Several implicated in the assault on the Capitol stand for election

The anti-democratic movement derived from Trumpism’s electoral “big lie” is advancing through the United States with a different strategy. This does not mean that they have turned their back on violence, but rather that it is an alternative option, a different way to reach power to hypothetically subvert the democratic system.

The ‘Plot Against America’, to quote the premonitory novel by Philip Roth, brings together an amalgam of operatives that include federal judges, public officials, media propagandists, high-ranking government officials in states under Republican leadership, extremist millionaires, and of course, the masses of angry supporters of Donald Trump. Of the more than 725 people charged for their involvement in the attack on the Capitol, including 325 for serious crimes, only 74 have been sentenced, most for minor infractions.

The eventual judicial ‘benevolence’ and public attention received within and outside the movement have led many to rethink their political involvement in order to elevate it to the next level. The violent men who unscrupulously attacked one of the fundamental arms of the democratic model are now rushing to use the very system they wanted to destroy for their own rise to power.

Imputed by the riots

In 2011 alone, eleven of the participants in the January 6 riots were elected to public office including the state Legislature (Congress), the city council and the school board. And for this year, more than two dozen have run for office in the House of Representatives and state administrations. Among the applicants are at least two individuals who invaded and caused damage to the Capitol and three others accused of participating in the riots. One of the leading voices in the national movement to discredit the 2020 election results, Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano, is running for governor of the state.

In any case, the majority of conservative candidates who will be on the ballot this year did not raid the Capitol or participate in the violence unleashed against police officers, as in the case of Ryan Kelley, aspiring Michigan governor. Kelley has led demonstrations in his state, such as the one in November 2020 against Biden’s triumph. He is a co-founder of the American Patriotic Council, an organization that mobilized against the pandemic restrictions on the Michigan Capitol in April 2020; a protest that attracted national attention when the protesters, armed, tried to enter the Chamber and later occupied the upper gallery.

The candidates who emerged from Trumpism believe that they are being treated unfairly by those who accuse them of being unpatriotic and of having participated in an act of sedition. All in all, the general feeling is that there will be no electoral fraud in this year’s processes. “People have opened their eyes,” say the leaders of these ultra movements, who take credit for their constant denunciation of the “fraud” that prevented Trump from reissuing his presidency in November 2020. The former leader’s “web of lies” Republican is still active.