A very unamerican coup
What we should and should not denounce in the Capitol riot
People called it shocking, but I just found it disappointing.
I mean, for all the practice Americans have had at staging coups, they have proved surprisingly bad at it on home soil. At least that’s what it looked like yesterday when the idiots known as Proud Boys and the gullible keyboard-worriers known as Q-Anon (plus a bunch of other Trump supporters) stormed the Capitol building to ‘stop the steal’ of the American election. More a coo (in the pigeon sense) than a coup (in the CIA sense), politicians, pundits and plebs alike piled on to denounce the right-wing riot, which was great to see. Less great were their reasons.
‘Coo!’ d'état
It is, of course, right and proper to detest the fascist bullies who broke through pitifully weak police resistance at the Capitol building to start their ‘revolution’ on Wednesday. It is wrong to call it an attempted coup, though. This was a riot. A protest that attempted to occupy a building, a demonstration that went too far. And while many have rushed to call it an act of terror, I’m really not convinced it was (though potentially some terrorist acts were attempted).
Yes, a President lost an election and incited people to protest and oppose the transition of power. Yes, we must recognise the seriousness of that. And yes, we all want to see the racist filth that have trampled over decency for years put in their place, and so there is a natural temptation to inflate the seriousness of this incident. But I think we should be cautious about doing this.
There is nothing sacred about a building, a window, a room, no matter which country’s government meets there. There is nothing inherently immoral about making a mess, causing a fuss or occupying a building. When Black Lives Matter do it, it is legitimate. When climate protesters and anti-capitalists and students protesting unjust wars break through police barricades or stage sit-ins that cause upset, that can be a just (if not always legal) tool for fighting oppression. In our haste to denounce the movement, let’s not throw out all of their methods.
Neither should we be too gleeful at the liberal use of pepper spray and beatings administered by American police in this case. Is it gratifying to see the fascist Proud Boys given a hiding? Sure. I liked to see it, just as I knew I was not at my most Christlike while I chuckled. But let’s be clear: shooting an unarmed protester, even one we think is deluded, is wrong. American police (And to an extent, police everywhere in 2021) have a real brutality problem that is exacerbated by the culture encouraged in the ranks, racism and militarisation of what should be a protective force. The fact that they are targeting white nationalists for once should not make us less keen to see their culture, their power and their impunity radically reduced.
This is not a ‘both sides are wrong’ platitude, by the way. The puny show of force made by the police and National Guard for white nationalists compared to the overwhelming response to Black Lives Matter protests earlier in the year (and the disproportionate number of arrests among BLM protesters) demonstrates the fact that law enforcement is as much part of the problem as the protesters. If Wednesday’s riot had been perpetrated by black people or anti-fascists, the death toll would be much, much higher. If American Muslims had tried to break into the Capitol, there would have been a massacre. And I’m not sure it would not have been applauded by ‘moderates’ in the media and government alike.
Offering an alternative
Does that mean we should not be angry? Should we shrug it off as lowlife high jinks?
No.
Some people have called this the darkest day in American history, but, as one pundit quipped, those people presumably have not actually read any American history. But it is disturbing. The protesters who invaded the Capitol may have been the most extreme or deluded representatives, but they are part of a huge group of people in the United States, who are increasingly embracing an ideology of hate. White, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-intellectual and (shamefully) Christian, there is a name for this ideology, and it is fascism. We are right to hate it because it has exclusion, dehumanisation and oppression as its motivations and goals. Whatever methods it embraces, we must meet it with intolerance.
I know. That isn’t very liberal. But a belief that a class of human beings does not deserve to be seen or treated as human and should be eliminated, be it racism, antisemitism, violent homophobia or any other fascist ideology cannot be tolerated. We know the aims and we have seen the consequences. It needn’t be a slippery slope any more than criminalising paedophilia might lead to criminalising all sex. Fascism must be hated and stopped, even as we strive to love the human beings deceived by that satanic ideology.
If we do not – if we fail to punish those who encouraged and perpetrated this small outrage (and those who for years have been encouraging the hateful ideology underpinning it from their seats in Congress and on news panels), the next iteration of Donald Trump will be more subtle, more amenable to moderates and centrists, and he (or she) will plunge America into deeper existential darkness.
But here’s the thing. If all we offer as an alternative is politeness, decency and decorum, we will either fail to prevent fascism’s rise or we will breed a more genteel form of fascism. Just as non-racism is not enough (we must be anti-racist), neither is a shallow liberalism in the face of fascism. Because that is what has been rising in America (and around the world).
As a Christian, I am called to pay more attention to the heart than the exterior, and so I must set aside my distaste at uncouth Donald, to look at the virulent ideology his more polite colleagues in the GOP have encouraged. That many churches have encouraged. White Christian Nationalism is a heresy and a danger to human flourishing. It must be denounced. It must be repudiated. It must be stopped, in the United States, in South Africa, in the United Kingdom, in Ukraine and the rest of Europe – everywhere.
And we won’t stop it by offering incremental change to the victims of societal inequality (who are so ripe to be picked off by predatory right-wing scapegoating). They will see right through status-quo politics and assurances that the market will see them right in the end.
Progressives, Christians and people of good conscience need to recognise that the movement that spawned recent outrages has grown in the fertile soil of injustice. And that injustice won’t go away because they have a classier President or we offer the poor and the working class a few more crumbs.
If we want radical right wingers to be stopped, radical change for the better is needed. The only question is whether we will have the courage to stand up and speak out for it, or if we’ll be content to tut and coo.
From the Beer Christianity podcast
The next episode of the Beer Christianity podcast features Tom Wright (again), Helen Paynter (our favourite and most helpful theologian) and a voice-note from a listener on Christus Victor and Penal Substitution. It’s out soon, so look up Beer Christianity wherever you get your podcasts, or find it at beerchristianity.libsyn.com
We’ve also got an episode in the pipeline all about whether churches are being oppressed by covid legislation (spoiler: they’re not) and one about Israel-Palestine, featuring an interview with Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.
You can leave your own comment or question at speakpipe.com/beerchristianity