Earlier today, thousands of angry Trump supporters, Qanon conspiracists, and other right-wing extremists stormed the United States Capitol in what appears to be an attempted coup. The left needs to seize this moment, and never again allow the Republicans to claim they are the party of law and order.
President Trump has tried to brand himself as the law-and-order President. When he first announced he was running for President, he pledged to save America from Mexican rapists. Shortly after getting re-elected, he followed through on his planned Muslim ban. He later declared a state of emergency on the US border, claiming he was protecting the US from an “invasion” of gang members and drug smugglers.
Trump’s law and order rhetoric became most pronounced during his reelection campaign, after the murder of George Floyd. He sent unidentified federal agents to kidnap peaceful protesters in Portland. He encouraged police violence against demonstrators. He toyed with declaring Antifa a terrorist organization, despite his own FBI Director testifying to Congress that Antifa was an idea, and not an organization. He then weaponized his department of justice against protesters. In fact, the some of the charges were so outrageous, that one man was even charged for merely posting on Facebook! The zealous prosecutorial crackdown on BLM and left-wing protesters raised eyebrows across the political spectrum.
Trump, Barr, and their affiliates did these actions under the pretense of law and order. A theme he continues to trumpet. Of course, Trump is not the first politician to use law and order politics as a pretext to stoke racial animosity and crackdown on dissent. But his use has been the most egregious.
After today’s events, the American right can never again claim to be the movement of law and order. This was not a spontaneous storming of the bastille. It was a planned, calculated, and executed attempt to overthrow the US government, overturn a constitutionally sanctioned free and fair election, and occupy use governmental property by force. This is literally the definition of sedition.
We will see how the American institutions handle the fallout from this in the coming weeks. Will people who literally stormed the US Capitol to intimidate lawmakers carrying out their constitutional duty face the same felony charges as those that sprayed political graffiti on the wall of a federal building? Will the Capitol Police and its leadership be held accountable for, at best, their incompetent response and at worst their sympathy to right-wing extremists literally trying to subvert our constitution? Will anybody be able to explain why only 13 were arrested during the looting of the US Capitol but tens of thousands arrested during the largely peaceful Black Lives Matter rallies? Time will tell, especially after Merrick Garland takes over as attorney general.
To be sure, the government has a duty, at least morally, to try to keep citizens safe. But for years now, the FBI, hardly a group of bleeding-heart liberals, has reported that far-right/white supremacist terror commit the most terrorist acts.
The left needs to seize this opportunity and point out the blatant hypocrisy of Trump and his sycophants. Today proved that that law and order was never really about law and order. It was about finding a moral justification, however thin, to get punch drunk on racism, xenophobia, and left-bashing.
The next time some politician tries to use “law and order” as an excuse to push hateful, regressive policies, we should remind them of the failed coup of January 6, 2021.
Dash Radosti is a third-year law student, activist, and aspiring human rights and civil rights lawyer at Georgetown University Law Center. He is also an Army officer, currently in the New York Army National Guard, and has deployed to multiple countries in the Middle East in support of the War on Terror. He previously served on the Bergen County Democratic Committee, representing Fort Lee, New Jersey, and as the campaign chair for Bernie Sander’s 2016 election campaign in Fort Lee, New Jersey. You can follow him on twitter @dashradosti.
