For many years I was a credentialed reporter in Washington, covering procedures from the Senate press gallery, House and Senate hearing rooms, and meeting with members of Congress — always with the constraining presence of armed and watchful Capitol police. That experience makes it all the more difficult to take in how an angry mob, on Jan. 6, could have pushed past a considerable number of these armed officers to threaten harm to elected officials who were conducting government business. We can’t consider as idle words such recorded threats as “find Mike Pence” and “hang Mike Pence” from persons armed and carrying police zip ties.
They were met by a deliberately reduced Capitol police presence — all the rioters of pink skin, some wearing t-shirts praising, among other things, the Holocaust, waving Confederate flags, given directions by police to offices they had targeted, and were, after their threatening and destructive action, allowed then to walk out and go home. Yes, there were courageous officers at the scene, but it was clear their ability to respond had been compromised, set up to be overwhelmed in an inside job.
At the risk of parroting the relentless media coverage and commentary since that event — and some embarrassment at having to beat my own drum — I feel compelled to point out that 12 months ago I warned in this space, of an election that was “coming at us like a train,” that Trump and his Republican enablers were, in fascist mode, maneuvering as Adolph Hitler did 90 years ago, to establish one party rule in the United States. I must say, everyone should have seen that same threatening, “menacing train.”
Donald Trump may not have studied Hitler’s tactics. Besides, that would-be dictator was product of an even more turbulent time. His world was in the depths of great depression, inflation had made the German mark worthless, and Germany was being unfairly punished for World War I, a conflict all the European parties had participated in starting. Trump does share with Hitler his promotion of white supremacy and shaming of socialism in national politics. Trump certainly played that card to win votes in November.
That a claim Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are socialists many Republican voters could be compelled to believe is a measure of what fools ordinary people can be. Again, Herr Hitler, in spite of his criminal behavior, won election, and soon after, near universal adoration from citizens by suggesting socialists threatened Germany.
So, we must take immediate stock of what has happened here. The championed effort to examine video evidence and arrest the wrongdoers who can be identified and to establish a commission of inquiry is a most modest approach to the problem.
What I was suggesting last January was that our country had encountered division not unlike that of 1850 and the only possible bar to the same sort civil war was that this disturbance was not sectional.
Begin with what occurred Wednesday morning. Trump exhorted some 50,000 loyal followers to march up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and “have a wild rally.” Given his refusal to accept defeat in the election, the verification of that defeat that was proceeding in House and Senate chambers . and what followed, his words could only be measured as seditious — a threat that had occurred only once before — the secession of Southern states to commence the Civil War.
Rudy Giuliani, whose many legal maneuvers to overturn the results of the election all failed, urged the crowd headed for the Capitol building instead now engage in “trial by combat.” Given the actions he encouraged, Giuliani should by now have been arrested. Sen.Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who was filmed waving the rioters into the Capitol, should also have been taken into custody and charged.
Our problem remains that the shocking invasion of government space and operations, while it ended rather peacefully, will not warn off the disillusioned. Over 70 million people voted for a white supremacist who remains angry a person of color could have been elected president, disparages women, and — by his own admissions — allowed the coronavirus to kill hundreds of thousands of the people he took an oath to protect. His enablers hold office in Washington and throughout the country, numerous fascism-supporting individuals are in the military and police ranks and Trump’s lawless well-armed followers are posting messages that in coming days they will forcefully attack again.
Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an author and historian currently at work on a re-examination of and challenge to the “American narrative.”