By David Brooks on July 25, 2022
Image: Gulf News
After eight public hearings by the Congressional select committee on the first violent assault on the Capitol since 1814 (when the British attempted it) it can be concluded that the most recent coup d’état in the Americas happened in Washington on January 6, 2021.
That coup attempt, by now unsuccessful, had two characteristics different from others in the hemisphere. First, the coup leader was the then president of the United States who sought by sedition to remain in power, violating the sacred democratic principle of a peaceful transfer of power.
Second, it was the first coup attempt in a country in the Americas in history where there was no U.S. embassy in the capital where it occurred.
No one would have dared to predict six years ago what has happened in this self-proclaimed beacon of democracy, let alone that it would be approaching a neo-fascist abyss. This is not by accident, nor by spontaneous acts, but the fruit of long-term strategies by the right wing implemented with great rigor and organization at the local, state and federal levels, from school boards, municipal governments, state legislatures, to the top of the national political leadership. And all of this is not relegated to history, but the threats of January 6 are still very much present.
Trump continues to promote his justification that the election was stolen from him, and continues to urge his supporters to continue the fight. “The radical left will not desist until they succeed in doing everything they can to end our movement and destroy America,” he warned this week in a message to his faithful. But the “movement” is broader than he is. The leadership and large segments of the Republican Party have bet on supporting anti-democratic tendencies as a blueprint for maintaining their power in the face of a country being transformed by dramatic demographic changes, including the fact that whites will soon be a minority.
Nazi flags and others with far-right symbols flew this weekend at the entrance to conservative events attended by Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Federal lawmakers and other politicians claim they are “Christian nationalists,” a white supremacist banner under which various currents of the far right are united.
The threat of political violence is spreading – several of the legislators on the select committee and witnesses who have participated in the investigation have received death threats and other forms of intimidation from right-wingers – and there are those who advocate, or warn of, a second “civil war”.
Multiple details were disclosed in the hearings about the coordination between armed ultra-right groupings – which, along with other right-wing “extremists”, are considered the main “domestic threat” to U.S. national security by the Department of Homeland Security – and their links to Trump’s personal strategists and advisors, and how they were all willing to destroy all democratic foundations of this system to “save” their country, i.e., maintain power.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey, asked on Fox News if the United States has intervened in elections in other countries, replied that “probably, but it was for the good of the system, to prevent communists from taking power, for example in Europe in 1947, 48, 49, with the Greeks and the Italians.” When questioned whether that is still done today, Woolsey hesitated and finally replied that “only for a very good cause and always in the interest of democracy.”
Perhaps, with all that experience with coups and other good causes, he and other veterans should recommend political intervention, but now in their own country, of course, for “the good of the system.”
More seriously, progressive forces elsewhere in America, with too much experience in such things, should consider how to support their U.S. counterparts in confronting coups and other anti-democratic attacks.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English