Extremist US fringe now mainstreamed

“America’s Tiananmen Square.” That’s the allusion Washington Post’s David Ignatius, one of America’s most distinguished commentators, used to capture the horror of Wednesday’s events at the US Capitol.  But even that unthinkable comparison does not fully capture how profoundly this country has been shaken to its core.

A lesser known but equally pithy Kenyan scribe, Daniel Opiyo, summed up the global incredulity over when he asked me, “What is the future of democracy in Africa if this is where America has fallen to?”

It is impossible for those not in the United States to comprehend the impact on the American psyche of the scenes that unfolded on their television screens on Wednesday, which some feared were a prelude to instability and a “coup” designed to keep President Trump in power. Even the assassination of President John Kennedy in 1963, which occurred when I was in the US as a student, did not raise alarms and fears that erupted with the storming of the U.S. Capitol, the nation’s most hallowed symbol of democracy. 

Senior Democratic leaders, and a couple of Republicans, are now seeking to remove President Trump from office to prevent him from doing even greater harm before he exits on January 20. While politics is of course at play – the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, compared Wednesday’s “invasion” of the Capitol to Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour, which led to  war with the US - these reactions are not surprising given the scale of the mayhem in what president-elect Biden called “the citadel of liberty”.

The nation’s most powerful elected leaders were cowering beneath their seats and desks in the august chambers of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Plainclothes security aides, guns drawn and pointed at potential entrance points for the marauding mobs that had taken over the complex, scrambled to get vice-president Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi succession, to secure locations.

Senate podium

One protestor actually managed to clamber onto the Senate podium and sit in the seat where the vice president had been minutes earlier. He proclaimed that President Trump had been robbed of victory! Another sat in the Speaker’s chair.  Another ran holding aloft a huge, unfurled confederate flag, as if a segregationist charge on the ramparts of the union was under way.

Even though these events and their potential for insurrection were well publicised, there were woefully few police officers at the Capitol. This is an utter mystery. The breach at the Capitol could have ended up being infinitely more catastrophic than the limited destruction we witnessed, which we later found out had also left four people dead.

A defender of the assault on the Capitol had the audacity to say that the protestors did not vandalise anything. I guess he thought we should be grateful his folk had done nothing more than take over the Senate and the House of Representatives!

We have seen how security forces have been brutally reacting to Black Lives Matter and other activists protesting police killings. But the Capitol lay almost unprotected by the police against a possible assault. During all this, President Donald Trump did not condemn the assault. Indeed, in his speech to the massive crowd of about a 100,000 protesting what they believed was a “rigged lection”, he had incited them to march to the Capitol and show the country “their strength.”

Despite all the horror and surprise, the awful events were hardly unexpected. Just a few months earlier, hundreds of armed protesters carrying heavy weaponry had invaded Michigan state’s Capitol to protest Governor Whitmer’s coronavirus lockdown.

Indeed, one of America’s most open secrets has been the militancy of the large numbers of its armed, right wing extremists. They have repeatedly carried out violent attacks, the most famed being the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995 which killed 169 people. 

 The growing number of extremists were dramatically emboldened to come out into the open during President Trump’s reign, as he openly courted them using racist tropes and the power of violence.

Taming the president’s basest instincts was not easy because of his astounding popularity – no president in recent history has had the passionate support from tens of millions of Americans as he does, despite his open racism, crude misogyny, outright lies and other odious practices.

His popularity soared during the last four years, with nearly 75 million people voting for him in November – 12 million more than in 2016. And that was despite the unspeakable horrors inflicted by his unfathomable policies against the coronavirus, whose toll will shortly reach an astronomical 400,000 dead.

Lost election

 And yet Trump lost the election by a whisker, prompting actor George Clooney, his militant opponent, to say last week that if Trump had asked people to wear masks, he would still be president.  

That kind of passionate support had made Republican leaders, who alone could have checked Trump’s basest instincts, afraid of challenging him, for fear of angering his supporters, on whose votes they of course depend. A few have now begun to distance themselves after the rioting at the Capitol that he incited.  

While many of Trump’s supporters are racists, the vast majority of them are decent Americans who have been disaffected by the terrible economic setbacks they have suffered under the policies of both Republican and Democratic presidents.

Tens of millions of them been marginalised and pushed into real deprivation as a result of the neo-liberal policies of the last four decades, which saw both industry and decent-paying jobs exported to low-wage countries, turning the vast industrial heartland into what is now called the de-industrialized “rust belt”. At the same time, the newly dispossessed have seen in this period the greatest accumulation of wealth by a small elite. 

While action on both the security and political fronts against extremists is essential, the mounting problems of the disaffected have seen them attracted to the allure of authoritarian or even fascist leaders who offer to uplift their lives.

This large group will remain a potent threat to American stability; bold action will be needed from President Biden to address their woes. However, he was elected on a platform of centrist continuity, and his appointments have consisted almost entirely of the old guard.

Unless Mr Biden rethinks his priorities, tackling America’s greatest challenge – reducing stark inequalities and curtailing the political power of the super-rich – will remain unmet and deepen instability.