The ongoing hearings in the US Congress on the events of January 6, 2021 have revealed harsh truths about the poor and dangerous state of American democracy.
The sessions proved conclusively that Donald Trump and his allies made a serious and determined attempt to overthrow the constitutional order and establish a fascist presidential dictatorship; That this conspiracy included a large part of the Republican Party and the judiciary, and undoubtedly elements within the army as well; that she was only minutes (or maybe seconds) and inches away from success; and that their failure was not the result of any organized resistance, but rather the result of chance, logistics, inexperience, etc.
This last fact needs to be emphasized. The American media constantly produces “heroes”, but even they could not find a single political figure associated with the resistance to the January 6 uprising, not a single act of daring or courage, not a single photo opportunity, nothing. Fleeing politicians, people hiding under their seats – not a picture, not a sentence, not a gesture associated with resistance, not even a single act of symbolic confrontation.
Ongoing hearings have highlighted the scale of the events. They discovered important new facts, even explosive ones. But they beg the question even more: Why did it take 18 months to bring the public’s attention to reality? In any case, there is not the slightest indication that sessions will form the basis for any action. President Biden continues to refer to members of the Republican Party as “my friends.”
It is clearer than ever that no attempt has been made in any way to prevent or stop the coup, either before or during it. The contrast between the scale of the crimes uncovered and the mediocrity of the response is striking.
Why was this fascist coup so close to success?
Its preparation was no secret. It was largely publicly organized. Trump repeatedly announced his plans in the weeks and months leading up to the 2020 election.
The WSWS He repeatedly referred to the constant threat at the time. As we commented in September 2020: “Trump is an outright fascist plotting to establish a presidential dictatorship. … if it was [Präsidentschafts-]If the debate has made one thing clear, it is that it will not accept the outcome of the election. A whole series of these quotes can be cited.
No faction or individual in the political establishment has attempted to prevent Trump’s criminal operation beforehand. No one warned the residents of the enormous dangers that threatened them in January 2021. The democratic rights of the American people were left completely unprotected to be trampled by fascist mobs.
On January 6th itself, no effort was made to prevent the coup while it was taking place. Trump supporters on the far right were on the verge of assassinating top US government officials. Biden didn’t make a statement for hours, nor did Nancy Pelosi or Charles Schumer. Wait for the army, police and intelligence to see who will emerge victorious.
The coup attempt did not stop, it failed. Only 60 people were killed in the US Capitol, downtown Washington, D.C. and along the National Mall on January 6 in a coordinated violent attempt to overthrow the US government and the 232-year-old Constitution. all in all Arrested. Only ten people were immediately arrested for illegally entering the Capitol where they plotted to assassinate prominent members of Congress. Most of the coup plotters were able to return home and “lived to fight another day”.
If the coup had succeeded, it would have been accepted by the democrats and the political and media institutions. They would focus on impeding, demobilizing, and demoralizing the popular opposition. Just as the Democrats accepted the stolen 2000 elections, they would accept the suppression of what remained of American democracy.
If the Democrats had intended to take action against Trump and the fascist coup plotters, they would have already done so. will do nothing. It is an imperialist party, a party of Wall Street and an oligarchy, backed by unions and bigots of race and gender from the upper middle class. Democrats fear popular agitation against the far right, which is entirely possible under the circumstances, and is a thousand times more than any far-right conspiracy.
Democrats were at odds with Trump when he was in power, primarily over his handling of foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine and Russia. They wanted him to be more targeted and aggressive against the Putin regime – which is what they based their impeachment efforts on, rather than the president’s apparent dictatorial leanings.
The Democratic Party’s inaction on January 6 was no surprise, despite the hand-rubbing and verbal wrangling. The AFL-CIO and other unions are behaving no less passively and no less criminally. Today, resistance to the dictatorship of the far right depends on the presence of a strong and politically vigilant labor movement. On January 6, the AFL-CIO was politically irrelevant. Then-President Richard Tromka did nothing to mobilize the resistance nor call for a general strike or mass protest. The only intervention in this sense was the spontaneous action of Twitter employees, who suspended Trump’s account and stopped his fascist provocations.
The pro-capitalist American chauvinist hierarchy was not particularly concerned about the prospects of a US dictatorship. After all, I’ve already helped organize enough of them in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere.
The absence of the January 6 opposition extended to academia as well. Is there a single prominent intellectual who spoke out in the face of Trump’s coup or offered a way forward? Professor Noam Chomsky rightly remarked that the January 6 participants “united in an attempt to overthrow an elected government” but then “sown fear [der Weißen] Before the “loss of our country” is responsible for many difficulties.
Authors Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, and Philip Roth have turned the fascist menace in America into a compelling fiction. Now, with the threat more acute than ever in US history, novelists, poets, and playwrights have shamefully nothing to say.
The upper-middle-class pseudo-left refused to take the coup attempt seriously. Historian Brian Palmer, for example, claimed that the events of January 6 were not a riot, and mocked those who warned of their significance: “Exaggerations flowed in as the trail of tears turned into a tidal wave.” the magazine Jacobin She put her readers to sleep by saying that the “defeat” of the January 6 coup attempt and the “quick rejection of the political and business elite have made it clear that there is currently no basis in the state or in the big business of Trump’s coup.” Jacobin He also published this timeless saying: “Capital, it seems, is still committed to liberal democracy.”
What remains of academic “radicalism” is fatally plagued by race and gender obsession. For these people, class was abolished as a norm in politics. As Trump plotted his plans for authoritarian rule, the forces of identity politics in Hollywood, academia, and the media focused madly on prosecuting those accused of sexual abuse. To them, Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, and Kevin Spacey posed a much greater threat than the fascist mob.
The refusal of these elements to resist the far-right’s attempt to usurp the US government is reflected in their stance on the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and the US and NATO proxy war with Russia, which threatens to lead to a new world war.
The massive influx of money has spoiled the media, academia, and the art world. The pursuit of stock market values, real estate, and the pursuit of a career have replaced a serious concern for social issues and the fate of the masses.
Friedrich Engels noted in 1886 that to the extent that German intellectuals had “opened their temple on the stock exchange,” they had “lost inclination to purely scientific research, regardless of whether the result was practically applicable or not, and whether it was possible. Police authorities or not. The “courageous old enthusiasm for theory” has been replaced by “an anxious worry about career and income, and going to the most vulgar job search.” This process is widespread in our time.
Only one movement was correct in its analysis and daily warnings of the Trump conspiracy – the WSWS, the Socialist Equality Party, the International Committee of the Fourth International.
WSWS is an expression of the objective and revolutionary role of the working class, and it expresses a consciousness of the workers’ organic resistance to capitalism. As this resistance becomes more apparent, with the emergence of militancy and open struggle, the relationship between the WSWS and working-class struggles will become more clear and a strong intersectionality.
The January 6 coup and the response of the entire political establishment show that resistance to the dictatorship can only come from a movement based on the working class fighting for the overthrow of capitalism. The WSWS does not have to suppress the truth, because the program of revolutionary socialism corresponds to the logic of objective developments. Exposing capitalism is crucial to the development of a movement for socialism.
Those who recognize the need for this struggle should make the decision to join the SEP.