A threat to the U.S. and to the world
Assault on Capitol Hill
Of all democracies, Americans like to think of theirs as uniquely
robust. This belief has been sorely tested by the truly shocking events
on 6 January, but vindication may be on hand next Wednesday when Joe
Biden is due to be sworn is as the next President of the United States.
Democrats the world over will breathe a sigh of relief, not least to see
the back of President Donald Trump and an end to his capacity to cause
havoc whether in his own backyard or the farthest reaches of the planet.
The
American security services are concerned that further mayhem may lie
ahead, with the more organised character of an armed insurrection. The
storming of the Capitol building by an angry mob, while both houses of
Congress were meeting in joint session to confirm the results of last
November’s presidential election, was a provocation as outrageous as it
was disorganised and futile. No matter how much damage the rioters did
once inside, no matter how disrespectful and intimidating their words
and conduct, it is unlikely that any single representative or senator
could have been swayed to change course.
Some of them wanted yet further investigations into allegations of ballot rigging, despite the assurances from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security that no serious fraud occurred. But it has been clear for weeks that most legislators in both houses accepted Biden’s victory. No coup, sedition or insurrection – however the events of 6 January are described – could have altered that. The confirmation of Biden’s victory was all but inevitable, because that is what the facts said. There were no “alternative facts” to set against them, and Trump’s insistence that he won by a landslide was a baseless piece of fiction.
At the heart of last week’s bizarre eruption of anarchy was a
manifest fallacy, and the fact that Trump had promoted and encouraged it
– and by all accounts, believed it – suggests he had lost touch with
reality. In this he was not alone. The most striking feature of the mob
was how many of its members felt they were acting out of Christian and
patriotic duty. There is a warning here for the US and for the rest of
the world. Demagogues are dangerous, and become more so when apparently
rational people are prepared to believe them. Trump was insisting the
ballot would be rigged against him long before election day itself. What
remains a mystery is how the alleged conspirators spread across the
nation could have managed to decrease the Democratic vote in the
congressional elections, while simultaneously, and usually using the
same ballot paper, increasing the Democratic vote in the presidential
race.
This is not the first time sections of the US population
have been drawn to irrational conspiracy theories about a hidden enemy,
concealed inside the workings of legitimate institutions. The arrival of
social media has amplified this tendency, particularly the way it
allows individuals to filter out all views contrary to their own, and
the fact that the more sensational a claim, the more attention it will
receive. Social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook have been slow
to recognise the wisdom in Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’
dictum that the principle of free speech does not permit the shouting
of “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. They have now slammed their doors shut
on Donald Trump, which is a tacit admission that they were part of the
problem.
That, however, raises more questions than it answers.
These social media platforms have always denied responsibility for the
content of their users’ posts, saying they are more like a telephone
service than a newspaper. That defence collapsed, once they realised
that some of those users seemed to be wanting to use them to organise a
civil war. Unregulated free speech on social media may not have survived
the Trump era.
Trump’s success was largely due to his intuitive exploitation of some
of the fundamental fault lines in US society – its demons. The most
crucial and disturbing is race and the legacy of slavery. The US has a
long way to go before it is at peace with its own history. Another is
the conviction that wealthy and powerful elites, well placed in
Washington and Wall Street, conduct public affairs solely for their own
benefit. The power of money in US national politics has never been
greater. A third is the ready resort to violence and the proliferation
of firearms. The rugged individualism of the Wild West still has its
allure. A fourth is the way globalisation has exported jobs in heavy
industry to the developing world where wages and safety standards are
lower, leaving whole communities poorer and with a sense of abandonment.
There are even more fundamental issues raised by this
astonishing episode that should concern the friends of democracy
everywhere. The first is how easy populist leaders can beguile millions
of voters with lies and half truths, often designed to bring democracy
itself into disrepute and prepare the way for dictatorship, of the
extreme right or of the extreme left. Such movements quickly attain
cult-like status, where the will of the leader is the only law – the
Führerprinzip. The second is how the breaking of democratic norms, which
may seem trivial at the time, can slide down a slippery slope into the
wholesale undermining of the system. The third is how dangerous violence
becomes when it is used for political ends – one of the hallmarks of
fascism. And the fourth, very relevant in the case of the US, is the
supreme importance of the separation of powers between the executive,
legislature and judiciary.
Trump’s stirring up of a mob to
interrupt congressional business is an example of the executive
interfering with the legislature. Presidential impeachment is the
opposite process, which is why it is undesirable except in the gravest
cases. Packing the courts with judges thought to be favourable to one
party rather than another is an example of the executive joining with
the legislature to suborn the judiciary – one of the most serious flaws
in the US system. Any review of the American Constitution in the light
of recent events must examine this “separation of powers” principle so
it can no longer be abused. And that applies to all systems of
government elsewhere in the world. These are not just America’s
nightmares. Nowhere is immune from them.
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