>FEBRUARY 18, 2022 | COUNTERPUNCH
Lessons from January 6th: an Inside Job
>BY GABRIEL ROCKHILL
Understanding the Bourgeois Gangster State & the Threat of Fascism
Over a year after the harum-scarum storming of the U.S. Capitol, there is ample evidence that it was an inside job. Not only was the security detail intentionally minimized to the extreme, but decisions were made at the highest levels of the chain of command to allow a right-wing mob to rampage through the building. At the forefront of this antidemocratic horde, as we shall see, there were fascist or semi-fascist organizations whose leadership has multiple direct ties to the military and intelligence agencies. All of this raises fundamental questions regarding the true nature of the U.S. government and its relationship to fascism.
Unfortunately, two false narratives concerning January 6th dominate the corporate media. On the one hand, the Democratic Party and its press allies have run a mawkish faith-in-government campaign, presenting themselves as the last great guardians of ‘our sacred democracy,’ while refusing to aggressively combat the fascist threat and back-peddling on all of Biden’s more progressive campaign promises. On the other hand, the Trump camp and its media have concocted a self-serving narrative according to which the storming of the Capitol was a false flag operation that lured ‘patriots’ into a trap, leading to the prosecution of innocent, freedom-loving MAGAs in the ‘second war on terror.’ Through an incredible act of ideological transubstantiation, which is unfortunately a common feature of white supremacy, the rioting antidemocratic mob is thereby transformed into victims rather than perpetrators of violence.
We need to see through these propaganda campaigns, while also identifying the purposes they serve for the elites who promote them. This requires understanding the actual situation these campaigns are attempting to manage. It is indeed the case that the movements represented by Trump and the moneyed interests behind them pose a very real threat to democracy. However, it is also true, as I’ve argued in greater detail elsewhere, that the U.S.’s political system is not actually democratic in the sense of enabling the exercise of real political power by the people. Rather, bourgeois democracy in the U.S. functions in such a way as to enable the capitalist ruling class’s control over the daily life of the masses, while maintaining, as much as possible, the latter’s consent. Even though this form of pseudo-democracy is clearly preferable to an open…