Of Bastilles and Liberty Bells
One conservative commentator likens the events of January 6th, 2021 to the storming of the Bastille—a comparison that is both puzzling and concerning.
At least partly feeding this phenomenon is surely our steady digest of outrage journalism that far too often includes outlandish claims, minimal critical thinking, an existential-siege mentality, and violent rhetoric.
Case in point is New Right pundit Eric Lendrum’s “Of Reichstags and Bastilles,” published on the website American Greatness in late 2021. The piece, which garnered far less attention than it deserves, suggests “celebrating the events of [January 6, 2021] as our Storming of the Bastille” and, in so doing, pairs standard MAGA pandering with naked anti-conservatism.
To be sure, the Bastille triggered a revolution in France that overturned despotism and was poised to replace it with liberal republicanism pursuant to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man; the 1793-94 Jacobin Reign of Terror was a tragic bastardization of the initial revolt. However, as Middlebury professor Gary Winslett recently commented about Lendrum’s piece, “For two centuries, the French Revolution with all of its demagoguery, chaos, terror, and mob hysteria represented everything [that American] conservatives stood against. And here, the New Right is arguing for embracing the French Revolution if such a thing promises to terrorize and obliterate their enemies.”
Conservatives celebrating the Bastille, especially those seeking to make America great again – as opposed to making America European again – might consider that the American Declaration of Independence was a “submi[ssion] to a candid world” of “facts” evincing “a long train of abuses and usurpations” by Great Britain, “all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States” justifying the colonists’ “right, [] their duty, to throw off such Government,” and to “alter their former Systems of Government.” In short, a revolution grounded in American tradition requires “facts” justifying that revolution.
The trouble is that Lendrum’s article, like so many of the New Right’s demagogic pronouncements, is built on myths, and thus attracts otherwise good people to unhealthy causes, thereby deepening our partisan divide.
So for Independence Day 2022, let’s take a step from Paris toward Philadelphia. Let’s subject Lendrum’s article to factual scrutiny and critical thinking. And let’s discover that, perhaps, opposing partisans aren’t so bad that we can’t break bread on July 4.
Lendrum begins:
The United States of America came to a crossroads on January 6, 2021. How we treat the events of that day will affect not only our politics, but our culture and our very way of life for the foreseeable future. This fact has already been decided; our only choice now is which side will control the political narrative.
The Depths of Dehumanization
It has been said that the most surefire way to create an authoritarian regime is to completely dehumanize a significant portion of the population, so that their subsequent enslavement by the state will not face any larger resistance. It was true during slavery, it was true during the Holocaust, and it is true now.
Actress Gina Carano was right; American conservatives are, right now, on a course for being every bit as ostracized and alienated from broader society as Jews were in the years leading up to Nazi Germany. Children are actively indoctrinated in our education system to turn against their own parents, Soviet-style, if they feel their parents’ views are outdated or backwards.
Perhaps Lendrum is right to compare the state of American conservatives today to victims of slavery, Nazism, and Soviet communism. But nothing he says or links to here supports his sweeping assertions.
If his point is a narrower one about dehumanization, then he will have less objection from this writer. But then why the melodrama? Dehumanization is common in politics, including from the right.
All Smoke, No Fire
Despite the Left’s seemingly endless cycle of perpetual hyperventilating over the events of January 6, the truth is that they are grateful the events of that day unfolded as they did. The Democrats were absolutely terrified – literally cowering under their seats, horrified at the prospect of mere peasants walking through the halls of their castle. But since then, they have paraded the events of that day before the American people and transformed them into their very own Year of the Long Knives. Biden Administration officials have openly gloated in televised interviews about how they actively sought to “charge as many people as possible” prior to Biden’s inauguration, gleefully adding that they succeeded in making Trump supporters “afraid to come back to D.C.”
The “Biden Administration official[]” to whom Lendrum refers was not a Biden Administration official. He was already a federal prosecutor during the Trump administration; he acted, Lendrum tells us, “prior to Biden’s inauguration.” In other words, he was a Trump Administration official.
Furthermore, Lendrum saying that “Trump supporters” were made to feel “afraid to come back to D.C.” glosses over two important distinctions. First, not all the “Trump supporters” in question were doing the same thing. Depending on how they behaved, some might more accurately be called protestors, others criminal suspects. Second, it is not “Trump supporters” generally that were charged with crimes, and those that were charged were not charged because they were Trump supporters, but because prosecutors had evidence they committed crimes.
Finally, an interesting question arises about this “partisan federal prosecutor, a man who’s completely out of control,” as Tucker Carlson said in the linked video: is he not precisely the proper agent of the “law and order” that the MAGA right purportedly supports? This tension recurs throughout the piece.
In the 12 months since then, hundreds of Americans from across the country have been arrested, many held in solitary confinement and denied legal representation, and some even being viciously beaten by the guards for their race and political beliefs.
The link does not explain how or whether the beating(s) were related to race or politics.
That said, brutality by corrections officers for all sorts of reasons, including race and politics, would not be new. What’s new is the right being on the receiving end of “law and order.”
Joe Biden, sounding more like Joseph Stalin, has called on Americans to report their friends and family to the government if they have become “radicalized.” The government has even been coordinating with institutions such as Bank of America to investigate any customers who happened to be in Washington D.C. on January 6, even if they had no role in the peaceful protests that took place at the Capitol.
Yet again in this passage about privacy violations by President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice, the issue of the right’s long support for invading people’s privacy in the name of “law and order” deserves scrutiny.
And in the end, that is what they were: Peaceful protesters. Not one person was killed by Trump supporters on January 6, although a few deaths by freak medical accidents were repeatedly and falsely attributed to the protesters.
Some and perhaps many of the protestors were peaceful, but not all were. This is true regardless of the fact that no one was killed by the protestors or that some stories of violence turned out to be flimsy. Protests can sometimes get out of hand, after all. It is not helpful either to sugarcoat your own side’s violence or exaggerate the other side’s.
All who have been charged thus far have been charged with no more than “disrupting an official proceeding” or “trespassing.” There are no charges for assault, terrorism, insurrection, treason, or anything of the sort. In the media, they have been slandered as anti-American traitors, even as they regularly sing the Star-Spangled Banner in prison to keep their spirits up; the very same patriotism that motivated them on January 6 remains one of the only things that keeps them going now as they face persecution for their patriotism.
According to a “statement of the case” signed by the defendant Joshua James and accompanying his guilty plea, “James and others agreed to take part in the plan developed by [Oath Keepers leader Stewart] Rhodes to use any means necessary, up to and including the use of force, to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power.… Rhodes instructed James and other coconspirators to be prepared … to secure the perimeter and use lethal force if necessary against anyone who tried to remove President Trump from the White House, including the National Guard or other government actors who might be sent to remove President Trump as a result of the Presidential Election.”
These people expressly considered themselves to be “Actual Patriots.”
Victims such as Paul Hodgkins and Anna Morgan-Lloyd – people with no criminal records whatsoever – did not bring any weapons and did not assault anyone that day, and yet they face sentences ranging from prison to probation while simultaneously being forced to undergo political indoctrination from judges and prosecutors. Both individuals were ordered by the courts to declare that Joe Biden was legitimately elected, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and Morgan-Lloyd was ordered to read books and watch movies that portray America as a fundamentally racist nation. Just as in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the final punishment for dissidents is not physical torture, but re-education into submission.
Neither this paragraph nor its links support the contention that Morgan-Lloyd was “ordered” to read or watch anything. Instead, her attorney suggested certain readings and viewings, which ultimately helped her win probation after her guilty plea. In my criminal defense practice, I often suggest that my clients engage in programs to appear more sympathetic to prosecutors and courts, even when my clients say they are innocent. If anything, this is a problem with the criminal justice system generally, not a problem specific to the prosecution of the January 6 defendants. Once again, the tension between populist conservatives’ purported support for “law and order” and their reaction to having the criminal justice system turned against them invites exploration.
Vindication, from Vaccines to Votes
The fanaticism of the regime is evident in how it clings to its narrative even though the facts have proven it wrong time and time again, with the so-called “skeptics” turning out to be right about everything.
The article next detours into COVID debates that are not relevant enough to dwell on here. However, it’s worth noting Lendrum’s claim that “Hydroxychloroquine does work.” He cites to a study published in July 2020, concluding that the treatment “was associated with reduction in COVID-19 associated mortality.” However, he mentioned neither an article published in the same journal later in the same year that concluded the opposite (“Hydroxychloroquine was associated with an increased risk of mortality”), nor other similar studies.
The more interesting test of Lendrum’s “skeptics” “turning out to be right about everything” is the 2020 election.
There is overwhelming evidence of widespread voter fraud in multiple swing states, from 74,000 returned mail-in ballots in Arizona that were never sent out in the first place, to over 35,000 illegally-cast votes in Georgia that may have not only changed the outcome of the presidential race in that state, but also both of the runoff elections for the United States Senate.
The same analysis that found voter problems in Arizona later released a report conceding Biden’s victory. And the problem in Georgia is not unique to Georgia or to the 2020 election; it is the result of a mundane election problem related to the fact that people move residences and both knowing and monitoring in which district a given person is supposed to vote can be complicated.
More generally, the evidence for fraud in the 2020 election may be “overwhelming,” but the evidence debunking fraud allegations is even stronger, particularly after judges across the political spectrum consistently denied even the best of the Trump campaign’s legal arguments.
At the core of the Left’s argument against the January 6 protesters is the notion that voter fraud in 2020 is “a big lie,” and the protesters stormed the Capitol over something that did not happen. As it turns out, it did happen – as the Left will smugly admit, under more ambiguous terms – and thus, the protesters were justified.
The linked article is about efforts to maintain the integrity of the 2020 election. There is nothing “ambiguous” about it. If Lendrum means to say that these efforts involved voter fraud, he would have to explain that.
Their Reichstag Fire
… The regime … is using the events of January 6 to its advantage.… The January 6 hysteria is the ultimate vehicle for authoritarian efforts to march us towards the final solution: A fascist nation, the very thing which they have accused the other side of desiring.
Theirs will be a nation where [“actual terrorists,” “black nationalists,” and “anarcho-communists” burned] down cities all last summer, while January 6 protesters are arrested merely for possessing a Lego model of the Capitol building.
It will be a society where rogue judges like Emmet Sullivan can go on deranged rants against highly decorated and respected generals like Michael Flynn, baselessly accusing him of treason and even suggesting he face the death penalty, all for a “crime” he never committed. Meanwhile, an American citizen who uses his First Amendment right to criticize this same judge will get prison time for doing so.
… Meanwhile, an actual hero like Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was willing to give her life for her country – and ultimately did just that, albeit in a far more tragic way – will be slandered in death as “a dead insurrectionist” who got what she “deserved.” She was even denied the proper military burial that she earned through her service, in one final act of almost literally spitting on her grave. And all the while, her ruthless killer, [Capitol Police Lieutenant] Michael Byrd, is praised as a hero, instead of the trigger-happy gunman that he is.
What the newly-emboldened Left desires, above all else, is to completely dehumanize their political opposition, so that eventual removal – or worse – of these “undesirables” from society will be socially acceptable to their audience.…
Since seizing power, Biden repeatedly has made comparisons between the “struggles” we now face and the Civil War that claimed over 600,000 American lives.… If he truly does believe we are in a crisis that is just as bad as the Civil War, then that can only mean one thing: He believes his enemies are no different from secessionists and “traitors,” and must be treated as such.…
For the Left, January 6 has become their Reichstag Fire. They took an event with minimal damage that was resolved quickly, and turned it into a blanket excuse for an unprecedented power grab, with the entirety of their political opposition in the crosshairs.
This section is more a polemic than a set of facts worth rebutting. If we were to assume all of the factual allegations here are true, then two conclusions lend themselves better than the idea that everyone on the right should fear the left’s “crosshairs.”
First, the MAGA right should revisit its support for law-and-order policies, as already noted throughout this piece.
Second, crisis politics should be heavily scrutinized. From post-9/11 military and domestic security policies, to post-2008 spending and regulations, to COVID rules or other national emergencies, I urge Lendrum and others to universalize their skepticism of political solutions in times of crisis, rather than applying it only to the specific case of their own putative persecution.
Our Bastille?
… January 6 may largely have been about voter fraud in the 2020 election, but that was not the only motivation. January 6 was a reaction to a long train of abuses and usurpations perpetrated against the American people by an entrenched elite class that has infected our institutions.
The only course of action at this point is to be just as firm in our stance as the Left is. If they truly want to address January 6 by making dramatic historical comparisons, then so should we. If their aim is to make January 6 their Reichstag Fire, then we should go forward celebrating the events of that day as our Storming of the Bastille; a day where a symbol of the degeneration of our ruling class into total corruption and tyranny was challenged, and the elites were shown just what happens when millions of freedom-loving citizens finally grow sick and tired of a boot perpetually stomping on their necks.…
[T]he Left has forced the nation to this brink, whether we like it or not. One side is prepared to do everything necessary to secure their political power, so the other side must be prepared to resist every step of the way with equal determination. One side understands the stakes at play as we enter this brave new world; so too must the other side. One side understands that January 6 was a turning point in our history. Our side, once again, needs to catch up.
It’s enough to rile anyone up. But we’ve seen throughout this article that, if reconciled with reality, Lendrum’s grievances amount to far less than “a long train of abuses and usurpations.” If anything, the strongest grievances are those directed against law enforcement and the intelligence community —grievances that might better be addressed in cooperation with the American left.
I’ve written before about the Left hyperventilating about their political enemies. Both sides need to cool it. Some purported outrages are outrages. Most are not. We all need a healthy dose of skepticism. Contrary to what the inflammatory talking heads say, it’s long past time to embrace community, not enmity.
When the right starts glorifying the French Revolution, it may be time to revisit some of the more inspirational principles of the American Revolution, like individual freedom, republicanism, and pluralism. This Independence Day, let’s commit to turning up the heat not on the rhetoric, but on the grill.