Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
Despite the big talk and ‘revolutionary’ posturing of fascists and other far-Rightists, once confronted with painful consequence the tendency is for all their bravado to collapse without dignity, as evidenced in many trials of the Capitol invaders of 2021.
On 6th January fascists, far-Rightists and other misguided followers of Republican Party Trump, who had lost the US Presidential elections to Joe Biden of the Democratic Party, broke through police lines, many invading the USA’s Capitol building and strutting around inside.
The incident had been fueled by Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud to deny him victory, then repeated and disseminated by far-Right conspirationist ideologues, in particular along social media networks and the invasion was allegedly to prevent confirmation of Biden’s election.
The invasion of the Capitol surprised many around the world and seemed to shock the USA’s public, while most of the fascists and far-Rightists reveled in it. The Capitol building is the seat of the US Congress, the legislative branch of the US State, i.e of its parliament.
Of course, the attack on the Capitol, despite the undemocratic nature of the participants, does not actually represent an “attack on US democracy” as claimed by many supporters of the US State. This is because the democracy of that state is entirely a fallacy.
The US State is run by a military-industrial-financial oligarchy, resulting in most State decisions and laws directly or indirectly benefiting that ruling class. In addition, the supposed ultimate decision-making bodies are composed of mostly rich people,1 some of them billionaires.
Campaigns for the Presidency itself are enormously expensive and paid for by contributions, the ‘pipers’ of course later ‘calling the tunes’. Judges of the Supreme Court are political appointees.
FASCIST MOBILISATIONS
Although many were taken by surprise by the invasion, the social and political stage had been under construction for some time.
In January 2017 in a clash between Proud Boys and antifascists ostensibly around the issue of the covid epidemic and mandatory mask-wearing, an antifascist shot and wounded in the leg one of the ‘Boys, surrendered to the police and was charged.2
Nearly 3,000 miles away in Charlottesville in August the “Unite the Right” rally was held, ostensibly to protest the removal of the monument to Robert E Lee, Civil War Confederate Army commander but also an attempt to build fascist unity against antifascist, antiracist resistance.3
There were numerous clashes in Charlottesville with the cops standing by until one of the fascists drove his car into the crowd, killing an antifascist. In Oregon, over 2,600 miles away in 2020, an antifascist killed a fascist and was hunted down by police and shot dead in disputed circumstances.4
Before, between and after those events there were many clashes across the USA and at one time Trump declared that “Antifa” were a terrorist group and would be made illegal! Antifascism is of course an ideological position shared by otherwise disparate forces and not an organisation.
TRUMP’S FOLLOWERS
While Trump himself has been undergoing trials and legal manoeuvres with regard to a number of issues, including allegations of financial fraud and unauthorised removal of documents from the White House, he is currently running for the Presidential nomination of the Republican Party.
As is usually the case with fascist leaders, it is their followers who carry the most severe consequences5 and a great many have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment in the huge number of trials following6 and, without any great evidence of protests in solidarity with them.7
On the two-year anniversary of the event, 978 had been arrested and charged with multiple crimes in relation to the attack, according to a Department of Justice database. According to research, the median age of the defendants is 39, with over 86% identifying as male.
A more recent report quoted more than 1,200 defendants having been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 900 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials decided by a judge or jury.
Approximately 750 rioters have been sentenced, with nearly two-thirds getting some term of imprisonment.8
Many of these racist, right-wing and fascist warriors have buckled under to their allegedly sworn enemy, the Federal and State police and informed against their erstwhile comrades or plea-bargained with their prosecutors.
How many? By January 2023, over half of the charged, according to the Department of Justice.
One of the most recent was Charles Donohoe, not-so-proud-now Proud Boys president of a chapter in North Carolina. He was a lieutenant of former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison — the longest prison term so far in a Capitol riot case.
Last May, Tarrio and three other former Proud Boys leader, along with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and other members were convicted of seditious conspiracy charges for plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Biden.
Rhodes was sentenced last year to 18 years in prison.
Donohoe agreed to co-operate with federal authorities and pleaded guilty in April 2020 to two felony counts: ‘conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding’ and ‘assaulting, resisting or impeding police’ but was not called to testify at the trial of Tarrio and other Proud Boys earlier this year.
Another who pleaded, Ray Epps, was sentenced recently but only to community service. Some of his former associates accused him being an undercover agent for the State and he is suing Fox News for feeding that view. True or not, his soft sentence is unlikely to dispel suspicions.9
It will hardly help either that Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps’ vehement denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative. They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the US Marines from 1979 to 1983.10 Of course, they’d tell us if he was.
The Prosecutor asked for six months jail and a non-custodial sentence certainly seems unusual considering the verbal and video evidence they had against him. On the other hand the State might have been painting a target on him to distract from real undercover agents.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of fascist and far-Right preparation for the riot and invasion some still believe that “Antifa” or the State started the whole thing in order to make the far-Right look bad (this kind of fantasy frequently features in aftermaths of fascist actions).
A more likely conspiracy is police tolerance and perhaps membership of fascist groups which, after all, are often on a similar ideological page to a lot of cops who, at the same time, tend to dislike the kind of political, ethnic or LGBT groups who most likely to be actively antifascist.
One can only imagine the response of the State if the Capitol invaders had been socialists, an ethnic minority or antifascists.
USA FAR-RIGHT & FASCIST ORGANISATIONS
Most people would be familiar with at least the name of Ku Klux Klan but there are a large number of other far-Right, fascist and racist organisations spread widely across the US State, such as the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers and Proud Boys,11 who consider themselves USA “Patriots”.12
Their activity may be on line, spreading racist and fascist ideology, along with unsound conspiracy theories but they can also be active on the street, parading their beliefs and trying to recruit members, or in seeking to intimidate or attack Left or minority groups.
According to researchers, more than a dozen different such groups participated in the Capitol riots and among those who stormed the Capitol there were participants in the fascist 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in the death of a counter-protester.
One of those veterans was Tim Gionet, a fascist activist who goes by the online pseudonym of “Baked Alaska” and live-streamed a video of himself on DLive from inside the capitol.13 Anti-Jewishness used to be a common trend then more often replaced today by anti-Muslim.
Racism is very much part of their ideology which is why they reacted with such hostility to the Black Live Matter protests. In addition they tend to be anti-feminist and against LGBT people, often enough being full of anti-immigration and imperialist rhetoric.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1 https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/04/majority-of-lawmakers-millionaires/
2https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/01/23/alt-right-event-seattle-devolves-chaos-and-violence-outside-truth-twisting-inside
3https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1116942725/the-charlottesville-rally-5-years-later-its-what-youre-still-trying-to-forget
4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl
5 One of them, sadly misguided 35-year old Ashley Babbit, ex US Military of 14 years, was shot dead by police guard during the attack as she was boosted up to get through a window.
6 Though relatively short, it is true, when compared to what would befall Left revolutionaries under similar circumstances.
7 Which must seem like a sad reflection on one of their mottoes: “Where we go one we go all”, often abbreviated as “WWG1WGA!” being one of the most popular QAnon slogans.
8https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/man-branded-undercover-agent-in-capitol-attack-conspiracy-theories-spared-jail-1573595.html
9Ibid.
10Quite a few of the rioters have past military records but it is difficult to decide whether these are disproportionate in for the militarised society which is the USA.
11These three are militias and usually turn up at events with assault rifles and wearing bullet-proof vests.
12https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/10/13/explained-alt-right-alt-light-and-militias-in-the-us
13 The fact that so many did so or posted on line of having been involved testifies to the psychological need for recognition and feeling of invulnerability of many of them.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Clashes between fascists and antifascists in the USA: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1116942725/the-charlottesville-rally-5-years-later-its-what-youre-still-trying-to-forget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl
Ashley Babbit, shot dead during the invasion: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/who-was-ashli-babbitt.html
Trials and sentencing of Capitol rioters: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/ex-proud-boys-leader-sentenced-to-three-years-in-prison-for-capitol-riot-plot-1566697.html
https://apnews.com/article/prisons-arizona-capitol-siege-5c9ebf384bf936403d42e1a453c89153
Trump electoral bid: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/colorado-supreme-court-bans-donald-trump-from-ballot-under-insurrection-clause-1566708.html
Fascist groups in the USA: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/10/13/explained-alt-right-alt-light-and-militias-in-the-us
QAnon: https://www.bbc.com/news/53498434
USA fascist and racist code terminology: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/10/8/a-brief-dictionary-to-help-understand-the-us-far-right
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