When rioters, incited by President Trump’s incendiary remarks, stormed the U.S. Capitol just two weeks prior to the inauguration of Joe Biden, it finally drove home that Trump’s base is fundamentally a violent, autocratic, and anti-democratic movement. It was also the starkest example of the similarities between Trumpism and previous fascist movements: It uncomfortably reminded me of Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome, where he showed up with 25,000 of his armed supporters at the capital with one demand: Name me prime minister.
While some of the people assaulting the capitol building really had no plan other than selfies and mayhem, others showed up prepared to tear down the U.S. government by violence. Many were veterans, police officers, and even Trump-supporting state legislators. Banners among them proclaimed their support for Trump, “Jesus 2020,” nationalist militias, the Confederacy, and QAnon. Others wore clothing with Nazi motifs like “Camp Auschwitz Staff.”
Once inside the building, some insurrectionists in tactical gear, armed with pistols, explosives, and flex cuffs, made a beeline for the House and Senate Chambers. They were apparently targeting Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Vice-President Mike Pence, and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC). While it is unknown what they planned to do once they captured high-value lawmakers, it is worth noting that they had been howling for Pence’s death after he refused to overturn the election, and they erected crude gallows on the Capitol steps. Five people died, including a police officer who was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. All of this was broadly similar to the 2020 plan hatched by Trump supporters in Michigan to kidnap and execute the Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Resistance to the mob by police was sporadic. One Capitol Police officer was bludgeoned to death, and another heroically lured rioters away from senators at great personal risk. Others allowed the mob in and even took selfies with them, sparking fears of collusion. Very few arrests were made on the day of the assault, and most were gently escorted out of the building in the hours that followed. It’s also worth remembering that regimes fall when the security apparatus steps aside and lets the rioters win; such was the case with the securitate in Romania, stasi in East Germany, and the SAVAK in Iran. Thus, the public had no idea how prepared some of the rioters were, nor how close they came to succeeding.
Trump supporters online widely regard the insurrection as a victory, and a demonstration of their power. One freshman Congressman from Arizona admitted that he voted to overturn the election after the attack because he was afraid of the mob. Reporting after the fact indicates we were within minutes if not seconds from a potential massacre.
Steps are being taken to ensure that the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration don’t see a repeat of the storming of the Capitol. Some of the online mechanisms for fomenting insurrection are being shut down: Trump’s Twitter account has been permanently suspended (though he still has the official White House Twitter account). Parler, a popular haven for far-right conspiracy theories and people planning the riots, has been removed from both Apple and Google apps and de-hosted by Amazon cloud services.
Unfortunately, none of these steps address the real issue. The movement supporting Trump is autocratic. It is fascist. And it controls the destiny of the GOP. The Georgia special elections saw Democrats win both seats, as turnout from the general election decreased more for Republicans than it did for Democrats. A great deal of credit goes to Stacey Abrams; however, Trump helped by convincing his base that the elections were rigged, likely driving down Republican turnout. It sent a clear message to the GOP: If the Trump base doesn’t show up for elections, GOP candidates will lose in the general.
There is also a fear that even those Republicans in completely safe districts and states will lose primary elections if they don’t keep the crazed, violent Trumpist base happy. Trump’s family has promised to support primary challenges of any Republicans who were insufficiently loyal to him during the attempts to overturn the election. The results in the Georgia election drove home how viable these threats could be. These demands for loyalty are absolute, as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) found out. After spending four years as Trump’s leading sycophant, he suddenly found himself a target of the Trumpist-base’s ire. As they screamed and cursed him out of Reagan National Airport, one of the Trump supporters yelled, “It’s gonna be like this wherever you go, for the rest of your life!”
Polling data suggests that unless something fundamentally changes, the protester is probably right. A YouGov poll after the assault on the Capitol found that 45% of Republicans approved of it, and 68% didn’t think that it was any sort of threat to democracy. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted to overturn the election, but only seven Senators followed suit. This disparity helps highlight the solution to what we just witnessed.
The SCOTUS Event Horizon for the LGBT Movement
Stop for a moment. Imagine how bad it will be…