In a meeting of the Republican Party leadership in Salt Lake City, Utah on Feb. 4, members of the Republican National Committee unanimously and officially declared that the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol to overturn the 2020 presidential election was “legitimate political discourse.” The vote came in a resolution censuring GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for taking part in the House Select Committee investigating the plot that led to the Jan. 6th insurrection that killed five people. The resolution condemned both representatives for participating in the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
It appears that the Republican Party has moved from tacit support of the political violence that occurred on Jan. 6th, to full-throated official sanctioning of violent insurrection and domestic terrorism in the future as a means to gain and hold on to power.
There is a growing realization across the country that the Republican Party’s support for voter suppression and election subversion laws – along with campaigns to ban books and the teaching of racial history in schools and criminalize nonviolent protest pose an existential threat to U.S. democracy. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.” Here, Stanley responds to the Republican party’s transformation into a political organization that is today systematically plotting the destruction of American democracy.
JASON STANLEY: I think that the remarks about legitimate political discourse — you know, they’re always trying to go for plausible deniability. So they say, “‘If you bear down,’ we’ll say, ‘Of course, we don’t mean the actual physical violence.'”
Of course, they also kind of do mean to legitimate the actual physical violence. It was a terribly violent day. But they also mean to legitimate the coup, the coup attempt that happened; and, really all the machinations that are ongoing.
The events of Jan. 6 had a particular role. They were planned. The presence of everyone there on Jan. 6 was planned. It was part of a larger attempt to overthrow a democratic country. And they’re saying that whole attempt to change, to get Pence to try to throw everything into chaos, maybe to to invoke the Insurrection Act, possibly. They’re saying all of that, that is legitimate political discourse.
SCOTT HARRIS: Yeah, it’s frightening. One of the things that the nation has been talking about as the dots are connected increasingly between what was going on in the White House, what was going on with the violence at the Capitol and the plans to put up fake electors to win a fraudulent Electoral College count. It seems that all these things were working together. But as of this date, there’s really no accountability for Trump and his inner circle who plotted this overthrow of democracy and the overturning of a democratic election. I would like for you to assess for us if you would, the Biden administration, the Democratic party and the U.S. Department of Justice and their response thus far to the apparent well-planned plot to overthrow the voters’ choice for president in the 2020 presidential election.
JASON STANLEY: Well, it really shows the gap between the United States and a country like Austria whose leader, Sebastian Kurtz, had to leave because of corruption. I mean, minor leagues compared to what we’re dealing with here. It’s extraordinary and the danger is manifest.
The danger is that when there’s no accountability, what you’re doing is you’re signaling that it’s all about power. And when the coup plotters, and the coup participants from President Trump on down throughout the Republican hierarchy — Hawley, the others participating more actively — when these people are not given accountability, it gives them extra popularity. It legitimates their actions. It says, “Look at what they could get away with.” It’s kind of an extension of former President Trump’s open lying.
The goal of his open lying was to show that he could get away with totally open lying. Now he’s getting away with this. That only strengthens his hand. That’s all that only strengthens his power.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Professor Stanley, in your recent article, “America is now in fascism’s legal phase,” you outline the way in which the Republican party is moving rapidly to suppress the right to vote, ban books, undermine women’s rights, ban the right to protest. And at the same time, they’re cultivating a violent army of militia groups to move toward what appears to be establishing an authoritarian one-party state.
JASON STANLEY: That’s an accurate description of what they are trying to do. These authoritarian forces here have always been intermingled with attacking Black history. That’s a very long theme here, harkening back to our Jim Crow, anti-democratic days. So, and of course, obviously Jim Crow is also the era in which you find voting rights for Black Americans being severely curtailed, which is the goal of this whole structure.
But it also comes with it this new world autocratic thing, which is the (Russia’s Vladimir) Putin, the (Hungary’s Victor) Orban — it comes with it now, a strong politics of essentially authoritarianism, a one-party state with an authoritarian leader because it’s connecting into this global movement that is primarily led by Putin.
But you know, Putin, (Jair) Bolsonaro (in Brazil), (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan in Turkey. And this is what they do. They pay play this cultural politics and the strong man is harsh, shows that he’s macho and not weak and not feminized, by essentially treating his opponents with brutality.
And if you looked at Trump, who he resonated with, he resonated with the world leaders who did this.
