Americans aren’t exactly inclined to nuance. It should come as no surprise, then, that the right-wing protests that culminated in the assault on the Capitol building in Washington on January 6, 2021, were immediately described as a coup.
For most Democrats, the participants were at least insurgents guilty of subversion, if not internal terrorists. Omnipresent coverage, for days, on television, and editorials that spoke openly of the attack on the “people’s house” confirmed this assessment.
Establishment Republicans have reserved the worst insult imaginable for protesters: “foreigners”. Former President George W. Bush compared them to citizens of a “banana republic,” and Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher agreed that “we are seeing real banana republic junk today on the Capitol. of the United States “. Marco Rubio, a Florida senator, described the events in a tweet as “anti-US third world anarchy”.
But despite all the fears, the pro-Trump rioters of January 6 didn’t exactly look like hard and pure fascists. Many have wandered aimlessly around the Capitol watching things from afar, taking selfies and then slowly returning to their hotel rooms when they got bored. We have not seen the street fighting that we usually associate with the rise of the far right in other countries of the world.
Perhaps the clearest sign that the United States was not in danger of sinking into fascism was the response to the events of January 6 by US elites. It is an established fact that historically economic interests have aligned themselves both with fascism – as happened in the 1930s – and with right-wing authoritarianism, and authoritarianism more generally in times of crisis. As Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, wrote in his recent book on monopolies: “The monopolist and the dictator tend to have converging interests.”
Donald Trump, of course, has something in common with fascists. It has used the mass media to stir up resentments already widespread, directing anger not against the holders of economic power but against minorities and those perceived as a cultural elite. It also encouraged violence and threats against its enemies, which culminated in the mobilization a year ago.
But what it didn’t get was the support of the elite. Trump gave companies what they wanted when he was in power: tax cuts, deregulation and control of workers’ power. But unlike Italy in the 1920s or Germany in the 1930s, big business interests did not feel threatened to such an extent by workers’ organizations and the left as to allow the president to overturn democratic norms. Indeed, it appeared that, on January 6, the elites saw the instability of the White House as a more serious threat.
In the aftermath of the Capitol riots, Trump’s supporter National Producers Association demanded that the president be indicted. The hugely influential Business Roundtable, which represents the country’s largest companies, has spread an almost as powerful condemnation of the action. And the circles of finance capitalism, the main ally of fascism in its initial version, have expressed themselves in similar terms.
Jamie Dimon, president and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, said on January 6, 2021, that “our elected leaders have a responsibility to demand an end to the violence, accept the results and, as our democracy has done for centuries, support a peaceful transfer of power “.
None of this proves that US elites have inherently democratic motivations. These are, after all, helping to finance the electoral district manipulation efforts across the country, which water down democracy and skew the results in their favor. They are pouring out millions of dollars to support politicians’ election campaigns that would undermine the right to vote. And they are channeling their resources to oppose bills that would give the working class greater economic power.
But, despite all their undemocratic efforts, they are far from ready to openly abandon democratic and liberal norms. Why venture into a revolt when their slow corrosion of democracy from within is protecting their profits better than storm troops would?
In other words, US politics is actually in crisis. But a slow motion crisis. It is not as striking as the assault on the Capitol or a seizure of military power. But in the long run it inflicts the same damage on democracy.
This brings us to the question of institutional reform.
A faulty system
In the United States, a party doesn’t just win an election and then rule (alone or in a coalition). On the contrary, after an electoral victory it often has to deal with a series of vetoes. Due to the obstruction of the Senate, sixty votes (obtained undemocratically by two senators from each state, including the least populated) are required to pass most of the laws. For the House of Representatives, the most democratic of the legislature, elections take place every two years. A fact that often makes it out of sync with the elections for the senate, which take place every six years, and the presidential elections, which are held every four.
A two-party system with this type of structure only ensures that a divided government is the norm rather than the exception, not to mention the role of the powerful judiciary. It is a political agreement created by the founders of the country to appease the passions of the population, and to ensure that the elite ruled and that changes to the constitution through amendments are almost impossible to achieve.
Contrary to the myths about US stability, it didn’t work out that well. In the 19th century, the structure of the US government, particularly its transfer of power to the federal states, protected the slavery and power of the plantation owners, which led directly to a bloody civil war. In the twentieth century, things were more stable, but this required an unusual amount of consensus among the elites and cooperation between parties.
But that consensus became more difficult to maintain after the exodus of the northern liberals from the Republican Party and the exit of the saidecrat from the Democratic Party have created a more ideologically coherent system. We had, on the one hand, a center-center-left party that incorporated some corporate interests, as well as the labor movement and a disproportionately minority base of workers and, on the other, a right-wing business-friendly party with a solid popular base among the conservative whites of the south. The resulting level of polarization was not unusual by world standards, but the US political system was extraordinarily ill equipped to handle that polarization.
In a rational system, elections would have consequences, the winning party would be able to rule, and if people disapprove of its actions, other elections would exclude it from power and allow the opposition to rule. In the current US system, elections almost always produce a divided government, and the opposition can use the system’s many veto powers to thwart the ruling party’s attempts to rule.
It is no wonder that so many Americans have little faith in the ability of politics to change their lives for the better.
The republican threat
The polarization happened both ways and, as Ezra Klein argues in his 2020 book Why we’re polarized (Because we’re polarized), we shouldn’t follow standard discussion topics, denouncing it as inherently bad. The undemocratic political system of the United States has only worked with the gagged workers and minorities of the past century, and some of the political tension denounced by observers comes from oppressed people claiming their rights and interests more loudly.
However, it is clear that the Republican party has moved to the right at a much faster rate than the Democrats have moved to the left. Republican distrust of state institutions – which is reflected in their skepticism towards both election results and vaccine safety – has intensified. Tens of millions of Trump voters have justified the January 6 assault on the Capitol, think the 2020 elections have been stolen, and fear the same will happen in the 2022 mid-term elections, in which Republicans are expected to make great strides. .
If Trumpism was the counterrevolution unleashed by President Obama’s eight years of lukewarm liberalism, what kind of response would a more self-confident left government generate? This is a question every progressive should ask themselves, especially in an attempt to push Joe Biden to become “the new Franklin Delano Roosevelt”. After all, we can expect reactionary forces to become even more aggressive when confronted with a more assertive leftist enemy.
How can tensions be reduced? For starters, Democrats need to focus less on conjuring nightmares about the future (even if some of those fears are justified) and more on delivering dreams that people can believe in.
This means clearer communication about the material benefits that politics can offer to the people. They should insist above all on this program, and be ready to take steps to pursue institutional reform – necessary to carry this program forward once in power – with moves such as eliminating the stonewalling power of the senate and reducing the power of the courts.
The future of US politics is bleak: it’s hard not to imagine, as Vox’s Zack Beauchamp does, continued instability, a lack of confidence in elections, a blocked congress and the growth of extremist groups. It may be that those of January 6, 2021 were riots and not a coup. But there will be many more unrest in the future if the left does not find a way to resolve the contradictions plaguing US society. And if this does not happen, the specter of the right breaking the impasse through authoritarian measures will become much more present.
For now, however, the problem is not that US democracy is about to be overthrown. Rather, the United States is not, to begin with, a great democracy. We need to create one that people can believe in.
(Translation by Federico Ferrone)
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