objection, and doing grave damage to our democracy:

Nor can we console ourselves with the intoxicating

fiction that we can break that oath without consequence because

doing so will not succeed in overturning the election. An oath is no

less broken, when the breaking fails to achieve its end.

We must be mindful that any who seek to overturn an election, will

do injury to our constitution, whatever the result. For just as the

propagation of a dangerous myth about this election made this moment

inevitable, our actions today will put another train in motion. This

election will not be overturned, but what about the next? Or the one

after that?

What shall we say when the our democratic legacy is no more

substantial than the air, except that we brought trouble to our own

house, and inherited the wind.

Indeed, although I did not know it, there was another train in motion only miles away. Nearby on the National Mall, the President of the United States was inciting a crowd of his supporters. He knowingly spread lies about fraudulent votes, suggesting that the election was stolen, and asserted that the Vice President could unilaterally overturn the results of a free and fair election in which 155 million Americans had cast their ballots. And then, he implored his crowd to go to the Capitol and do something about it. Trump even said he’d join them.

And so they did.

The scene was everything you have seen on television and more. I was on the House Floor taking notes for a rebuttal speech I would make later, when the Speaker was whisked out of the room by security, followed immediately by the Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer. The mob had broken into the Capitol, we were informed, and were headed our way. Police were discharging tear gas, there were reports of gunshots, and we were told to take out the gas masks under each seat and prepare to put them on. One of my colleagues, a veteran, was yelling instructions — “breathe slowly under the hoods or you will pass out.” That is when the mob reached the doors to the House chamber and started battering them and trying to break through. Capitol Police pushed furniture in the way to barricade them out and drew their weapons. The mob broke the glass in the doors, and members were instructed by police to leave the chamber through the rear doors ASAP. We did.

As bad as it was, it could have been worse. There were many in the violent mob who had every intent to attack people they judged to be their enemies, and several Democratic and Republican members told me to try to keep out of sight. As one Republican said, “I know these people and can talk to them. You are in a whole different situation.” I don’t think he meant that he literally knew people in the mob, who were still disembodied and angry voices banging to get through the doors, only that he knew people like them and what they were capable of.

Capitol police ushered us to a secure location. On the way, one of the Republican members was carrying a large wooden stand he had taken from the House chamber, the hand sanitizer still attached to its top. I could tell he meant to use it as a club, if he needed to. “You that worried about your safety?’ I asked him. “Yes,” he said, explaining that he had heard gun shots. I didn’t recognize him and only knew he was a member from the pin on his lapel. “How long have you been here?” I asked, expecting him to tell me that he was in his second or third term in Congress. “72 hours,” he said. “I just got elected.” I wasn’t sure what to say to reassure him, and merely deadpanned, “it’s not always like this.”

As we waited for police and National Guard reinforcements to arrive, I discussed with my colleagues what our next steps should be. I felt strongly that we needed to resume the proceedings as soon as it was safe to do so, that we could not let these thugs interrupt the transition of power any more than they had already. I was pleased to see that sentiment was widely held.

When we did resume, now in the evening, we voted down the objections to the Arizona electors, but nonetheless an astonishing number of Republicans still sought to overturn the results. And after resuming the Joint Session, Republicans objected to counting the certificates from yet another state, Pennsylvania. It was incredible to me that after all this, after seeing the clear and violent implication of their conduct, these members were not finished with their oath breaking.

Late in the evening, I spoke again on the floor. Remarking on the fact that Franklin Roosevelt had given his Four Freedoms speech exactly eighty years earlier, highlighting the dangers of ‘poisonous propaganda’ to our democracy, I called on Republicans to stop. I emphasized the need for unity in the face of the attempted insurrection and a pandemic that is killing thousands of us every day:

This is the urgency that our new president must address,

a virus that will claim more American lives that all our casualties

during WWII. To meet that moment will require unity, not discord,

will require an abiding faith in our country, in our democracy, in

our government’s ability to function and provide for the needs of

its citizens.

We cannot continue debating the merits of an election that was

fairly conducted, and overwhelmingly won by Joe Biden.

Have we not brought enough damage to this House, to this country? It

must stop!

But it didn’t stop. At around 3 am, we voted on the baseless objections to the Pennsylvania electors, and 138 members of the House (a large majority of the Republican Caucus and their leadership) as well as 7 Republican Senators, voted to reject the votes of millions of Pennsylvanians. Astonishingly, Republican members claimed that the ballots were fraudulent even though they had been elected on the very same ballots. Apparently, as I pointed out during the debate: “What value has consistency when measured against ambition?”

On Thursday morning, I felt a mixture of sadness at what our country has gone through, embarrassment at how we appear in the eyes of the world, anger at the irresponsible actions of my colleagues who have spread lies about the election for months and brought this on themselves and the nation, fury over a president who instigated the rebellion, and a grave concern over the future.

The actions of the mob and those who incited them, the President most of all, are despicable and outrageous, and those who committed crimes need to be held accountable. But we should not lose sight of the fact that what happened in the early hours of the morning, in a chamber with windows broken by bats and not far from statutes flecked with blood, was every bit as much an attack on our democracy as anything the mob tried to do. This assault on our Constitutional order was inspired by people wearing suits and ties, and cloaked in the genteel language of Congressional debate, but their purpose was no less ominous.

Donald Trump lit the fuse which exploded yesterday at the Capitol. Every day that he remains in office, he is a danger to the Republic, and he should leave office immediately, through resignation, the 25th Amendment or impeachment. He should have been removed from office a year ago when the House impeached him and we proved in the Senate trial that he abused his power to cheat in the election. During the trial, we warned that if left in office, he would try to cheat his way into staying there. As I said at the time, the odds that he would do so again were 100 percent.

And as much as I am pleased to see people resigning from his cabinet and former officials speaking out, where were they when they had a chance to stop this dangerous man from destroying the country, except by his side? As we read the sudden expressions of outrage from the likes of Bill Barr, Betsey DeVos, Mick Mulvaney and others, let us remember that these enablers wanted four more years of Donald Trump as president and worked hard to make that so. Their statements now are less about saving the country and more about saving what is left of their shattered reputations.

Donald Trump has been the worst president we have ever had and should be confined to the dustbin of history where he belongs — for this failed insurrection, and everything before it.

Yet even when he’s gone, the evil he has perpetrated will live after him. We can fortify the defenses of the Capitol. We can reinforce doors and put up fences. But we cannot guard our democracy against those who walk the halls of the Capitol, have taken an oath to uphold our Constitution, but refuse to do so.

The work to repair and defend our democracy has never been more urgent or daunting. But we must never back down from this sacred task. I know I won’t.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.