Friends,
We do not have a democracy in the USA. But unless we take serious action, this country will become fascist. Kagiso, Max
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) (R) speaks alongside Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY)
and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Chair of the Select Committee to Investigate
the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, during a committee business meeting
on Capitol Hill March 28, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty
Images)
The Socialist
Left Should Be Giving the Jan. 6 Hearings the Attention They Deserve
Socialists should be front and center,
demanding that there be actual repercussions for the anti-democratic effort to
overturn the election.
July 10, 2022 by In These Times
In late June, as I arrived at my weekly union stewards training, I stumbled upon a group of fellow delegates talking about the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. While these labor activists primarily discussed revelations that Trump allegedly approved of rioters’ call to “hang Mike Pence,” their political conversation flew in the face of the idea that working people are indifferent about the congressional hearings on last year’s near-coup. Don’t just take my anecdote as evidence — look at the nearly 20 million people who watched the first hearing and the 13 million who tuned in on June 28 to catch Cassidy Hutchinson’s surprise daytime testimony. CNN reports that almost six out of ten people in the United States are following the hearings, and CBS finds that nearly 70 percent believe it’s important to find out the truth about January 6.
Hutchinson,
a 26-year-old former White House aide, testified before the Select
Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States
Capitol that Trump was willing to let the MAGA rioters assassinate then-Vice
President Pence. She revealed that Trump and his chief of staff Mark
Meadows — her former boss—both knew the threat of armed
violence days in advance and did nothing to abate the danger.
These revelations confirmed some of the worst fears about how close the United
States came to seeing the 2020 presidential
election overturned.
The
January 6 committee has not brought charges against the individuals
involved, as the body does not have that power, though some members have floated recommending
criminal referrals to the Justice Department. Federal elected officials such
as Rep. Adam Schiff (D‑Calif.) believe that the tacit
purpose of the committee’s current approach is to demonstrate to the U.S.
Attorney General Merrick Garland that there is sufficient evidence and public
support to bring charges against the orchestrators of the riot and
unconstitutional putsch, from Trump on down.
The chorus of
popular demands for justice and the defense of democracy is where the
Left — and especially the organized socialist movement — is
desperately needed.
The Left should
engage in, not ignore, a key democratic crisis.
Scanning the
social media feeds among my left-wing friends, however, I hardly see
a mention of the hearings, and when I do, it’s often dismissive of
the congressional committee. I see little reporting of the investigation
in prominent socialist and progressive magazines, including In These
Times, while others provide no coverage at all. My own organization, the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), issued only a single statement about
January 6 since the day after the deadly attack, and nothing on the
committee itself. This near silence is at odds not only with the millions of
working people paying attention to the hearings, but also democratic socialist
elected officials in Congress.
Rep.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.) revealed she feared more than death from
the MAGA rioters, while her fellow DSA member Rep. Cori Bush (D‑Mo.) introduced legislation to expel members
of the House of Representatives who aided in the January 6 attack.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.), meanwhile, posted in June that this hearing was
not about “ideas” but “whether we maintain our democratic form of
government.” These prominent socialists share the concern among the U.S.
public, and especially the Democratic base, that the future state of elections
is under threat.
What
I appreciated about being on the Left in the mid-2010s was the fact that
we were much more on the pulse of the U.S. public than our liberal friends. The
Left largely saw Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy in 2016 as
fallible, and was able to offer viable alternatives. Through Bernie Sanders’
two presidential campaigns, in 2016 and 2020, hundreds of democratic socialists and Berniecrats won races for elected
office across the country. Outside of the electoral realm, socialists today
are plugging into the
fast-growing and restive labor movement that’s successfully organizing shops at
Amazon, Starbucks and other major companies.
But these
successes could all be for naught if we completely lose our flawed — but still
existing — liberal democracy. If our current system is replaced by an illiberal
form of government, like exists in Hungary, the working class will suffer more.
Hungary is now viewed as a model for the American
far-Right, which hosted their Conservative Political Action
Conference in the European country, as its leader, Viktor Orbán, has
made elections a mere formality while expanding the
secret police.
One way to
prevent this authoritarian slide is through engaging in public pressure to push
Garland and other Justice Department officials to prosecute Trump and his
allies. That kind of campaign cannot be “left to the liberals” as some are
wont to say. Socialists should be front and center, demanding that there be
actual repercussions for the anti-democratic effort to overturn
the election.
We cannot have
a multi-racial working-class socialist society without first achieving
a functioning democracy. Socialists have long stood for improving U.S.
democratic institutions, as imperfect as they are. We fought for women’s suffrage and
were militant participants in the Civil Rights Movement.
At its core, the socialist movement believes in not just defending democracy,
but spreading it to other realms outside of politics, from the economy to
the workplace.
The current
reaction against liberal democracy is part of an effort to roll back
reproductive rights and racial justice gains made in this country that required
decades of struggle to win. We cannot let the anti-democratic, anti-choice and
racist forces win. Socialists must again lead by example.
If we don’t,
then reactionaries like Pence and Rep. Liz Cheney (R‑Wyo.) are likely to become
the heroes of this effort, simply because they’re Republicans following their
constitutional duty. Rather than ceding this ground to liberals and the GOP,
socialists and organizers on the Left should step up pressure on Congress to
pass Rep. Bush’s bill to punish those guilty of trying to overthrow the will of
the voters. A national effort to raise awareness of this legislation,
including a collaboration between DSA members and the congresswoman, could
help build pressure to actually punish those politicians involved in the
failed putsch.
It’s easy to
hope that January 6 was a one-off incident. But anti-democratic
forces rarely give up so easily. Just look at the history of Chile. In that
country there was a small military rebellion months before the right-wing
coup on September 11, 1973 which ousted Salvador Allende. For
a time, the democratically elected socialist government had officers and
generals who obeyed the constitution. But facing enough pressure from
coup-plotters and foreign agitators, that loyalty eventually ended.
The same could
happen here, especially as anti-Trump Republicans lose
primaries, shifting the GOP toward pure fealty to the former
president. Trump and his supporters are hard at work stacking the deck, from
local election boards all the way up to the Supreme Court, which could
have monumental consequences in
determining future presidential elections.
Trump has
already signaled that he is likely to run again in 2024, and he still
refuses to accept the 2020 election results, sowing distrust in the
democratic system among his base. He’s made no secret of his desire to take
power, no matter the legality or constitutionality of his means. We narrowly
escaped his attempt two years ago. In the future, we might not be
so lucky.
This is why
the Left should engage in, not ignore, a key democratic crisis.
I want to be able to go to my union family and say “here’s what
socialists are doing to hold the perpetrators of
January 6 accountable.” Leftists have long fought to defend and
expand liberal democracy in our goals of building a socialist government.
Let’s continue that tradition.
© 2021 In These Times
David Duhalde is the chair of the Democratic Socialists of America Fund, DSA’s sister educational nonprofit. He is the former political director of Our Revolution and former deputy director of DSA.
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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