A failed—but attempted—coup, and other stories
A review of the last four days and the damage done
It’s been an interesting week.
We started with the Georgia special election that flipped the Senate to Democrats, then things took a turn on Wednesday with the attempted coup—yes, let’s not beat around the bush, it was—at the Capitol that was one of the biggest security failures in the government’s history and ended with five people dead.
Hours before the coup attempt, a British judge ruled Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the U.S. because of our country’s horrific prison system. And on Thursday, Joe Biden nominated Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to head the Labor Department.
A couple of unconnected thoughts on the riot are below. First, a review of some of the stuff I wrote this week.
On Georgia, a piece I wrote for Blue Tent got an update for the special election results:
"We got the victory that we wanted at the state level to to flip Georgia blue," Asian American Advocacy Fund director Aisha Yaqoob said, adding that turning out voters again for the special election was “going to be our big mission Explaining that and really breaking it down for people—making it feel real to them that they could be the deciding vote.”
Within the same hour as news about Walsh’s nomination broke on Thursday, I published an article at The Appeal on the mayor’s veto of legislation restricting the Boston Police Department’s use of force on demonstrators:
“Mayor Walsh’s veto to this legislation is a failure of leadership when this is an opportunity to establish clear restrictions on lethal crowd control weapons and greater accountability in policing,” said City Councilor Andrea Campbell, an outspoken advocate for police reform in the city. “I’ll keep pushing to pass this ordinance because this is the kind of action and leadership this moment requires.”
And this morning I wrote for Business Insider about the importance of holding GOP lawmakers accountable for their role in fomenting the violence of the attempted overthrow of the government:
The intent behind this reframing of reality is clear. An honest accounting of what happened on Wednesday would lay the blame for what happened where it belongs—at the feet of the American right. Any such accounting would indict the Republican Party and its allies in conservative media for decades nurturing the conditions within their base that led to this latest escalation in right-wing violence. It also allows the over 121 GOP House members and over six Senators who nonetheless voted to overturn the results of the election after the riot to skate by without consequence.
On to my thoughts on the attempted coup.
It was an attempted coup
The storming of the Capitol was an attempt to overthrow the government and reinstall Trump as president despite the election’s results. How deep into the institutional right that effort went is now the subject of intense scrutiny.
There is a gathering understanding that elements in the administration and some Congressional Republicans were likely involved in the strategy aspect, with the mob knowing already where to go in a number of cases once inside and the National Guard being held in barracks.
With the Capitol Police at best being unprepared for the mob violence that participants only spent a month publicly and vocally preparing for all across social media and reports that officers were directing insurrectionists to Democratic lawmakers’ offices, it’s hard to discount law enforcement involvement.
Then there is this video from Don Jr.
Watch this with the context in the back of your mind that they were planning a coup.
You do not, in fact, gotta hand it to em
There’s an impulse on the left—one that long precedes our current moment—that in order to achieve revolutionary change it may be necessary, and even desirable, to ally with extremist elements on the right.
Such a “red-brown alliance,” as it’s referred to by detractors, is based on the idea that both the left and the right can find unity in their opposition to dominant centrist government.
A logical response to the events of the past week would, in a rational world, put that thought to bed. On Wednesday, far-right rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building as lawmakers certified the results of the election in an attempt to disrupt the process and reinstall President Donald Trump in the White House for an unearned second term.
The band of small business owners, idle rich kids, off-duty police and military officers, and others were clear about the reason for the assault. It was to reject what they see as “left-wing” rule under incoming President Joe Biden.
Nothing about this group of people and the ideology they represent can ally with the left; an anti-communist, racist mob of extreme right-wing reactionaries are not going to find common cause with progressives. Not to mention any such “alliance” would come at the expense of people of color in the coalition and our LGBTQ+ comrades.
There are some lines you need to make clear cannot be crossed, and this is one of them.
That’s all for now.
More next week, in the meantime be sure to check out Discontents if you haven’t already where I’ll have something to say on Monday.