Breaching the Capital: The Culmination of Compounding Problems in a Failed State.
On January sixth Trump supporters broke into the Capitol Building while Congress was in session to put a stop to Congress certifying the electoral colleges' certification of Joe Biden's victory.
Days after Donald Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential election, a campaign to “Stop the Steal” began to be pushed by President Trump and his allies. The premise of “Stop the Steal”, according to lawyers close to Trump, was essential that the election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden due to the belief that Dominion voting machines used in U.S. elections were part of a multinational communist operation to insert Biden as President. Supporters of this nonsensical theory “accuse Dominion of rigging voting machines to flip votes to President-elect Biden”, they also allege that the operation had links to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has been dead since 2013.
Other “Stop the Steal” theories allege that millions of mail-in ballots in favor of Trump were simply tossed out in key counties in several states. For example, an article in The Epoch Times that alleged that over 40,000 votes were removed from Trump in Pennsylvania stated:
“According to an analysis by the Data Integrity Group, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times, votes for Trump - from both Election Day and mail-in ballots - were removed from the totals in at least 15 counties”
The keywords to pay attention to in that quote are the ones in bold. This quote essentially reads, “According to analysis *that only we have access to and won’t let you see* votes for Trump were removed…” this reporting is not credible. There are no links to any source material in the article, only more links to other articles by this propaganda outlet that, according to The Grayzone believe that “Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the [Chinese] Communist Party”. The people spreading these nonsensical claims should be laughed out of any room they find themselves blabbering on about this “Stop the Steal” nonsense.
To anyone with a shred of critical thinking skills, this nonsense is easy to discredit. Let’s take a look at the allegations of Biden receiving support from Venezuela. For instance, Joe Biden has pledged to maintain an aggressive stance against Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez’s successor, Nicholas Maduro is now President. Under the Obama administration, with Biden as Vice President, the United States ramped up its aggression towards Venezuela. The U.S. has interfered in Venezuelan affairs since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1999, with notable events such as the attempted coup in 2002. However in 2011 the Obama administration,
“authorized a special fund of $5 million in his annual budget to support anti-government groups in Venezuela. In 2015, Obama [increased] this amount to $5.5 million.”
Following this increase in funding allocated towards regime change in Venezuela, then Vice President and current President-elect Joe Biden “warned Caribbean countries that the government of President Nicolas Maduro will soon be ‘defeated’ and therefore they should abandon their discounted oil program with Venezuela,” according to an article in Counterpunch. One month later in February of 2015, President Obama declared Venezuela a threat as part of his “National Security Strategy”. This paved the way for additional sanctions to be leveraged against Venezuela throughout the Trump administration.
These sanctions were made possible because the Obama-Biden administration declared Venezuela a threat to national security, and they ended up killing an estimated 40,000 Venezuelans from 2017 to 2018 alone. Also, on the campaign trail, Biden slammed Trump’s failed attempts at regime change in Venezuela as “an abject failure” because “Maduro has gotten stronger.” and he’s pledged his support to the opposition leader and self-proclaimed Venezuelan President Juan Guido. So it’s ridiculous to allege that the Venezuelan government was conspiring with the Democratic Party and Dominion to insert Biden as President.
In a message to the incoming Biden administration concerning the events that took place on January sixth in DC, The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela said:
“The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela expresses its concern with the acts of violence that are taking place in the city of Washington, United States.
Venezuela condemns the political polarization and the spiral of violence that only reflects the deep crisis that the political and social system of the United States is currently going through.
With this unfortunate episode, the United States is suffering the same thing that it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression. Venezuela hopes that soon the violence will cease and the American people can finally open a new path towards stability and social justice.”
Unfortunately what occurred at the capital building in DC is evidence that far too many people who support the faux-populist-real-fascist that is Donald Trump lack any critical thinking skills, and they have been tricked into thinking they’re patriotic freedom fighters when in reality they’re being groomed as the foot-soldiers of a wannabe fascist strongman. Smooth-brained Trump diehards like the people who stormed the capital think they’re fighting in defense of democracy, but they’re unable to realize that they’ve been duped into supporting a homegrown version of the type of strongman the United States has propped up in nations abroad to destroy the last vestiges of democracy in those countries before turning them into puppets of U.S. empire.
Today members of the United States Congress got a small taste of the violence they export abroad. The chickens came home to roost, and this is part of the reason why the bipartisan establishment in the United States wants Trump to go. Donald Trump personifies so much of what the United States empire truly is that he can’t help by inadvertently expose it.
The events that took place in the Capital on January sixth were a serious embarrassment for the ruling class in the United States on a global scale. They undermine the ability of the United States to hold itself up as some sort of exceptional nation on the world stage. For example, in the hours following the breaching of the capital building a correspondent on CNN discussed how she was worried that this event could make it more difficult for the United States to export democracy to nations abroad. Something we shouldn’t be in the business of doing in the first place since in reality those interventions are actually done in the name of gaining geopolitical leverage or looting the resources of foreign countries.
There’s a reason why establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell refused to get on board with Trump’s “Stop the Steal” nonsense, and they shouldn’t be praised for it. They’re simply aware of the fact that getting rid of Donald “I left troops in Syria to take the oil” Trump will make continuing the bipartisan consensus in DC with less public outrage much easier. The bipartisan establishment has taken what it could get from Trump, most notably tax cuts and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, but his overall behavior is too erratic for the political establishment to trust him with four more years at the helm of empire. For those who truly run the show, Joe Biden is a much safer pick than Trump because he’s a much safer pick for anyone who wants to continue the status quo without inadvertently undermining it out of sheer stupidity or arrogance or narcissism or whatever you want to diagnose Trump with.
By propping up Trump for four years, the bipartisan establishment was able to achieve some pretty great things for themselves while allowing the rest of the American public to continue to suffer. As those in power increased their wealth and gave themselves and their rich buddies trillions in dollars worth of tax cuts, tens of thousands of Americans died annually because they couldn’t afford healthcare, and more than half a million Americans experienced homelessness every night. This inequality has been a constant regardless of what party is in control of the government, but over the last few years, as this inequality has gotten worse and the President has only fanned the flames of violence, our society has experienced an increase in political polarization. This polarization reached new heights as it drove Trump to incite a riot of his supporters around the Capital Building which ultimately escalated into mobs of armed right-wing extremists fighting capital police and breaking into the Capital Building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the electoral colleges’ certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
The ease with which these Trump supporters were able to overrun the police was utterly staggering. Several videos are circulating social media of capital police simply opening barricades and allowing these mobs of armed Trump supporters to storm the capital while Congress was in session, forcing politicians and their aids to go into hiding in undisclosed locations within the building. There is even a video of a cop taking a selfie with one of the people who broke into the capital building while they were still inside the capital.
To make things even more suspicious, a request made by D.C. city officials to deploy the National Guard in response to the riot at the capital was initially denied by the Defense Department, and as a result, National Guard had to be called in from Virginia and New Jersey. One woman was shot and killed by capital police while attempting to gain access to a room where members of Congress were hiding, but when things began to settle down the mob of armed right-wing extremists were calmly escorted out of the building, with only 13 of them being arrested. Compare that to the more than 14,000 arrests that were made during Black Lives Matter protests over the summer. Police brutalize Black Lives Matter protesters for taking to the streets in their own cities but allow armed right-wing extremists to storm the Capitol Building without hardly lifting a finger. If leftists ever tried to do what these Trump supporters are doing in the name of getting everyone healthcare, ending homelessness, or ending the wars they’d be met with lethal force by law enforcement. This led some people on Twitter to speculate that capital police and potentially even members of Congress and their staff cooperated in the planning of this attempted insurrection. As a result, an investigation is going to be conducted into how capital police mishandled the situation. According to Congressman Tim Ryan:
“We recognize the bravery of the Capital Police and law enforcement officers who protected members of and essential workers in the Capital Complex yesterday. At the same time, it is obvious that there was a severe systemic failure in securing the building’s perimeter and in the response once the building was breached.”
Regardless of what the outcome of this investigation finds, a major reason why law enforcement reacted the way they did to the mob of Trump supporters is that they didn’t represent a serious threat to the American state, they were on its side. I thought this Twitter thread by @LivPosting gave the perfect analysis of this event.
“It’s not a civil war for the same reason its not a coup for the same reason police are not using force against them: they do not represent a serious threat to the American state, they are on its side. Its a spectacle, the results are predetermined. They’re chained up in a cave pointing at the shadows on the wall. If it was this easy to meaningfully threaten the American state I would be embarrassed for the American left for not at least trying it. People seem to think that a political spectacle cannot involve any violence and I would respond that typically political spectacle actually leads to violence. Not violence that meaningfully threatens the system…but one that is seemingly aimed at random. The violence is aimed at seemingly nonsensical targets with no material basis. They’re unable to develop a coherent plan. Whats their goal? Pressure the government into making Trump President? Declare a dictatorship with Trump as head? How could they ever feasibly have done these? A weapon that is aimed at random with no coherent target is still dangerous insofar as it can still cause people harm, it just cannot overthrow a government.”
In shorter terms, these people were allowed to riot and break into the Capitol Building because the ruling class knows that they don’t represent a threat to the oppressive systems the American state is structured around, they just want those systems to oppress marginalized communities even more than they already do.
Several Democratic members of Congress have called for new impeachment proceedings to be initiated against President Trump if he isn’t removed from power by invoking the 25th amendment for inciting the mob that momentarily took over the Capitol Building. On January first, President Trump Tweeted:
“The BIG Protest Rally in Washington D.C. will take place at 11:00A.M. on January 6th. Location details to follow. StopTheSteal!”
Also, just hours before the group of Trump supporters managed to break into the Capitol Building, President Trump himself spoke to the group as part of his efforts to desperately hang on to power. In his speech to his supporters that would break into the capital just hours later, Trump said “You’ll never take back the country with weakness. You have to show strength.”
Regardless of what you think about what occurred in D.C. on January sixth, it’s fair to say that what happened is to be expected in a failed state where the bipartisan ruling class has lied to the public for decades about major issues and has proven itself to be incapable of providing for the public good, especially since the start of the pandemic.
What happened on January sixth was an example of what happens in a society that spent the last several decades inundating the American public with disinformation in an attempt to manufacture the public’s consent for the government to institute oppressive policies both at home and abroad. From the Gulf of Tonkin to WMD’s in Iraq, to allegations of Russian Collusion in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump, the ruling class in the United States has lied to the American public to get them to support policies that they otherwise wouldn’t support. In the instance of Tonkin and WMD’s the policies the ruling class was attempting to manufacture consent for were wars. However, in the case of ‘Russiagate’, the policies have been increased censorship on social media and more unnecessary aggressive policies towards Russia in an attempt to make them a scapegoat for problems caused by the American ruling class.
Decades of lying to the public at such a massive scale have finally caught up with the American ruling class, and this Stop the Steal nonsense is a perfect example of this. Since the public has become more aware of the fact that they’ve been lied to for decades about such major issues, many people have wondered off into dark corners of the internet looking for their own version of the truth. As a result of these people having next to no media literacy skills to help them weed out propaganda and disinformation, many of them have fallen victim to often racist and xenophobic conspiracy theories online like QAnon. Many of these people could be seen participating in the events at the Capitol Building on January sixth.
What happened on January sixth is a perfect example of how the United States is a failed state. The bipartisan ruling class doesn’t care about the American public. They’ve lied to them for decades and treated them as pawns in their own game to increase their wealth and maintain power. Even before the pandemic they allowed 78% of Americans to live paycheck to paycheck, they allowed half a million people to be homeless, they allowed 68,000 people to die annually because they couldn’t afford healthcare while allocating nearly $1 trillion annually for defense spending. Since the start of the pandemic they’ve allowed nearly 350,000 Americans to die at a rate of over 1,000 deaths per day, they’ve allowed more than 55 million people to lose their jobs, they’ve allowed more than 14 million to lose their private health insurance, and they’ve allowed an additional eight million Americans to slip into poverty in just the last five months of 2020.
The American public had to sacrifice nearly everything they had over the course of this pandemic and now they get to watch as they continue to struggle with the bare minimum of government assistance (if they’re lucky enough to get any at all) while the billionaire class in the United States increased their collective wealth by more than $1 trillion since last March.
Allowing this mass suffering to go unaddressed only makes events such as what took place on January sixth in DC to become unavoidable. The bipartisan establishment is proving their own illegitimacy every day, it’s just so infuriating that this legitimate anti-establishment outrage is fighting for a nationalist extremist like Donald Trump instead of something that would actually help them.
If Democrats weren’t so reluctant to offer that something that would actually help the public we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Some news that went overlooked on January sixth as a result of events in D.C. was the fact that Democrats Raphael Warnock and John Osoff won their Senate runoff elections in Georgia. These victories ensure that Democrats will hold majorities in both the House and the Senate as Joe Biden takes office on January 20th.
Without Republicans in control of the Senate acting as a roadblock to passing progressive legislation, Democrats will have to take the blame for standing in the way of passing legislation that’s supported by a vast majority of the public. If policies that would actually help the public like Medicare for All, a wealth tax and a $2,000 per month universal basic income don’t become law over the next two years, the only reason is that neoliberal leadership within the Democratic Party is just as opposed to those policies as right-wing Republicans like McConnell. (Nearly 90% of Democrats and 70% of the public supports Medicare for All, 64% of the public supports a wealth tax, 65% of the public supports $2,000 per month universal basic income)
The last time Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the Presidency they passed a Republican healthcare plan, allowed 10 million people to be evicted from their homes, bailed out big banks, and refused to prosecute any Wall St. executives for causing the financial crisis. They also expanded the drone program into at least seven countries with a 90% civilian casualty rate and started the most aggressive war on whistleblowers in American history. As Democrats find themselves in complete control of government once again, instead of advocating for universal healthcare in the middle of a pandemic that has caused more than 14 million people to lose their private health insurance they’re expected to advocate for increased funding for law enforcement, more domestic surveillance and increased efforts to censor social media, using what happened on January sixth in DC as an excuse. According to The Wall St. Journal:
“Mr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them.”
I thought the best analysis about what to expect from Democrats who are taking power in response to what happened on January sixth in DC came from Evan Greer, a journalist who’s had their work featured in the Washington Post, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Time, and Wired. In a thread on Twitter Greer explained that in response to what happened on January sixth in DC, Democrats are expected to push for more surveillance, policing, and internet censorship, but that “This is the exact opposite of what we need to do. We need to address the problem at its root: systemic racism and injustice.” Greer explains what she means further, and I can’t think of a better way to wrap this up than just quoting her thread here:
“The mainstream pundit narrative will focus almost exclusively on the tactics used by those who stormed the capitol. The tactics are not the point. There is nothing inherently wrong with militant protest, the problem is weaponized white supremacy sparking violence. You'll hear self-avowed progressives call for things like more funding for the FBI to "monitor domestic extremist groups." In their imagination this will be used to target Proud Boys etc. In reality it will just deepen the surveillance state that harms Black & brown communities. You can't stop fascism with authoritarianism. The weaponized white supremacy, patriarchy, and economic injustice that led to this eruption of violence cannot be stopped by cracking down on dissent, criminalizing freedom of expression, or militarizing police. We have work to do.
Censorship always silences marginalized voices first. Surveillance always criminalizes Black and brown and Muslim and LGBTQ+ dissent the most. Expanded policing just deepens the systemic injustice that caused all of this in the first place. When people are scared they cling to authoritarian structures. We've seen this since Trump came into office, with progressives and liberals lionizing institutions like the CIA and FBI that exist primarily to uphold US imperialism and oppression. It's a path that leads to disaster. We need profound, transformative, structural change. We need to dismantle the economic & political systems that have brought us to this point and create new ones that protect people's basic human rights and take care of people's basic needs. We need to abolish failed institutions. I know it's kind of cheezy to quote him but Albert Einstein famously said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
We can't heal the wounds ripped open today by doubling down on the racist and authoritarian policies that got us here. But that won't stop politicians from both parties from attempting to exploit this crisis to push an authoritarian agenda. They'll demand the repeal of Section 230, even though that will actually make it harder to address online hate. They demand more funding for the FBI and cops. This IS a crisis. But it's a crisis that demands a true reckoning. It's a crisis that demands we reject the fundamentally flawed ideologies and institutions that have caused so much suffering since this country was built on stolen land. It's a crisis that demands hope, and action”