On January 6th Capitol Hill was stormed by Trump supporting rioters who wanted to disrupt the democratic confirmation process and (probably) cause harm to the elected officials. The whole night I watched it live, I was speechless. I knew what the news would show the morning after, I knew how this obvious coup d’etat would be portrayed by far right news anchors.
I was speechless. I was on the other side of the world but I somehow was still worried. Somehow is the wrong word perhaps, I was rightfully worried. In fact, everyone everywhere who cares about human rights and fairness should be worried, regardless of their personal interests regarding the USA. “Why should we care?”, oh you for sure should. Because I know for a fact, if this were a smaller country with not as many resources, with not as much coverage, this coup d’etat could have worked. A sitting president inciting a storming of a governmental building is a first in American history and the whole world should care about negative firsts, preventing negative firsts.
“Don’t meddle in our politics”. “Your opinion literally doesn’t matter”. Oh so wrong you are. Everybody’s opinion matters when an influential country looses whatever smidgen of democracy it used to have. And I don’t want to say America is destroyed now, because people will forget about this as well. However, I am so certain that is this exact chain of events had had ocurred in a Middle Eastern or a South American country, the USA would have been very concerned. Maybe a little bit too concerned. To the point of sending troops to overthrown a dictator perhaps.
This comparison pains me to make but, these far-right reactionaries and rioters should remember America’s considerable role in helping the Allience powers win the Second World War. They fought against the fascists, they were anti faschist. As partially ethnically Jewish, and as a human being, it makes me hurt to see some of those Americans now, storming the Capitol while wearing “Auschwitz camp”, “6MWE” t-shirts, ridden with anti-semitic dogwhistles and racist memorabilia. Petrifying. American’s fougt agains the monarchy, now reporters such as “Liberty Hangout” promote a US monarchy, a far-righ riot featuring the proud boys is blamed on ANFITA, Republicans fail in honestly condemning their own side. Disgraceful.
Not to be dramatic but, American history classes lack a very important aspect of the education they have to provide - teaching students about the horrying events of the past. It should not atop at “Colombus sailed the ocean blue”, “Natives and the whites signed a peaceful pact”, “We won the WW2”, “Stalin starved people to death” and other childish claims which lack all historical nuance. In Germany children are taught in depth about their terrifying past and never to repeat it. Even then far-right groupd still exist in Germany. What would you expect from a country where people with a basic high school education unironically think Hitler was a “sOciAliSt”.
My grandfathers fough the war. They were veterans, they were martyrs. They survived the Holocaust, they fled their towns t escape those exact “camps” that were printed on the rioters shirts. Seeing people who have never lived through that glorify the other side now makes me seriously doubt their sanity.
Misinformation and unableness to live in the same reality. Calling an establishment democrat president-elect a “marxist”. They want to “protect their heritage” with the flag of the confederacy that lasted only for 5 years and by flying a Trump flag over an American one which is the flag of a pathetic one term president. A man was waving the European country Georgia’s flag for f*ck’s sake.
6 million was not enough for them. I am disgusted and scared.
