Criminal Injustice
Violence in Politically Polarized America, the Capitol Coup Attempt, and Democracy in Peril
2022.01.06 by Just Mason
It probably comes as no surprise that [today] is the anniversary of the January 6th coup attempt in Washington, DC. Everyone in America saw the chaos erupt that day, and has seen the footage replayed time and again; yet there is much disagreement about the facts surrounding the event. Some see it as a violent attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 election. Others see it as a laudable effort to “stop the steal”, claiming the election was stolen, rigged or otherwise fraudulent. Still others believe it was a false flag operation executed by antifa to make the MAGA movement look bad. As we mark a year since the event, independent and corporate media alike are making much ado about the ongoing trials, convictions, and investigation, as well as the causes behind the insurrection. What is being discussed less is the rise in far-right violence against marginalized communities in recent years, and the massive failures of the criminal justice system to curb these trends.
It is crucial that society reckons with the factors that led to these trends, and caused hundreds of people to storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election results and/or cause harm to elected officials. However, there remains a significant gap in accountability between those who perpetrated the attack on the Capitol, and those who facilitated it through misinformation and violent rhetoric. Over the last several years, there have been glaring inconsistencies between prosecutions of far-right extremists, and those of far-left protesters within the anti-fascist or Black Lives Matter movements. There is also mounting evidence that extremists on the right, aside from being aligned with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, are often associated with police departments or the military. Countless posts can be found on social media, masquerading as news articles and falsely claiming that any and all crimes (including the January 6 insurrection) attributed to right-wing extremists were in reality done by antifa, or didn’t happen at all. And there is a concerning tendency within the mainstream media to equate the violence of the far-right with left-wing protests.
According to Hymes et al., over 700 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 insurrection. The charges range from “entering or remaining in the restricted Capitol grounds”, to theft and property destruction, to “conspiracy against the United States”. Sentences have ranged from probation for nonviolent offenders to “more than five years in prison for assaulting officers” (Hymes et al., 2022). Members of far-right groups such as Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and Proud Boys, who participated in organizing the attack, stand charged with conspiracy, but there have been no sedition charges filed.
“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”
The case of Daniel Alan Baker represents a stark contrast to the cases of those charged in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Natasha Lennard wrote in The Intercept that Baker, who was arrested on January 15, 2021, spent 10 months in jail before he was convicted of “transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a threat to kidnap or injure another person”. The charges were related to a series of social media posts in which Baker warned about upcoming attacks on the state Capitol in Tallahassee, urging “anti-racists and anti-fascists to encircle the state Capitol” and confront MAGA protesters. Baker, a teacher and self-described anti-fascist activist, “never brought a weapon near a government building; he amassed no armed anti-fascist forces; he made no threats on a single individual”. He was sentenced on October 12, 2021, to forty-four months in prison.
I am not suggesting that the January 6 rioters should be sentenced more harshly (although I am suggesting that Baker was railroaded). Those who organized the attempted coup, however, and sought to direct others to use violence to overturn the election, should be prosecuted. It is unlikely that we will see this go much further than the members of far-right white supremacist and paramilitary groups. To the best of my knowledge, no charges have yet been filed against state actors, such as congresspeople or former President Trump, for inciting, aiding or abetting the insurrection. Daniel Baker sits in prison for posting about smashing the “fash”, while Trump will likely never be charged for the countless times he uttered similar sentiments via tweet or public address. Some members of Congress, possibly emboldened by the lack of accountability for the insurrection, seem to have taken to threats of violence as a matter of course.
It is not hard to see a marked bias on behalf of the criminal justice system against leftist protests, demonstrations, activism, violence, and the threat of violence. Set aside for a moment the Capitol coup attempt. All other things being equal, far-right protesters are often protected and even joined by police while far-left protesters are dispersed, beaten or arrested. Violent right-wingers are frequently given the benefit of the doubt following assaults, while left-wingers are prosecuted to the full extent of the law for property destruction or social media posts. For example, Kyle Rittenhouse, armed with an assault rifle, went out of his way to counter-protest a Black Lives Matter demonstration, where he proceeded to kill 2 people and paralyze a third because he feared for his safety. Again, Baker is locked up, while Rittenhouse not only walks free, but enjoys a very surreal kind of stardom among the far-right (see Rittenhouse’s appearance at Turning Point USA’s “America Fest” on December 20, 2021).
Then there are the wealth of police who avoid murder convictions every year, even in clear cases of racist violence and murderous intent, leaving people of color dead in their wake. There is a concerning connection between racist policing and the rise in far-right violence. Yet things get even more concerning when taking into account the roles of current and former military in far-right groups like the Boogaloo Bois, a decentralized network of militiae who have advocated for violently overthrowing the government, including killing cops. One member of the group, Steven Carillo, “discussed tactics involving killing of police officers and other law enforcement” before himself opening fire on three sheriff’s deputies. Rick Rowley has thoroughly investigated the overlap between white supremacist groups and current or former state officials from military or police forces. Rowley’s full film, “American Insurrection”, can be viewed on PBS Frontline.
The self-contradictory nature of the anti-authoritarian sentiments of these decidedly authoritarian groups appears to be lost on their members. The injustices handed down and overseen by the criminal justice system no longer seem inconsistent with its mission. Congress fails to hold its own members accountable for placing Congress itself at risk. Each new President seems to go to greater heights to obscure and excuse the greatest lows of their predecessors. Conservatives jeer and liberals cheer as a series of pawns in a boorish, yet dangerously undemocratic game of chess are sentenced to prison, while the “masterminds” of a worsening culture war keep beating the drums. Anti-racist activists continue fighting for justice while burying their dead, while the good old boys and cops responsible too often escape justice, and right-wing pundits proclaim that January 6 was the natural response to Black Lives Matter.
The U.S. ends the forever war in Afghanistan, only to see an increase both in the suffering of Afghans and the U.S. military budget, part of which is now used to keep out Afghan refugees. This is the same U.S. military budget that cannot be curtailed in order to reduce its contributions to climate change because it will be needed to hold back the tides of climate refugees created by climate change. Nearly every journalist in the mainstream media celebrates the continued persecution of journalist and whistleblower Julian Assange, who appears to have sacrificed any semblance of a decent life by exposing America’s war crimes. Steven Donziger is now “free” to return to house arrest for the remainder of his unprecedented sentence, while Chevron/Texaco is free to squeeze the globe dry and pollute at will, without fear of reprisal. Jessica Reznicek will spend 8 years in prison, followed by 3 years supervised release and $3,198,512.70 restitution for a nonviolent crime, while the Dakota Access Pipeline facilitates violence on the entire planet.
As if all that were not enough to boggle the mind, we are now witnessing renewed and pervasive outrage over the January 6 insurrection by the very same politicians and media elite who have recently supported right-wing coups in other nations. Recall for a moment Juan Guaidó, who led a failed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically-elected President Nicolás Maduro, with U.S. support. At the 2020 State of the Union Address, “U.S. lawmakers from both major parties…gave Guaidó a standing ovation when Trump…erroneously described the self-anointed leader as the ‘true and legitimate president of Venezuela’”. In a blatantly Orwellian act, President Biden, himself the target of the right-wing coup attempt on January 6, invited Guaidó to attend the “Summit for Democracy” last month (Stancil, 2021).
Justice may not in fact be blind, but she often turns a blind eye toward the crimes of government, military, the wealthy elite, and the justice system itself, at least in today’s America. We live in strange times, although I’m guessing most times seem strange to those living in them. I did not mean to so ravingly digress, but each count of injustice reminds me of another, stretching so far back I can scarcely see the beginning any longer. The insurrection a year ago scared many Americans, and emboldened many others, but it did not come as a surprise to all. There has been a steady erosion of our tenuous democracy for a long time, and the forces of capital continue to chip away at it presently. Democrats and their “Never Trump” allies in the Republican Party may have ousted the bad guy from office, but many of his most harmful legacies still stand. The U.S. rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, but then swiftly undercut any meaningful agreements at the COP 26 climate talks. The primacy of economy over public health continues to plague us (sorry about the choice of words), as does the profit-over-people model that has kept vaccines inaccessible to the bulk of the global South while Big Pharma’s revenue soars. And while the economy, as it is usually assessed, is doing just fine (as seen in the billions the world’s richest men have added to their stash), the working class is not. If Democrats don’t find a way to shake off the embrace of capital and reclaim their status as the party of the working class, Republicans are well-positioned to pick up that slack.
Perhaps, in the case of the January 6 Capitol riot, what is needed for justice to be served is not more people spending time in the system. It occurs to me that while serving their sentences, the insurrectionists are not entirely unlikely to become further radicalized (but are statistically unlikely to be “reformed”). And I think we can all agree that the convictions of Trump and company probably are not on the table…so, what then? Maybe this time, justice should look more like a serious effort to build working class solidarity, to revitalize democratic participation, to tear down the façade of neoliberalism and replace it with a system in which at least one of the major political parties represents the people.
When President Biden speaks today, I expect he will lambaste Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol riot, but I would be surprised if his Justice Department ever brings charges against the former President. I would also be surprised if Biden addresses the root causes of democratic erosion, namely the overwhelming influence of capital in the electoral and political processes. Until we get money out of politics, I expect we will continue to swing from one party that serves corporate interests over those of the people, to the other, with little but the ongoing culture war to distinguish between them.
The citizens that attacked the U.S. Capitol a year ago had been hoodwinked by Trump. He falsely led them to believe, among other things, that the election was stolen, that COVID-19 wasn’t a big deal, and that centrist Democrats were in fact communists. But the biggest lie, in my opinion, was his original one: That he, Donald J. Trump, represented a sea change in Washington. The reason this lie went over so well, and continues to have staying power in the political discourse, is that a plurality of Americans are desperate to be heard over the cacophony of corruption that is drowning them out. So while Trump was clearly not the savior our democracy needed, the nature of our profit-over-people neoliberal system allowed him to soar into the White House using anti-government rhetoric; and to manipulate hundreds of Americans to attempt a coup on his behalf. Without real, fundamental changes to the political status quo, the kind of authoritarian rhetoric, racist violence, and seditious militiae we have seen are not likely to simply disappear any time soon.
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References
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Holmes, D. (2021, December 23). This is so fucking embarrassing. Esquire. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a38595135/turning-point-usa-americafest-kyle-rittenhouse-embarrassing/
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