In its history, the Capitol has been the scene of violent episodes: in 1814, when the British set it on fire, during brawls between parliamentarians or during small-scale attacks during the 20th century.e century.
None of this, however, equates to what happened there a year ago. Unprecedented by their violence, their scale and the underlying intentions, the events of January 6 generated a shift that has no precedent in the contemporary history of the Republic.
First, one of the two ruling parties entered a parallel universe, confirming the hold of the former president. The Republican leadership has embraced historical revisionism knowingly downplaying events – an assault on a legislative chamber!
However, the condemnation of the rioters has value only if the accountability of all the actors is established, so as to re-establish a “system of mutual security”, to use the words of Robert Dahl, the basis of the rule of law. . The cracks have reached the foundations of the building.
Elections in the year
Then, 2022 will be defined by primaries and federal and federal general elections. However, the electoral system suffers constant attacks. In 2021, 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting, according to the Brennan Center census – a record year in a decade.
The year 2022 is only on its eighth day, and already 13 new bills have been introduced in 4 states. What is changing is the politicization of the framework for elections, the counting and judicial recounting of votes with laws allowing for partisan interference. For the Brennan Center, this represents “a serious threat for 2022”.
Indeed, even if many social media platforms have closed inflammatory accounts and the most vindictive voices are a little less audible, the relative calm is illusory.
What the Digital Forensic Research Lab confirms: the most radical have taken the bush, stepping aside from the national public space in favor of local issues – in particular schools, a new playground for cultural wars – supported in this by the caciques of the Grand Old Party.
A disturbing portrait
Moreover, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, led by Robert Pape, paints a disturbing portrait of this development. By profiling the rioters of January 6, Pape’s team measures the nature and the implantation of this movement in American society. If for nearly 24% of adults (two thirds of Republicans), the election was stolen, the researcher estimates that they are 21 million to consider that, for this reason, the use of force is necessary.
This fringe worries the Pope, because 8 million of them have weapons, 6 million support extreme right-wing groups, and 4 million have military experience.
Research shows that, far from being an assemblage of far-right groups, it is a political movement spread across the whole territory, with violence at its center and the ‘big replacement theory’ as its driving force ( theory stating that the Democratic Party would seek to replace the current electorate with immigrants, who would be more favorable to it).
In the face of increasing far-right violence and hate crimes (well documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center), Princeton’s Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project and Bridging Divides Initiative launched the US Crisis Monitor to assess political violence in real time. Their record is worrying: the right-wing demonstrations are more violent. Pro-Trump protests are on the rise, (six times) more likely to be armed, and most (83%) take place near legislative bodies.
Left and right
They are also very structured – around three dominant groups: the Boogaloo Boys, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys. However, law enforcement intervenes more frequently and more violently in left-wing protests, such as those of the Black Lives Matter movement, than in right-wing protests.
We must add a component to this panorama: the armed forces. If the military staff presented itself as a safeguard at the end of the Trump era, there are still risks involved. Three former generals (Eaton, Taguba and Anderson) wrote an open letter to highlight the high proportion of veterans and soldiers among the January 6 rioters.
They point to the dissent within the command, the risk of units siding with Trump in 2024 and the politicization of the National Guard.
Indeed, seven states (Alaska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming) oppose the submission of their National Guard to the federal government, arguing, as does the new commander of the Oklahoma National Guard (the former having been sacked), that except by order of the president, he answers only to the governor.
Violence
At this point, continuing to trivialize the rise of the far right poses a great risk. Because there is no equivalence between extreme right-wing violence and extreme left-wing violence: databases such as that of START, at the University of Maryland, prove it.
Far-right violence is simply out of the ordinary. Therefore, if the mood last Thursday, in the wake of Biden’s speech, was that “democracy prevailed”, it is a false sense of security.
Indeed, the research of Robert Pape establishes an escalation trajectory making it possible to assess the slide of a society towards mass violence. His conclusions abound in the direction of the text published by Thomas Homer-Dixon last week in the Globe and Mail : the risk of implosion in flight is major and imminent. It would be illusory for us to believe in the frontier screen: our geography has seated us at the top of a percolator. When it has boiled, at the bottom, the hot liquid will eventually come up to us.