Coup in the Capitol

Chaos has erupted in Washington D.C., our capital, on January 6th, 2021 as a faction of pro-Trump Republican protestors have stormed the Capitol and entered the Capitol Building virtually unchallenged by authorities. One woman is reported to have been shot and killed in the violence that has ensued within the Capitol as the D.C. National Guard has been activated, and 200 Virginia State Troopers sent in response to this madness as Vice President Pence as well as the Senate have been evacuated from the premises. Looting and rioting are occurring now as general disorder has taken over. What we are seeing here is the example of the complete decay of capitalist society expressed in its political form: the form of polarization. As much as we have seen a shift towards the left and towards a revolutionary attitude growing within the masses in the past few decades, so have we also seen a growing trend towards far-right reactionary ideas. This is what has always happened historically in times of great social upheaval, when an old system must die and a new one must take its place: on the one hand, we see people ready to answer the call to revolution, and on the other, those who become more entrenched in defending the old order and in the reactionary thought that accompanies such an endeavor.

Also highly important to note regarding this phenomenon is the complete lack of the level of police repression and violence that we all would have expected if these protestors had been part of, say, Black Lives Matter, or god-forbid they had been socialists or communists! That would have been a massacre! We have already seen how the state has responded to peaceful BLM protests across the country (should we call into example the actions of the police in Portland, Oregon not a few months prior to this event? Where police dragged peaceful protestors into unmarked police vans and protestors were met with the most ferocious violence and repression on the part of the police), and yet what are we seeing here? We are seeing “polite” requests of men such as Pence for the protestors to “stand down” and Trump’s plea for them to “stay peaceful”! Where are the rubber bullets, the tear gas, the batons of policemen to break the bones of those they strike? They are nowhere to be found. These mobs were allowed to enter the Capitol Building, the epicenter of American political power, with virtually no opposition on the part of the authorities. Would this have been the case if these mobs had not been pro-Trump Republicans—had they been “other groups”? We can most assuredly say this would have not been so.

The attitude adopted by the rural working class--which has been completely neglected by the left in many regards--has led many of them to participate in such actions as those that we are seeing before us. They recognize just like many other workers the crisis of society, and their frustrations and criticisms against the bourgeois state are in many respects valid. They, however, look to figures such as Trump, which to them embodies strength and leadership against the “establishment”, and in this respect they have been misled. Trump is merely a servant of the bourgeoisie, as are all other politicians of the twin parties of American capitalism, albeit a somewhat rogue and uncharacteristic one in contrast to the more formal Democrats and even other Republicans. It is this illusion which many rural working class people hold that we must strive to deconstruct and explain the falsities of so that we, as revolutionaries, can educate the workers and lead them towards correct analyses and conclusions on the matters at hand in our country and in the world. This is of vital importance for the revolutionaries of today. We must take action both in educating people and in fighting against the false ideas and the illusions which have led many working class people to join the mobs which today have taken over the Capitol and caused general mayhem and destruction.

—The Red Republicans