Insurrection, Treason, and Anti-fascist Politics

January 6 began like most other days have the past few months. Yes, it was 2021, but let’s be honest. The only thing that changed on January 1 was the calendar.

President Trump continued to play the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, spreading ill tidings and tweets full of lies as tiny Tim lay asleep in his bed. A complicit Republican party continued to support carolers crooning on about election fraud. They had decided that no ghosts of Christmas past, present, or future should disturb Trump’s political fantasies. Elsewhere, future President Biden was busy putting in motion his political transition and generally doing completely unremarkable yet amazingly presidential-ish things, like appointing cabinet members to help advise him on how to run a government.

Meanwhile, Americans of all stripes wrung their hands and fretted over the direction the country was headed. Some hoped beyond hope that Vice President Mike Pence, or some alliance of reactionary Republicans led by Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, would act as their lucky star and grant their wish that Trump be selected as the new Dictator in Chief. Strangely, few MAGA fans seemed to mind they were running roughshod over the same democratic principle they espoused. You know, the stuff that actually makes America great.

But most Americans, the vast majority in fact, had already moved on, having heard enough propaganda throughout all of 2o20.

Instead, we watched with bated breath as the Georgia elections came to a dramatic end, delivering a critical win that assures Democrats a firm hand on the rudder of Washington politics once Biden is sworn in. But politics were still in motion by mid afternoon. Reactionary Republican planned to protest certification of Electoral College votes, a tired trick pulled from Robert’s Rules of Conservative Disorder. Across the way, a sea of red cheered on President Trump as he continued to spoon feed them lie after lie, telling crowds that “we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.”

With all eyes on Washington D.C., we watched as the final minutes of the 2020 election play clock slowly ran down. Despite the lateness of the hour, the self-professed “loyal opposition” pressed ahead with its final Hail Mary play. It didn’t matter that team MAGA was down more points than any touchdown, field goal, or extra point conversion has ever produced in the history of football. For Team MAGA, it was going to be possible–it just had to be. Accepting the reality that Trump and his MAGA fanatics had lost was unthinkable.

If only MAGA fans payed as much attention to basic civic lessons as they do to sports rules. But we know most don’t. And so they did what any die-hard mob of sports fanatics do when their home team loses–they rioted, unleashing an insurrectionary orgy of violence, death, and destruction in their wake. As the barricades came down, the party of “Law and Order” revealed its true nature once more–the party of Crime and Treason. The party of reactionary politics and Confederate revivalists. The party of white supremacists and fascists who prefer Proud Boys to Black Lives Matter. It’s a party Trump and Republican leadership have been cultivating for years.

The chickens finally came home to roost.

MAGA white supremacist parading a Confederate flag during invasion of Capitol building on Jan 6, 2021. (Image Credit: JIM LO SCALZO/EPA-EFE)

A Reality Check

I think it’s important to be clear about this next bit, because when we look back on this day of infamy years from now, here’s what our history books should say. What happened on January 6, 2021 was an attempted coup. An insurrection. Treason. It was inspired, directed, and led by President Trump, with the aid of Republican leadership and groups like QAnon and the Proud Boys.

“We will never give up, we will never concede,” Trump said to tens of thousands of his soon to be rioters and insurrectionists gathered at The Elipse for the “March to Save America“rally. “Our country has had enough,” thundered Trump to his adoring fans, “we will not take it any more.” He even promised to march down Pennsylvania Avenue with them to “stop the steal,” another of his many lies that day.

We all know what happened next.

Watching this aborted attempt to destroy democracy was hard enough. Yet there is an even uglier truth we must face, one which is not going away. We are witnessing what German legal theorist and Nazi sympathizer Carl Schmitt described as the heart of real politics, his famous friend-enemy distinction from The Concept of the Political.

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy…The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation…Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict. Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent’s way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one’s own form of existence…The friend and enemy concepts are to be understood in their concrete and existential sense, not as metaphors or symbols…

If there was any question about who the real enemies of democracy are, January 6, 2021 put that issue to rest. People pulling down an American flag and raising a Trump flag, and people parading the Confederate flag in the Capitol, are enemies of the republic. Literal enemies, as Schmitt said, not metaphors or symbols. We literally fought an entire Civil War to stamp out Southern slave apologists. Just like we did in the 1860s, it’s time to put down this rebellion too.

It’s also important to remind ourselves that this moment was made possible because average Americans like you and me decided, for reasons I still cannot fathom, that fascist politics and egotistical dictators are preferable to civic politics and representative government. I have little doubt that were the founding fathers alive today, they would be outraged. Up in arms even. They were no strangers to traitors in their midst. Some met the firing squads, while others rotted in prison. Federal law clearly spells out one possible remedy (18 USC § 2385):

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government…Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

Whatever we decide, one thing we cannot do is let these fascists and insurrectionists go unpunished.

We need to send a message to all the MAGA thugs and right-wing insurrectionists who are growing increasingly emboldened by day, and dreaming of a resurrected white ethnostate by night, that we will put them down with extreme prejudice. There are thousands of armed far-right militia groups just waiting for a signal. We’ve already seen these white supremacist militias in action, most recently when they plotted to kidnap and execute Governor Whitmer in Michigan. An October 2020 Homeland Threat Assessment report explicitly warned us that “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists (WSEs)—will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.” That report also told us what to expect on January 6, 2021 when it warned that white supremacists “might target events related to the 2020 Presidential campaigns, the election itself, election results, or the post-election period. Such actors could mobilize quickly to threaten or engage in violence.” 

Among domestic violent extremist (DVE) actors, white supremacist extremists (WSE) conducted half of all lethal attacks (8 of 16), resulting in the majority of deaths (39 of 48). (Source: DHS, 2020 Homeland Threat Assessment)

Mark my words, January 6, 2021 was merely a dress rehearsal for the real insurrection. Only a naïve fool thinks Team MAGA is going to quietly sit at home for the next four years when they believe “radical left Democrats” are destroying America. We are balancing on a knife’s edge, and these insurrectionists are a clear and present danger to American democracy. Now, more than ever, we must stand up and declare ourselves militantly anti-fascist and fight, not just to preserve American democracy, but to make the dream of “liberty and justice for all” a political reality. We owe it to our ancestors who fought and died to defeat fascism and racist terror, and we must pass on those same freedoms to future generations. Now is not the time to remain silent or complacent about the future of American democracy.

¡No pasarán!