It is no coincidence that the vice-president of the commission of inquiry into the attack on the Capitol, the Republican Liz Cheney, decided Thursday evening to surround herself with the great presidential figures of the United States in her speech. opening of the first public session of the work of this parliamentary group responsible for shedding light on the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
“I ask you to think of the scene that unfolded in the rotunda of our Capitol on the evening of January 6”, under the gaze of “Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Eisenhower, Ford and even Reagan”, a- she named. The elected Americans then resumed the certification of the vote confirming the victory of Joe Biden in the presidential election of 2020, a process interrupted during the day by violent demonstrations having turned into an insurrection.
“There, in a sacred space of our constitutional republic, launched the elected official of Wyoming, men and women in tactical intervention gear, with long guns, deployed inside”, protected the building against a violent mob, “beneath paintings representing the earliest scenes of our republic, including one painted in 1824 which depicts George Washington resigning [le 23 décembre 1783]and voluntarily relinquishing power to give control of the Continental Army to Congress”.
“By this noble act, Washington has set the indispensable example of the peaceful transfer of power,” she added, “which President Reagan called ‘nothing less than a miracle.’ The sacred obligation to uphold this peaceful transfer of power has been honored by every American president… except one. »
To depoliticize the investigation into the attack on the Capitol, to take the tragedy out of partisanship, to inscribe it henceforth in the ledger of the history of the United States: this is in large part what the commission of inquiry on this January 6 by playing, Thursday evening, from the American capital, the first measures of its public hearings. An expected media event which, in nearly two hours, exposed the mechanics of a “stratagem” orchestrated by a deposed president, seeking to maintain power by “overthrowing the will of the people”, summed up the chairman of the commission , Democrat Bennie Thompson. And the gesture, if it is still perceived as a simple movement of political opposition by the faithful of the populist and the tenors of the Republican Party, must now be approached for what it really is, that is to say a “flagrant violation of the Constitution President Joe Biden said in the hours leading up to the hearings, an attack on American democracy the country can no longer afford to take lightly. There, as elsewhere.
“The stakes of this commission and its public hearings cannot be higher than that for the United States, but also for the whole world, really, given the power and the American influence”, explains to the To have to American historian Nancy MacLean, professor at Duke University, North Carolina.
“Donald Trump and his close allies engineered, promoted and paid for a criminal plot to nullify an election they lost. These hearings are therefore the most important of our time. Why ? Because they will help determine whether our country will continue the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power after elections, a tradition that dates back to George Washington. She adds: “The study of democracies that have collapsed has taught us that the best prerequisite for a successful coup is a failed coup whose instigators go unpunished. »
The center of a conspiracy
This is what the commission of inquiry is now seeking to avoid, which on Thursday evening was more than direct in holding former US President Donald Trump responsible for an “attempted coup”. of which January 6 was, according to her, “the high point”.
“There is no room for debate. Those who invaded our Capitol and fought law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump told them, that the election was stolen and he was the rightful president,” Liz Cheney said. , a rare member of this party to sit on this commission, before presenting several pieces of evidence showing that the ex-president was repeatedly informed by his entourage that his theory of electoral fraud did not stand up to the confrontation of the facts. Even his daughter Ivanka Trump indicated during her testimony before the commission that she had been convinced by ex-Attorney General Bill Barr that this fraud was nothing more than ” bullshit “, according to the terms used by this Minister of Justice. “I respect Attorney General Barr, and I believed what he said,” said the daughter of the former president, who preferred to wallow in a parallel reality.
This demonstration that the populist, despite being informed of the reality of the facts, has deliberately sought to rewrite them in order to stay in power illegally, and this, by lying to his troops to get them to overthrow the government will continue next Monday, with the resumption of the public hearings of the commission of inquiry.
“Donald Trump is the greatest threat to democracy and to democratic institutions in our entire history,” said Larry Berman, professor emeritus of political science at the University of California at Davis, in an interview. He is a man who believes in autocracy and only himself and is willing to sacrifice everything in the name of his big lie about stolen elections. This is what these public hearings must show, to write it down in history. “But also to try to stop, at best, or to slow down, at worst, the threat that this populism, carried by an extreme right ideology and the normalization of hatred of the other, poses to the time. .
“Make no mistake: we faced an attack on our country led by Trump and his faction within the Republican Party that led us into a constitutional crisis,” said Nancy MacLean. The sooner millions of Americans realize this, the better our chances of being cured of this cancer. »
“Too many Americans imagine that our country is immune to authoritarianism,” she adds. This assumption makes us vulnerable to an unprecedented threat, of which Trump is the main component. What we saw on January 6, 2021 and what the House investigation found is unprecedented in our history, and counting. Election sabotage efforts continue with the spread of misinformation about the 2020 ballot results still fueling — even if at odds with the facts — statewide attempts to alter the framework for future elections for partisan purposes. »
An American Weakness
A disturbing post-January 6 outcome for the co-author of the essay How Democracies Die (The death of democracies) Steven Levitsky, professor at Harvard, since he reveals, according to him, one of the weaknesses of the Americans, who are unable to defend their democracy because they “take it for granted”. “We are not aware of the warning signs” of these threats, he told the Associated Press this week, hoping that the work of the commission of inquiry into this insurrection will end up on the books. civic education and the country’s history textbooks.
“This is how democracy will be saved,” he said. And this, without “what happened [soit balayé] under the rug,” said Bennie Thompson in his opening remarks. What the commission of inquiry into January 6 “and the lies that led to this insurrection” putting “in danger two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy” now seeks to do.