The US Capitol Building Riot and Its Blowback: Scarier than QAnon?

Sun, Jan. 24, 2021: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm
The US Capitol Building Riot and Its Blowback:
The Only Thing Scarier than QAnon Is the Reaction to It

The right-wing riot at the US Capitol on January 6 was a spectacle, complete with Confederate flags and a QAnon shaman in red-white-and-blue face paint. Some half of the active electorate sympathized with the belief that the 2020 presidential election was a steal. The other half of the active electorate was abhorrent, speaking with semi-religious reverence about the desecration of sacred institutions. The true blue had suspected that the Russians stole the 2016 presidential election and, for the last four years, supported politicians ever vigilant against détente breaking out with the second most powerful nuclear state.
The US state has not been meeting the needs of its people, its naked dysfunctionality is bare for all to see, and the ruling circles are experiencing a crisis of legitimacy. The response of the rulers to mass discontent is not to address the root causes but to step up suppression. The aftermath of the events of January 6 has precipitated blowbacks by the ruling elites, such as proposed anti-domestic terrorism measures, in anticipation of popular resistance to the intensifying contradictions of the US imperial project.

Our speaker, Roger D. Harris, will begin the discussion with an abbreviated presentation followed by Q&A and robust group discussion on the many issues raised by the Capitol building riot. Was it a riot or a coup? Was it a trap for Trump and did the police collude with the rioters? What is the danger of fascism? What does the rising right-wing insurgency signify and what should be the response to it? Whither Trump and what about the Squad? And most of all, what do the developments of January 6 and its blowback mean for left organizing and progressive social change?

Roger is a member of the ICSS program committee and the human rights organization, the Task Force on the Americas. Roger recently wrote on the US Capitol riot of January 6: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/13/the-only-thing-scarier-than-qanon-is-the-reaction-to-it/

Also recommended is the US Peace Council’s statement on the event and its aftermath, People’s Movement is Faced with a Serious Threat (Roger was one of the authors):
http://wpc-in.org/statements/people%E2%80%99s-movement-faced-serious-threat

Additional recommended reading are the blogs by the inimitable Caitlin Johnstone, who tells us “Modern liberalism is just QAnon for people with diplomas on their walls.” See on today’s topic:
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/stop-trivializing-the-term-coup-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix-fdc49a95fdd2