Talk of an ‘insurrection’ is way off the mark

Claims that the Capitol riot was an attempt to overthrow the US government are ridiculous, a deliberate exaggeration for the purpose of scoring political points.

Donald Trump supporters march towards the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. Picture: AFP

In 1983, Marxist revolutionaries, dedicated to the overthrow of the US government according to the FBI, detonated a bomb late at night in the US Capitol building, tearing a hole in the Senate wing as a warning to congress and the Reagan administration of worse to come if the US didn’t withdraw from Grenada in the Caribbean.

It was a heinous act of domestic terrorism, and a more calculated and dangerous one than the ramshackle mob that lurched into the Capitol on January 6 last year.

For Vice-President Kamala Harris, though, speaking last week on the first anniversary of the pro-Trump riot, January 6 was on par with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, a day that would change the course of history, perhaps more than any other.

For her, President Joe Biden, and what seems to be the entirety of the Democrat establishment, the anniversary marked an in ­“insurrection” – ie, an attempt to overthrow the government.

This is a ridiculous claim, yet emblematic of an age filled with deliberate and gross exaggerations and distortions for naked political self-interest.

January 6 was a protest gone wrong, and one that former president Donald Trump could and should have done more to rein in after it spiralled out of control. But that’s it.

After a year, not a single person of the 725 arrested has been charged with insurrection. Only a tenth have received criminal sentences. Government prosecutors have even had to resort to a law written to combat financial crime, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, to find crimes with penalties tough enough to match the insurrection charge.

History teaches us real insurrections, especially successful ones, are dangerous and rare.

The Turkish generals, commanding thousands of troops, who failed to oust Recep Erdogan in 2016, would be shocked to learn the January 6 rebels’ weapons of choice: baseball bats, walking sticks, knifes, and even a few crutches.

Police recovered only a handful of guns among the protesters.

The picture of a relaxed Richard Barnett, with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s office desk, must have been taken before he got off the phone with the Pentagon to learn the world’s most powerful military wasn’t on board.

Then again, maybe the rioters were relying on the soaring rhetoric of the shirtless, horned man with face paint, the so-called QAnon Shaman, to win over congress, just as Napoleon had in his coup of 1799.

Relative bloodlessness is about all January 6 has in common with the Coup of 18 Brumaire.

No police and only a handful of rioters died on January 6, and those mainly by accident, including one who overdosed – a very inadvisable pursuit during an insurrection – and another who was trampled to death by other protesters.

Taking selfies with police can’t have helped the insurrection either, providing officers time to ­assess the enemy at close quarters and regroup.

Maybe, despite all this, Trump was frantically shoring up military support back at the White House? Actually, he was glued to cable TV and boasting about the size of the crowd to his staff, according to staff members. Augusto Pinochet wouldn’t have been watching the TV in 1973, when he seized power in Chile.

If January 6 illustrated what right-wing extremism was capable of in the US, American democracy appears safe indeed.

Even if the rioters had disrupted the certification of the election, congressional members would have come back the next day to finish the job – hardly a revolution – after the police had cleared the building.

Whatever January 6 was, it was doomed to failure.

“Those involved must be held accountable, and there is no higher priority for us,” Attorney-General Merrick Garland said in a fiery speech last week, vowing to leave no stone unturned in his search and prosecution of anyone involved in the riot, “present or not”.

Yet only a few years ago, in 2014, then chief judge Merrick Garland in effect rescinded charges against Elizabeth Ann Duke, one of the 1983 Capitol bombers, who skipped bail after her arrest in 1985 and remains on the FBI’s most wanted list.

So much for the sanctity of the Capitol.

Another of the bombers, Susan Rosenberg, had her jail sentence commuted by Bill Clinton on his last day in office in 2001; she now serves as a fundraiser for Black Lives Matter groups.

In his January 6 speech last week, Biden mocked, rightly, the idea that the 2020 election was “stolen”, pointing out that every legal challenge, even those heard before judges appointed by Trump and other Republicans, had failed.

But by calling January 6 an “armed insurrection”, none of the 71 per cent of Republicans who wrongly believe that would have changed their mind.

Far from fading into the background, in the year since January 6, Trump has grown more powerful in the Republican Party.

The implied characterisation of Trump supporters as insurrectionists patently hasn’t helped bring the country together.

It’s harder to dissuade others of ridiculous claims if you, yourself, are making ridiculous claims.

The abuse of language isn’t restricted to the January 6 riots. The pandemic has supposed created an “emergency” and “overwhelmed” the health system.

Covid-19 has not been a genuine emergency for some time, and very few hospitals in the world were ever “overwhelmed”, as ordinary people would understand those terms to mean.

English is a rich language. Reasonable people arguing in good faith, whatever their politics, should be able to agree on the facts.

The congressional committee charged with investigating January 6 will issue an interim report in the coming months.

It would be in Democrats’ as much as Republicans’ interest, as well as the cohesion of the US, to walk back the insurrection charge, which no one could seriously believe based either on history or semantics.