This is What Trump Always Wanted — And There’s Worse to Come
serty
Today was the day that armed fascists stormed the US Capitol, broke the doors and windows, entered the house chamber, where there was an armed standoff. All that, by the way, was abetted and incited by the President and his key political allies. Is that a sentence or two you thought you’d ever read?
This is the coup I warned you about. Don’t read that in the way of horn-tooting. Many others did, too — and if you’re half way thoughtful, you saw it coming just as much as we did. Still, I want to place some of those warnings in a little context — so I can explain what this coup means, what happens next.
Here are five things I tried to warn you about.
I warned you that there was going to be a coup.
I warned you that Trump was going to double down on his coup — all the way to the bitter end.
I warned you that as Trump’s soft coup failed, he would resort to a hard coup. Meaning that as a judicial, legal, political coup failed, he would try to get the military involved, and if that failed, he would try to simply rouse his army of American Idiots to violence.
I warned you that all that would happen almost inevitably. Why? Because Trump is an authoritarian, and he can’t back down. Backing down is showing weakness, and that is the one thing an authoritarian can’t do. Not just psychologically — but in order to keep their movement alive. They must go on doubling down, committing harder and more frequent and more outrageous transgressions, for their movement to go on being committed to them, to the goal of upending democracy, to believe that they can bring about the apocalyptic end they deisre.
And finally, I warned you that Trump would take his coup all the way to the bitter end even if he knew it couldn’t possibly be won. Why? Because there was a consolation prize well worth the winning. Weakening democracy, corroding its norms, shattering its values, disrupting its codes and rules. Dealing it a fatal enough blow, at least, to let it bleed out. And then maybe next time, maybe next time, the seizure of power would be successful. Even an attempted coup was going to be a consolation prize worth winning, because it would keep Trumpism alive.
All those resentments would go on burning. “They stole the election from us!” “They rigged it!” “Stop the steal!” “Make America Great Again!” All that would go on festering. And that is a very, very juicy consolation prize. Because if you can’t win power, then at least you can keep your movement alive, growing in resentment and fury and violence. If you can’t have the house of democracy — then maybe you can burn it down so nobody else can have it.
And all that brings me to the meaning of this coup.
What is it? You’d be quite correct to see it as a kind of Reichstag Fire.
American pundits are soft-pedalling, but the truth of what happened today is as awful as it is necessary to say as clearly as it can be said. Armed fascists stormed the capitol. Their goal was to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power. They knew they couldn’t seize power, probably, but what they could do was intimidate, bully, and frighten. Terrorize.
This was an act of terrorism. But not just any kind of terrorism. It wasn’t two sad fat guys in their underwear looking up bombs on the internet. It was the President of the United States and his key allies seemingly inciting and fomenting a violent attack on their own government. It was thousands of their most fanatical supporters — many organized into paramilitaries — arming themselves, with the aim of doing violence in order to bring the peaceful transfer of power to a halt, to whatever extent they could.
This was something new in America. What seems like state-sponsored violence — or at least state-licensed violence, effectively encouraged from the head of state himself, to society’s very own body politic. That is an act so far outside the norm of politics there is not a good word for it. What is it called when a head of state essentially asks fascist paramilitaries to commit acts of terrorism against the government?
Sedition, maybe. Treason, perhaps. It’s something remarkably close to civil war. Yes, really. Go ahead and think about it, and if you can find a better word for “a President inciting fascists to commit terrorism in order to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” go ahead and let me know.
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So how should a thoughtful person see all this? Trump is doubling down on his coup yet again. First the judicial coup failed, then the legislative one did, then the military option failed. All of those institutions rejected Trump’s attacks on democracy — which isn’t cause to celebrate them, by the way, that’s the least we should expect from them. And now Trump seems to have resorted to what you might call, if you wanted to be polite, mob violence, and if you wanted to be accurate, terrorism.
How far will Trump go? He’s going to keep going until he faces consequences. That’s another point I’ve tried to hammer home. The Dems have this foolish idea that making nice with fascists is how a society heals. Is that looking remotely accurate right about now? See any healing going on? Did holding out the olive branch pacify those fascists — or did it make them sneer and laugh and say “these idiots are weak! We can get away with whatever we want!”…and end up with them storming the Capitol?
The Dems have to punish this transgression, swiftly and severely, or else American democracy is just a punchline for the world’s comedians. That means holding Trump accountable — and charging all the “protestors,” sorry, fascists, not just with trespassing, but something much more punitive, whether terrorism or sedition.
But even that doesn’t solve the problem. Because even if Trump faces consequences, and so do the fascists who stormed the Capitol, the damage is now done. The damage to what?
Remember when I said that the point of the coup was the consolation of prize of keeping Trumpism alive? That damage. This is a Reichstag Fire moment. It will live on in Trumpists’ minds. It will solidify and bond the movement together. It will let them know that they don’t even have to pretend to be interested in democracy. That they can support — and even enact — outright violence.
With this attempted coup, Trump has effectively licensed ongoing acts of terror by his most fanatical supporters. He’s basically said to them: “We didn’t lose the election. And we’re going to teach them the hard way. Sure, invade the Capitol if you want. The gloves are off now.” Let me put that another way, because I feel I’m struggling to make my point clearly.
When coup attempts like the one that happened in America take place in failed states, what follows them? Coup attempts that are “failures” in the most obvious sense — but succeed at the deeper work of destabilising democracy, uprooting norms of peace, justice, truth, and decency?
Well, what tends to follow is something like this. Those fascist paramilitaries, knowing that they have the outgoing head of state’s explicit support and implicit license, go on doing violence.
In other words, the failed coup only marks the beginning of a new pattern of violence. What do the fascists then attack? All the institutions of civil society. They blow up courtrooms. They hold politicians hostage. They assassinate judges. They kidnap intellectuals. They invade schools. They occupy local governments. Society endures a wave of terrorism after failed coup attempts like the one America just had.
A failed coup is a kind of phase transition. It is like a glacier melting or an ocean boiling. It signals the beginning of a new phase in a society’s story. A chapter, usually, of escalating violence from extremists, who have now given up entirely on using political ends to accomplish their fanatical means, and so they resort to increasing levels of brutality. Terrorism of all kinds usually ensues, from, again, assassinations to bombings to kidnappings and so on.
That is, I think, what is beginning to happen in America. These fascist have been normalised by white American culture for so long — seen as something like cute little pit bull attack dogs — that those very white Americans failed to see the danger they were in. The hounds of ruin and chaos were about to turn on the family which bred them, oblivious to their wild appetites. Fascists are not cute little house pets — which is what white American culture made them out to be, when, for example, the NYT profiled neo-Nazis as friendly neighbours next door, when Jake Tapper had Nazis on his show to “debate” with (hey, is exterminating my whole kind of people a matter of debate? Oh, cool!!), when Richard Spencer was portrayed as a dashing, handsome rogue, when Steve Bannon was glamorised as a cool, soidisant genius of a worldly philosopher. White American culture made this monster. And the monster has now turned on it.
I say that because I have seen this happen elsewhere. In the Islamic world, too, for a time, being a hard-right fanatic was something that was culturally tolerated, cool, dangerous, seductive, even — just like being a fascist in America was and has been. What happened? Just the same thing that is happening to America. The fascists bit through their leash, and turned on those who made them. They attacked the very societies which had, foolishly, normalised and even been fascinated with them.
The fascists then vied for political power. And often, they failed. When they failed, there was a coup attempt that didn’t succeed. And after that is when the Islamic world as Americans think of it really began: a place of everyday violence, where going to the market can be something you don’t survive. A place synonymous with terrorism and brutality, because politics don’t work anymore.
That is the kind of place America risks becoming now. That is the kind of place Trump wants it to become. How does Trump win — even if he loses both the election, and the coup? If he convinces his most hardcore followers that violence will work where politics hasn’t. And if he convinces the rest that that violence is something to tolerate, turn a blind eye to, shrug at.
That is a very, very real possibility. Because the troubling fact is that a majority of American whites still back Trump. You and I may be horrified by today’s events. But is the average American white person, who backs Trump still? What do they feel looking at their TVs? Maybe they’re shaking their heads — but is there some part of them, deep down, that thinks: “Well, if politics doesn’t work, if they steal the elections from us, then what choice do we have?”
Bang! There goes a democracy.
That is why this coup is so dangerous. That is why it should have been described as a coup from the beginning. Why they should have been called fascists from the beginning, all those years ago. Why Trump should have been named as the authoritarian demagogue that he was, from the day he was made President, and before.
It was always to going to come to this.
They are fascists, doing what fascists do. Their leader is an authoritarian, doing what authoritarians do. When and if their political, judicial, and legal attempts to seize power ended in failure, they were always going to erupt in rage, and do what fascists and authoritarians do, which is storm capitols, jeer at democracy, wave guns around, and tramp on the ideals and hopes and history of a nation. They were always going to attempt a coup.
The point of today was very, very simple, as simple as it is chilling, if you really understand it. It was Trump saying to his fanatics and fools the following message, in not-so-subtle, barely hidden code: “Politics has failed. There’s only way left to us, and that’s violence. So go ahead and do what you have to. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. I’ll pretend to care, after you’ve done it, and you pretend like you don’t hear me, OK? And together, through this charade, we’ll terrorise into submission the society we couldn’t win over democratically.”
Today was the day Trump finally admitted he lost — in the only way he ever would or could. It was the day he licensed his movement to far beyond what they are already accustomed to — casual hate, demonization, bigotry, scapegoating, racism — and finally step into the wilderness of violence and the badlands of brutality. Politics didn’t work, Trump shrugged. Guess you’re going to have to do things the hard way. Just be peaceful with those guns and that hate, OK? Wink-wink!
This is the precise moment at which societies usually entire a downward spiral of terrorist violence. There are reasons — even more grim ones — to believe that will probably be the case in America. Did you see those protestors being arrested swiftly? Charged on the spot? I didn’t. Did you hear leading Republicans begging Trump (LOL) to “call it off”? I did.
And guess what? When you have the power to call it off, you also have the power to turn it on. Trump may not be President anymore. But in a way, what today was about was this. Having a different, and sometimes even more dangerous, kind of power. The power to brutalize, storm, weaken, terrorize.
Today was the day President Trump finally became Ayatollah Trump, leading his very own American Taliban, American ISIS, towards the Promised Land. All they had to do, he told them, in not so many words, was become the sword, since the pen and the word had failed.