Will a Domestic Terrorism Law Prevent Future Capitol Invasions?

The immediate response of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and many other liberal commentators to the assault on legislators in the Capitol building on January 6 2021 was to call for the would-be putschists to be labelled as domestic terrorists. Many even supported a new law to create domestic terrorism as a new category of offence in U.S. law.

Be careful what you wish for. All such granting of emergency powers to military, police and intelligence forces to physically root out a ‘terrorist’ threat is almost certain to end up being mainly used against the left. There are plenty of existing laws sufficient to investigate far right groups, and to charge the actual putschists.

Any domestic terrorism law will confer ‘state of emergency’ powers on police, military and intelligence agencies. Any such law would explicitly suspend, or modify the operation of, democratic rights and practices on the grounds that they were a luxury that cannot be afforded, given the state of threat.

A domestic terrorism law will simply justify pre-emptive police and intelligence agency surveillance of all U.S. citizens (since anyone is a potential ‘domestic terrorist’ — how can the police know otherwise without spying on everyone?).

Anyone is a potential ‘domestic terrorist’ — How can the police know otherwise without spying on everyone?

Those people who committed crimes in the assault on the Capitol should be charged with different crimes based on the different things they actually did. Some of the ‘rioters’ were conscious putschists; others were naïve dupes of the Trumpian Republican Big Lie machine.

But the left should support prosecutions that make distinctions, and uphold the right to protest and protect civil liberties and due process, while jailing those who warrant being jailed (which will include many of the dupes, based on their actions). It is important to do this because the call for a domestic terrorism law is helping to build up another lie, or at least misunderstanding about what actually happened on January 6, and why the police were apparently unable to prevent it from happening.

The FBI and others say that a loud and aggressive protest march turned into a violent assault on the Capitol building because the police lacked the legal authority and budget to surveil potential domestic terrorists before January 6. That is not true. They had plenty of advance knowledge about organized rightists. They had even more advance knowledge about what Trump and Trump Republicans were calling upon their supporters to do on that day — it was all done in public.

The unruly protest outside the Capitol only became a violent threat inside because the police deployment allowed it

When the march reached the grounds of the Capitol building, it was not yet a violent group launching an attack on legislators. It was an unruly protest that included many individuals and somewhat organized groups who were ready to be as violent as the police would let them be. The riotous protest could have, and should have, been handled as such. That protest turned into something very different — an invasion of the Capitol building that put the lives of House and Senate legislators at risk — because the police (and/or the White House and other authorities above them who decided what police forces to assign to duty that day and what reinforcements to send later) decided to allow it. What is needed to prevent another January 6 is an investigation into all of the police, military and intelligence agencies whose deployment allowed it to happen. Above all, the investigation should focus on all of the (mostly Trump appointed) top people in command over the deployment at the Department of Defence and other relevant departments. And the White House and Trump himself. This can only be done by a special commission from outside.

First and foremost, progressives of all kinds should unite to put the focus on those who prepared the ground for the putsch attempt, the Republicans and the vast network of moneyed interests and institutions and groups that support them. It took four years of continuous lies to create a false set of alternative facts about everything the Republicans and Trump were doing.

The ‘Stolen Election’ Big Lie would not have worked without that four year build-up, including at least a year of talk about how mail-in voting was fraudulent and voter fraud widespread. It would not have worked if Mitch McConnell and the House and Senate Republicans had said the election was fair after the election (but almost none of them did so for over two months leading up to January 6) .

The attack on the Capitol by protesters, from the outside, only happened because they were being incited by Republican lawmakers who announced in advance their intention to reject the election results, from the inside. It was an inside/outside job and the leaders were the Republican leaders on the inside, not a bunch of extreme rightists and Trump dupes on the outside.

The Capitol assault was an inside/outside putsch attempt led by Republican legislators from the inside

The left should definitely call for a political campaign by the Biden Democrats and all liberal and left forces against the Trumpist Republican right, starting with conviction of Trump by the Senate. (They should however modify the impeachment motion to allow Trump to run again. Let the voters decide. The motion should strip Trump of any salary, pension and Secret Service protection instead. Banning Trump only helps the Republicans. They want to replace him with a smarter and more electable demagogue. If Trump is banned they get to blame the Democrats, create a martyr myth and move on to the better demagogue. Removing all taxpayer funding for Trump hurts him materially and is a dishonorable discharge. It makes dishonoring the issue of the motion. It makes it far harder for Republicans to change the subject. The threat to democracy is not Trump running again. It is a Republican party running any presidential candidate who perpetuates the racism and America First nationalism and Big Lie politics that Trump has channelled for the past four years. That will only be prevented to the extent that the expose is of the Republican party for creating, enabling and still defending Trump and Trumpian politics. The Democrats must attack the Republican leadership and their ideas and methods, to win as many Americans away from their proto-fascist politics as possible.)

To repeat, the Republicans and the pro-Trump right-wing media were the source of the putsch attempt, not the grabbag of organized rightists and Trump dupes who invaded the Capitol building as the result of 18 months of incitement – over 140 House Republicans and initially a dozen or so Senate Republicans actually voted to overturn the election results. Almost all Republican politicians and spokespersons repeated the lie that the election was stolen, or failed to challenge it, for over two months before January 6. A domestic terrorism law will do nothing to stop something like that from happening again.

There is a need for congressional committee hearings and one or several commissions to gather and publish facts about the lead up to the January 6 action. As those facts come out, the attempted Republican Party incited putsch should be named as such. A campaign should be conducted to take this to the American public, to get them to see that it was wrong, and why it was wrong. The FBI and other agencies should be shamed into paying more attention to white supremacist and America First proto and neo fascist groups using existing laws.

Realistically, ‘law enforcement’ (ironic quotes) may need new specific authority to act here and there. But the left should also demand a review leading to a scaling back of some powers that they already have. We need to counter the one way trend to an increase in police etc powers. We should develop ideas about how to force all law enforcement agencies to be more transparent and accountable. Frequent public reports should go to legislators so that the ever-increasing powers of police etc is a regular topic of public knowledge, and hopefully challenge. The right will champion a Law and Order National Security State. The Left will champion policing integrated with pro-equality social agency work (demilitarize and defund the police, gun control) that helps the people to help and protect one another in a Freedom and Democracy State.

The left needs to avoid the trap of handing the forces of law and order in the US state even more tools to repress dissent and to extend a surveillance regime over the population. January 6 was not another 9/11. In fact 9/11 was not a 9/11. It was a horrible event because of the loss of so many lives. But it was not proof that the tiny group of terrorists in Al Qaeda actually posed any serious threat to the United States, justifying a War on (International) Terror(ism) under the Patriot Act and other ‘international terrorism laws’. Those laws took away American liberties and gave excessive special powers to the police, intelligence agencies and armed forces. It led to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, which only stimulated the growth of ‘international terrorism’. But that is a topic for a different post.

NOTE: Having said all this, there are likely to be violent atrocities perpetrated by the extreme right in the U.S. in the near future. Public figures on both the right and the left will need to upgrade their individual security arrangements. Collective security arrangements in the Capitol and other government building will have to be improved, while still allowing access by the non-violent citizenry.

It took Hitler ten more years after the failed 1923 Munich beer hall putsch before the mainstream conservatives gave him state power

The Republican party led mainstream rightists will continue to build up a more and more radicalized mass base of support for the ‘we [white] Americans are the real victims’ alternate reality narrative. If Trump’s days as a useful idiot are over, they will find a new leader to give expression to the same racist and imperialist nationalism that Trump promoted so effectively. It took Hitler ten more after the 1923 Munich beer hall putsch to get to the point in 1933 where he was granted power by the mainstream conservative establishment.

The unsuccessful putsch of January 6 2021 is a warning that we fail to heed at our own peril. But a domestic terrorism law will not help.

THIS IS THE SECOND POST IN THE ‘DEMOCRACY AND POPULISM’ SERIES