Extremism and the assault on democracy- one year on
Ambassador Muhammad Zamir
United States Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking ahead of President Biden at the US Capitol on 6 January, this year, compared January 6, 2021 to September 11, 2001 when al-Qaeda hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. She added that they also “sought to degrade and assault the values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed, and shed blood to establish and defend.”United States President Biden’s address which followed that of Kamala Harris, recalled the insurgent and militant attack on the US Capitol Hill on that date last year.
Biden returned to the fundamentals on which he had built his successful presidential campaign in 2020. He pointed out that he had dedicated himself towards leading a battle for the “soul” of the nation. He also asked if- “we are going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm, a nation that lives not by the light of the truth, but in the shadow of lies?”
It may be recalled that in 2020, Trump had refused to accept the outcome of the presidential election that Biden won by a decisive seven million popular votes and 306 to 232 margin in the US’s Electoral College.
Biden’s speech of this year has been compared by some analysts with the Gettysburg Address delivered by the 16th President of the United States Abraham Lincoln when he urged his nation in 1863 to rededicate itself to democracy, which was under existential threat. He urged everyone to preserve the government “of the people, for the people, by the people.” Similarly, this time, at the beginning of 2022, Biden defined that same national quest by reiterating that he was trying to save “the right to vote, the right to govern ourselves, the right to determine our own destiny.”
Trump, according to the media is now making the 2022 midterm elections a platform for his dangerous lies that his second term was stolen. He, according to some civil society leaders is also trying to build the infrastructure of a 2024 campaign for a return to the White House that would likely make his aberrant previous term seem a paragon of legality. Biden did not mention Trump by name but went hard at his rival. He reminded his predecessor that he was a loser who had lost the last national elections by more than 7 million votes. In this context he reminded Trump to focus more on truth, his country’s interest, democracy and the US Constitution rather than only on self-obsession.
Political scientists are however pointing out that Biden will have to do more in meaningfully arranging the passing of two bills that has been held up in the Senate for some time- the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. There are some roadblocks that have been apparently holding back this dynamic..That includes his social spending plan associated with voting reform. Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who oppose reforming the Senate filibuster that allows Republicans to block the bills in the 50-50 Senate are crucial players in this regard. It is expected that the President will now increase the pressure on those two Senators. One has to wait and see what happens.
Nevertheless, it needs to be noted that Biden’s speech of this year has not been accepted or endorsed by certain important Republican political figures like Senate Minority Leader Mitch or Senator Lindsey Graham who had earlier labeled the attackers as “criminals” and laid total responsibility for the attack at Trump’s feet. Now both are closely associated with Trump.
Social media and the electronic media have for quite some time, over the last year, been following with anxiety and concern the growing evolving scenario in the United States related to the US far-right threat.
Chris Arsenault, in this context has noted that, as a follow-up of what happened in the Capitol Hill attack on 6 January, last year, apprehension exist that far-right groups who side with the Republican Party might create terror attacks due to political polarization during the up-coming US mid-term elections.
The insurrection in 2021 on 6 January, which led to five deaths and more than 700 persons being charged with violent crime has forced security services to take the threat of the far-right more seriously, according to Jason Blazakis, a former US Department of State counterterrorism official. He has suggested that security officials now consider that a lone-wolf style attack might happen that could have an osmotic effect. This is because hundreds of thousands of individuals across the USA subscribe to a far-right ideology. Arie Perliger, a criminology professor at the University of Massachusetts with expertise in far-right extremism has also warned that relevant security authorities should be more concerned about militia cells working underground within the USA despite it being “harder to identify them and thwart their plans”.
It is understood that this assuring of security in the United States has also become slightly difficult because some of the security services have been infiltrated because they contain personnel with far-right sympathies. CSIS research in this context, as revealed by the electronic media, has indicated that the prevalence of attacks on US soil linked to active-duty and reserve personnel rose in 2020 to 6.4 percent, up from 1.5 percent in 2019 and zero in 2018. It may also be mentioned that according to the National Public Radio database of the people charged over the January 6 insurgency in 2021, at least 13 percent had ties to the military or law enforcement.
Harrowing violence, mobs forcing themselves past police barricades, hunting the Speaker of the House, marauding through the hallways, threatening to hang senior political figures are not features that can be accepted by any country, particularly the USA. This has been demeaning for the USA, which is held in high esteem for its support for democratic norms, transparency, accountability, Right to Information and Freedom of Speech.
[Muhammad Zamir, a former Ambassador is an analyst specialized in foreign affairs, right to information and good governance, can be reached at muhammadzamir0@gmail.com]