Around January 6

It seems as if several decades have passed since the events of January 6 in Washington, and at the same time it seems as if it had happened yesterday. The attack on the Capitol by Trump's mindless followers, encouraged by the only president who has called for ignoring the results of an election, was not only grotesque or murderous (it left several dead), but has become one of many proofs of that reality does not exist or does not matter. I read somewhere that this year half of humanity that is democratic or believes itself to be democratic will go to the polls to vote for someone, and I am already beginning to think about what we will say in January 2025: we will ask ourselves how what happened happened, how we let things get here, what we sowed to reap this. And we will remember the usual commonplaces: that the people have the rulers they deserve, that those who do not participate in politics suffer, etc. Etc. A long etcetera.

That's right: I'm not an optimist. I am not, in part, because of what happened with January 6. We all saw it on television, not filmed by journalists' cameras but by those of the same brainless members of the fascist herd, proud of their participation in the destruction, or of putting their feet on a congresswoman's desk, or of shouting threats with tone of teenagers in front of a closed door, or of cornering a single police officer among several. It was a pathetic spectacle of cowardice and bullying, the kind that usually occurs in politicized crowds, or those that feel politicized, when there are individuals who would never dare to do the same thing if they were alone. But that cowardly thug ethic is the quintessence of Trumpism; Or, to put it another way, Trumpism has invented a space in the image and likeness of its leader, who is a coward and a bully, and the speeches in which Trump mocked a disabled person, or their physical appearance, have already become normalized. of a woman, or called in a speech to attack someone.

We all saw it on television, yes, and we continued to see it as more and more videos came out made by the insurgents' own phones. And what did we see? A movement of resentful people, of false victims of everything (of women, of Jews, of Latin American immigration, of the displacement of the white man), innocent and ignorant men and women who had responded to the call of an irresponsible person. Of course: I have no doubt that many did it with the genuine conviction that someone was stealing something from them. I know this because I have spoken with them, in Georgia and in Mississippi and elsewhere, and that is why I can say what I said above: that reality does not exist or they do not care. I read somewhere that 46% of Republicans believe that the events of January 6 were instigated by the FBI, and the only thing more horrifying than that is the following revelation: 13% of Democrats believe it too. No, reality does not exist: what someone tells about it exists. The users of social networks, disinformation platforms, and WhatsApp chains are complicit in this. Seeing some of the versions of reality that are generated there, one feels almost compassion for the naivety of the citizens.

Or because of his unusual credulity. How easy, how cheap it is to convince them of everything, how few are the consequences of lying and causing harm with lies. These days he was thinking about Mr. Alex Jones, one of the most despicable creatures of the extreme right-wing media (the competition is tough, in the United States and everywhere). Jones, as some will remember, was the inventor of a true campaign of lies and slander that launched into the world the idea that the Sandy Hook massacre had not really happened: that it was a ruse by liberals to sabotage the free carrying of arms. . Sandy Hook is the school in Connecticut where a twenty-year-old man, another brainless man, shot and killed twenty children and six teachers; But after Alex Jones lied and lied and lied, the gun-worshiping far right settled on the version that suited them. The Sandy Hook massacre ceased to exist; The parents of the dead children were chased and harassed by the mindless followers of Alex Jones. But some had the courage and patience to sue Jones, and they won.

In 2022, Jones was sentenced to pay $1.5 billion in compensation to those he had damaged, and was expelled from Twitter, one of the platforms that served him most in constructing his lie. Well, a few weeks ago Jones received a priceless gift from his perfect accomplice, the infantilized millionaire Elon Musk, who launched one of his surveys for fools, where a vast majority of humans and bots and fictitious accounts decided that Jones had been punished enough. And they returned his Twitter account, or whatever that sewer of misinformation and narcissism is called now; because Elon Musk, as we know, is a champion of freedom of expression. Jones, memorably, boasted of having contributed to the mobilization of the January 6 insurrectionists, so much so that his Twitter messages were later requested by the committee that investigated the insurrection, and so much so that the committee questioned him at the time. I remember this too: on the day of the interrogation, Jones claimed that he was under so much stress that he could not answer the committee's questions. And then he misspelled his own name. Spelling is not his thing.

Although it may seem implausible, although it may seem disheartening, it is almost certain that Donald Trump will be the nominee of the Republican party for the elections at the end of this year. He is already campaigning, and in a new way in North American democracy: from the courts. Every time he goes to court to defend himself for one of the multiple crimes he (is said) to have committed, his army of dupes fills his bank accounts with donations. They almost move me. The judges have already said that Trump is a sexual offender (there was no need: he had said it himself on a bus) and have made four criminal charges against him; But what interests me right now are the 30 states where banning him from being a candidate is being considered. The argument is an amendment to the Constitution that prevents the election of anyone who has previously participated in insurrections. Two states, Colorado and Maine, have already failed in that regard; many others have done it in the opposite direction. The matter will be left in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the campaigns continue their course, and their fate is not played out in the courts: it is played out in the public narrative. And in a year, when everything—the elections, the trials, the bitterness, the misinformation—has passed, we will probably still be wondering what happened on January 6. Perhaps voters will choose between two words this time: the Trump campaign calls the participants “patriots”; Biden's calls them “terrorists.”

You will choose between two versions of a past day, a day that – as usually happens with the past – no longer exists. Nothing more terrifying.

Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia and here to the channel on WhatsAppand receive all the information keys on current events in the country.

_