Assault on Congress that only after 14 hours and after being interrupted by the insurrection of Donald Trump supporters who entered the classrooms was able to certify the victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, president and vice president of the United States. First, the night of the riot. The black page of American history, four victims and at least thirteen injured.
But how did it get to this point? We talked about it with Mario Del Pero, US expert and professor of International History and History of US Foreign Policy at the Institut d’études politiques / SciencesPo in Paris.
Among his latest publications “Era Obama” (Feltrinelli, 2017) and “Libertà e Impero” (Laterza, 3rd ed., 2017).
Could it have been foreseen?
“The dramatic and grotesque form that this somewhat operetta insurrection took on was not predictable. In the sense that I don’t think anyone would have imagined seeing demonstrators disguised as Huns taking selfies on the presidential seats of the Chambers, entering the Capitol. But four years of Trump’s verbal violence, four years of institutional illiteracy, four years of assault on the forms and contents of democracy paved the way to some extent for physical violence. There are deaths but it could have been much worse but there is a macroscopic scar on the institutions ».
What do you mean?
“A disfigurement to the custodian institutions and symbol of US democracy and the US republic, the deliberative space, the space of legislative codification, the space of confrontation and political confrontation, the institutional space, the congress, the monument even a little in its cheaply neoclassical architecture that wants to symbolize the republican virtues of good governance, balanced government, competent people, moderation, respect for the rules. So there is a double disfigurement to these republican values and virtues and to the democratic space ».
How did it get to this point?
«The conditions have been set by Trump in his years of electoral mandate and in this long post-election transition by systematically refusing to accept electoral defeat. His riding conspiracy theses, this narrative of electoral fraud, stolen victory, political corruption and so on, obviously made their own by millions of Americans, fuel anger, rejection of institutions. If freedom and democracy are paraded under our noses as Trump tells his supporters, it becomes legitimate to rebel and protest, a legitimate rebellion against tyranny, authoritarianism and corruption ».
Didn’t the police foresee?
“Trump has prepared the ground then there is the practical data of yesterday: this inability of the police to predict what could happen and prevent it. It was an epic failure of the security apparatuses, because allowing demonstrators to enter and block the session of Congress is an epic failure and for this the security apparatuses will have to explain. I think a certain underestimation of the risk played, I think the desire not to militarize Washington played into the belief that this militarization could exacerbate these tensions and perhaps inadvertently cause an escalation. But I believe that the nature, let’s say, of the demonstration, the color of the skin of the demonstrators also acted ”.
How did skin color affect?
“The failure of the police forces was also caused by a bad reading of the situation but as a further explanation, not exclusive, it could also be that there is a different attitude of the police, especially the municipal police, towards those who demonstrate . Nature, contents and protagonists of the demonstrations determine the forms and modalities of the police response. The very hard fist is often used and used against young African American demonstrators while in this case, with this white America, let’s say, not marginal, conservative, it was decided to adopt a different line and which proved to be unsuccessful “.
What will happen in the coming months?
“This is the big question. In the coming months this story of the stolen victory will remain because it has entered the circle and a majority of Republican voters believe in it. Trump will ride it, even for very prosaic and earthly reasons, to make money, which is his primary interest, right now he has heavy credit lines due, a possible very heavy tax penalty due and he will use his role as celebrity publishes to do them and will do so by riding on the idea of electoral scam ».
It will remain very present.
«By doing this clearly Trump will remain a public presence and a heavy mortgage on the country but also and above all on the Republican party. The big challenge for Republicans today is to be able to emancipate themselves from Trump. An immense challenge: they have the very serious responsibility of having created it in a certain way, they have used and exploited it to have acceptable public policies, from justice, to taxation, to the environment and so on and yet they have completely lost control of it. Trump fully mobilizes their electorate but does not allow them to expand and keeps them structurally a minority in the country, we have also seen this with the electoral defeat in Georgia “.
Is Trump the Danger to Democracy?
«Trump is the product rather than the cause of a crisis of US democracy, if we want not only of the US but of all the most advanced democracies. It is the product of forms of mutual polarization and political de-legitimization of the two US parties that predate Trump and that have contributed to producing him. Trump as president this rift, this polarization, has ridden them with a sort of institutional vandalism which then culminated in physical vandalism. I don’t want to talk about new American fascism, as some do, but it is clear that a figure like Trump lacks the basis of institutional grammar, constitutional sensitivity and therefore democratic literacy. As a result, Trump did a lot of harm to American democracy even though it was the product of a previous difficulty ».
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