I will be honest and say that I don't know exactly how to interpret the surreal events that unfolded this past week in Washington, DC, when a mob inflamed by online memes and presidential fantasies rampaged through the halls of the US Capitol.

Throughout the Donald Trump era there has been a debate among his critics about whether to regard this presidency as a mortal threat to the Republic or a degrading interlude in its decline; a revival of 1930s fascism or 1870s white supremacy or as something more purely virtual, performative and astonishingly weak.