A revolt against power: a symptom, not the cause of the crisis of American democracy
"The night of American democracy" , "the worst day of American democracy" , "scenes from a Latin American country" , "a coup instigated by Trump" . These are just some of the definitions given at the event on January 6, in the USA, when Donald Trump's supporters symbolically assaulted the Capitol, seat of legislative power, interrupting the certification process of Joe Biden's victory. Even those reporters who resisted for four long years, claiming the Trump administration was full of successes, spoke of the Washington Epiphany as a "bad ending".
But… the events of January 6 were by no means a "bad ending" nor a disgrace to the American system. Indeed, they reminded us of the true nature of the United States, a nation born of a revolution and never ended up under a dictatorship precisely because it is dominated by a libertarian culture that first of all mistrusts the state and its institutions. The fact that Donald Trump, the first (non-political) citizen president, awakened this spirit is a worthy conclusion to his extraordinary four-year period.
First of all, many wrong definitions are given to the occupation of the Capitol, but it is necessary to understand what it was not. It was not a coup: there was not a piece of mutinous army (as in the case of Spain, Chile, Brazil and many other similar cases) or a party militia (as in the case of the October Revolution in Russia) that conquers the seat of power to establish a new regime.
Yesterday's protesters were mostly unarmed and their intent was not even to replace the temporary tenants of the Capitol with a new regime. Hearing the interviews, even of those who have ventured into the Parliament, can be useful to better understand it. Many express fear that the US will fall under a dictatorship, especially a Communist dictatorship. "Like the Communist Party of China", they said and read in their placards. They called themselves Christians, in most cases, so be prepared to avoid confrontation ("turn the other cheek").
The aim was not to take power, but to "make our representatives listen to us", as all the participants in the march and raid on the Capitol said. And the consternation was great when a policeman shot an unarmed demonstrator. "We pay taxes for them, yet they shoot us," said an elderly militant from Washington. Many of them had flags with the blue stripe of "Blue Lives Matter" , the police support campaign during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and it must have been a shock to see the police shooting at unarmed protesters, killing Ashli Babbit. which was also beyond a glass door (therefore anything but a self-defense action).
For those who speak of "unprecedented violence", the number of victims can be, in fact, a useful way to clarify: deaths and injuries only among the demonstrators. Situation opposite to that of the Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrations, where the wounded were in good proportion among the policemen. From May to October, the far-left movement upset entire cities, occupied areas, attacked federal institutional offices, causing 19 deaths, hundreds of injuries and about 2 billion in damage. In yesterday's demonstration, no private property of Washington citizens was damaged. Nobody shot or attacked the security forces deployed in defense of the Capitol.
Since we cannot speak of a coup, not even of a revolution in the Jacobin or Communist sense, a definition that best fits the movement of Black Lives Matter , what was yesterday's? A revolt against power. American history, from its origins, is punctuated with revolts against power, when it becomes too tyrannical. The philosophy of the Founding Fathers always follows that of John Locke: "When there is no judge on earth, all that remains is the appeal to God in heaven" , everyone becomes a judge and responds to his own conscience when the government does not respects the pact that has justified it so far.
In the Boston Tea Party of 1773, rioters disguised as Native Americans boarded the English ships at anchor and poured their entire cargo of tea overboard, protesting against taxes and commercial monopoly imposed by King George III. It was a strong demonstrative gesture that, at the time, had a resonance similar to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Who is picky about the comparison, know that the rioters of the time, considered "yokels", "mobs", "smugglers" and "fixers" (nowadays also "tax evaders") did not enjoy the good press in the circles that counted. Even the Declaration of Independence (1776) itself expresses a principle that then applied to the English crown, but which in the future would also apply to an American government:
"But when a long series of abuses and embezzlement, invariably aimed at pursuing the same goal, reveals the plan to reduce men to absolutism, then it is their right, it is their duty to overthrow such a government and provide new guarantees for their safety for the future ".
But were there the extremes? Is there a plan aimed at "reducing men to absolutism"? We can discuss this indefinitely, but as we have specified on more than one occasion also on these columns, there are at least many signs that make us think. In the most atypical elections in recent history, with half of the votes arriving by post and therefore unreliable, with all the suspicions raised about fraud and malfunctioning voting machines, the media and institutions reacted with complete silence: videos removed, post and censored articles. It cannot yet be talked about privately on social networks , under penalty of expulsion, suspension or the intervention of some zealous administrator who is ready to unleash his "independent" fact checkers (who, however, verify the news only on one side, always to the same conclusion: fake news ).
The news agencies now appear as a compact bloc in the service of the newly elected president. The media, then also social media , carried out political action against Trump, going so far as to take away the direct coverage from him at the press conference. Even yesterday, after the events at the Capitol, the president still in office was banned from Facebook and Twitter for twelve hours: they also removed the videos of his speech in which he invited his protesters to return home. If the media were silent, the judges were deaf to any request for clarification, relentlessly rejecting any accusation made by the Republican team of lawyers, led by Rudolph Giuliani. The evidence has been disseminated, it has escaped censorship, it is now known to all, but it cannot be used in court for reasons that only a lawyer or jurist can explain. For sure, for the man on the street, only a scenario of abuse of power appears from which it is impossible to defend oneself.
The response of the opposition? Not received, when not complicit. Few senators and congressmen have spoken out against certifying winner Joe Biden. The thesis of "national reconciliation" has prevailed, which after a history of uncertain election and silence on every suspicion sounds ominously like: "Who had had, who gave gave, let's forget the past" , with 74 million voters Trump (72 percent of whom think the election was fraudulent) with no right of objection, for the sake of social peace. It was in these circumstances that the revolt of January 6 broke out. Revolt itself is not a threat to democracy, if anything, it is a very serious symptom that American democracy is threatened by an increasingly authoritarian system of power.
The post A revolt against power: a symptom, not the cause of the crisis of American democracy appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/una-rivolta-contro-il-potere-un-sintomo-non-la-causa-della-crisi-della-democrazia-americana/ on Fri, 08 Jan 2021 04:58:00 +0000.