Trump's Fascist Insurrection

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.