From Trump’s escalator descent to announce his Presidential campaign in 2015 amid a flurry of nativist, racist, xenophobic, and bigoted accusations, to the white Christian supremacist riot and murder in Charlottesville, with Trump’s response being to claim that there were “very fine people” among the white Christian supremacist rioters, to the entirety of Trump’s sole term in the executive, the violent insurrection that began as a Trump rally and culminated in the storming and terrorizing of the Capitol by the white Christian supremacist mob that he whipped up into a frenzy and that has resulted in five deaths is certainly shocking and shameful, yet not entirely unpredictable.
Nothing better illustrates the problems of systemic
racism in U.S. society generally and within law enforcement specifically than
social current events setting up as near a controlled experiment as can be
achieved outside of experimental conditions by comparing and contrasting the
police response to unarmed, peaceful activists of the Black Lives Matter movement
protesting the recent spate of racist and police murders of unarmed black
citizens to the woefully severe lack of police response to white Christian
domestic terrorists rampaging through the Capitol which D.C. residents furiously noted as it occurred.
The unpreparedness of the Capitol police is at least inexcusably
negligent and at worst criminal. The white
Christian supremacists, far-right Trump supporters, Proud Boys, etc., had been
publicly planning their assault on the Capitol well in advance and the FBI has
been investigating and calling white supremacists the greatest domestic terror threats in the United States since 2007 and in an FBI counterterrorism policy guide
in 2015 identified white supremacist and other domestic extremists within U.S.
police departments and other law enforcement agencies. Which is why it comes as no surprise that
authorities are now concerned about the number of police officers and
active-duty soldiers and veterans who took part in the insurrection, that
Capitol Police Chief Sund has stepped down, two Capitol Hill police officers
have been suspended and approximately a dozen others are currently under investigation.
All of the white Christian terrorists who stormed the Capitol, destroyed and stole Capitol property, initiating so much violent mayhem that a Capital Hill police officer, who was himself a Trump supporter, experienced seizures and died must be identified, arrested and prosecuted. That the terrorists wrecking so much violent mayhem led to the death of a Capitol police officer exposes the fact that right-wing support for police and "blue lives" are patently disingenuous and only express racist ideologies that support police racially profiling people of color and the police lynching of them, for as soon as officers get in their way to enforce the law they not only toss aside their support for police, but actually violently assault them.
A couple dozen arrests
have already been made and there is an ongoing federal murder
investigation. Most of the
insurrectionists already arrested and charged are facing charges such as knowingly
entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful
authority, violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, theft of
government property, assault on a federal law enforcement officer, unlawful
possession of a destructive device (Molotov cocktail), transmitting a threat in
interstate commerce, possession of an unregistered firearm and unlawful
possession of ammunition, and the investigation of the death of the Capitol
Hill police officer may well result in murder charges, yet it is clear that these
investigations, arrests and charges ought to revolve around criminal conspiracy
and terrorism. That they do not is
further illustrative of the systemic racism in the United States.
An American sixteen-year-old son of a radical Muslim Imam,
Abdulrahman Awlaki, was killed two weeks after his father was similarly killed
in Yemen by Predator drone Hellfire missiles without being charged for any
crime and without any attempt to arrest him for any trial by a jury of his
peers. It appears that if you happen to
be the child of a radical Muslim Imam you are not entitled to due process of
law and may be remotely murdered by a drone strike. Or, as the Black Lives Matter movement has
stressed, if you happen to be a person of color you may be killed before you
are even cuffed, perhaps in your own home.
Yet a criminal conspiracy of white Christian supremacists committing the
literal textbook definition of terrorism after being organized and emboldened
by a lame-duck President may only face the lesser charges already cited, if any at all.
That the white Christian supremacists were willfully
engaged in domestic terrorism is uncontroversial. Trump told them that they had to “fight much
harder” and “walk down to the Capitol,” be “tougher” and “take back our
country.” If that weren’t enough, Trump’s
lawyer Giuliani then exhorted that they needed to have “trial by combat.” The US Code defines domestic terrorism as
activities that “involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of
the criminal laws of the United States or of any State” that “appear to be intended
to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a
government by intimidation or coercion…”
The white Christian terrorists who stormed the Capitol following Trump’s
telling them to fight harder and take the country back and Giuliani telling
them the need for trial by combat in an attempt to overturn the results of the
democratic election were explicitly and uncontroversially engaged in domestic
terrorism as defined by the US Code itself.
That this Trump inspired and called for insurrection has fascist elements is equally noticeable. Former Republican Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, noted the similarities between the Trump endorsed white Christian supremacist insurrection in the Capitol and the Nazi Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when the “Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys” spent “a night of rampage against the Jews.” Walden Bello notes the similarities between the Capitol insurrectionists and the right-wing gangs in Chile and the chaos that they fomented that resulted in the military coup against President Allende in 1973. Bellow further notes the similarities to the fascist squadristi of Mussolini that used violence to control the streets and that the bourgeoisie then supported in opposition to the socialists who were gaining electoral victories. Bellow also notes along with Schwarzenegger the similarities to the Nazi fascist street gangs that began violent street actions in the last years of the Weimar Republic. Many of the insurrectionists were themselves making sure the similarities were visible.
For all of those who have objected to criticisms of
Trump and his base as having clearly discernable neofascist elements, they must
now reflect on their premises and reassess them in light of the overwhelming
historical evidence of Trump’s term in office and most explicitly in light of
the insurrection against the Capitol. This is what fascism looks like.
Along with the ongoing investigations into the Capitol
insurrectionists and police failures, Trump must be impeached and removed from
office as he is a clear and present danger and must not be allowed to run for
office again. The members of Congress
who lent support for the insurrection must also face consequences and be expelled from Congress.
