Last night (6/1) we saw pictures from Washington where crazy Trump supporters had started a riot and occupied the congress and vandalized parts of the building, joked delegates and staff and stopped the negotiations. This after Trump in the morning gave a fiery speech that he will never admit that he lost the election and told his supporters on the spot to go to the Capitol. Doesn’t he and the Republicans’ actions begin to resemble what happens in banana republics? Former Republican President George W Bush thinks so and you can agree. Trump turns out, in words, to be an extremist like the supporters he incited, to never accept the election result, because it was a rigged election. He stands for the truth, he says, and the Democrats and the political establishment have stolen his victory. And his followers believe him!
Protesters also gathered in state parliaments in Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Michigan, California, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Texas and other states in protest of the stolen election, which they call the election of Biden. In Washington, many people are wondering about the fact that the Protestants could so easily get into Congress, partly because the guards there did not stop them. Security is obviously not what it should be and it could have been worse, as the police found weapons and smoke grenades in the occupiers. Four people died of various circumstances. The mayor of Washington had to issue a state of emergency and curfew in the city. But many Trump Protestants did not care. Inside the Capitol, delegates hid and sought refuge, while others armed and barricaded themselves in the building.
Trump’s obstruction of the election results begins on election night. He explains that he has won – long before all the votes have been counted – and that the electoral authorities can stop counting. He has in all states where the vote difference is less than one percent, demand that everything be counted again or rejected. The strategy is to create suspicion among his voters that everything did not go right. And for some Republicans, who believe in Trump and do not want to find out the truth, it is not enough that all current appeals and courts have shown that there has been no systematic election fraud.
But Trump and his closest aides have systematically argued that it was a fraudulent election, in which Democrats and the establishment in Washington stole Trump’s votes. For two months now, they have been cultivating the myth of electoral fraud and whipping up hate speech among many Republicans, and especially those on the far right and right-wing extremist groups. Apparently some of the most militant occupiers were from the Alt-Right movement and some other right-wing groups, where the truth about the election does not matter. They are simply out to cause as much misery for the democratic United States as possible, among other things to release some of the hatred that is bubbling within them.
What we see are a large number of groups and armed militias on the extreme right: Alt-Right, Boogaloo, Aryan Nations, Michigan Militia, Arizona Patriots, Texas Light Infantry, Free Militia, Defense Militia, Traditionalist Workers Party, Populist Party and many more . Alt-Right is an abbreviation of The Alternative Right. The Movements is an umbrella organization for right-wing extremist movements and groups. They celebrate Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election and are some of his main militant supporters. They have swastikas and have shown a Nazi-like greeting with the words ”Hail Trump” and ”Hail victory”. We Europeans know this well from the Nazis’ ”Heil Hitler”.
Given the strong contradictions and above all that these extremist groups have grown large with the support and sympathy of broad groups of Republicans and disappointed, frustrated and angry Americans, the events surrounding the Capitol and the state parliaments should not have come as a surprise. Trump and the gang around him have for a long time continued to incite and fire at these groups with all the talk that it was an unfair election, but also that his victory was deliberately stolen from him.
The extreme right-wing groups are anti-state, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, misogynistic and openly racist groups. Common to them is the quest to restore white identity and white supremacy, which liberals have undermined with their policies and which the traditional conservatives have not prevented. And Trump is just a sham president – albeit a life-threatening one – in a power game he happened to win. He does not understand the basic rules, attitudes and methods of democracy. His only interest is himself! But now perhaps his exalted role in the Republican Party is over? Alf Ronnby
Kritikern Alf 