11.02.2021

Bigger than January 6

Donald Trump is now on trial before the Senate charged with inciting insurrection. Jack Conrad says the attempted self-coup began long before the January 6 storming of the Capitol

When it comes to assessing January 6 2021, there are those on the left who cannot - will not - see anything more than a relatively small-sized demonstration that got out of hand. Dull, naive, myopic. We can let John Rees - formerly of the Socialist Workers Party and now of the “dynamic extra-parliamentary” Counterfire - speak for their confusion:

“Trump supporters are neither numerous enough nor organised enough to mount a coup,” Rees assures us. Nor are a “significant section of the police or armed forces going to join them”. So, he concludes: “this is an extreme form of protest.” Not that comrade Rees is complacent, oh no. “The real danger,” he writes, “is that years of disappointment from a Biden administration will turn this from the Munich beer hall putsch into the real thing.” “For now,” he predictably urges, “the left needs to get on the street and turn this around with a Venezuelan level of mobilisation that sweeps these scum into the gutter.”¹

What hopeless muddle. What posturing nonsense.

January 6 was Trump’s final throw of the dice. Therefore, we surely need to bring into view his many other throws; we must necessarily consider the whole game.

Ever since his unexpected election victory over Hillary Clinton in November 2016, Trump was busily, frantically, determinedly agitating, manoeuvring and campaigning to ensure that, by fair means or foul, he remained US president - not only till 2024, but 2028 and perhaps beyond (he talked of “negotiating” a third term, even though since the time of George Washington there has been an unofficial two-term limit and, after Franklin Roosevelt, who won an unprecedented fourth term in 1944, this became an official limit via the 22nd amendment²). He wanted to make himself into America’s first president for life - America’s emperor.

Towards that end, Trump sought to stretch, bend and, whenever he could, overstep what has long passed as US non-partisan, constitutional norms. We saw that with the appointment of a slew of reactionary judges - and not just to the Supreme Court. We saw it with the use of the national guard and federal agents against Black Lives Matter protestors. We saw it with the surfeit of military cabinet secretaries. We saw it with the endless accusations that Joe Biden’s November 2020 election victory was a steal, that there had been massive voter fraud. We saw it in Rudy Giuliani’s countless legal challenges. We saw it with the 20,000-30,000-strong January 6 Save America rally and the march on the Capitol. All moments in Trump’s long-drawn-out self-coup attempt.

What is a self-coup? A self-coup - an autogolpe - is a coup through which a country’s leader, the chief executive, seeks to enhance, or retain, power by overturning electoral outcomes and/or by unconstitutionally gutting the power of other branches of government. A self-coup is perpetrated by the chief executive - rather than by military officers or other regime insiders against the chief executive.³

So Trump’s attempted self-coup should not be seen merely in the final throw - the moment when several hundred self-proclaimed patriots forcibly broke through police lines and entered the Capitol. Prior to that, Trump was relying on the army to impose martial law, wanting to rerun the presidential elections in five swing states and get the ‘right’ result with a suitably reduced electorate. He was relying on the courts - not least the Supreme Court. He was relying on his 74 million votes to pressurise Republican senators and representatives into doing his will.

What about the negative experience of the Biden administration turning “this from the Munich beer hall putsch into the real thing”? Put the future aside for the moment. Instead let us concentrate on the “real thing”.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Munich beer hall putsch was the real thing. It was an attempted coup - er, that is why it is called a putsch.

Note, in its original Swiss German, ‘putsch’ meant ‘knock’ or ‘thrust’, but since then - both in German and English - the term is used as being equivalent to the “kind of power bid commonly known as a coup”.⁴ ‘Putsch’ certainly debuted in English after the Kapp putsch of March 1920 in Germany.

The rightwing monarchist, Wolfgang Kapp, along with reactionary political and military allies, attempted, but failed, to overthrow the Weimar republic, which had been proclaimed, of course, by social democratic leader Philipp Scheidemann in November 1918. There was a huge, 12-million-strong general strike. The social democratic-led coalition government in Berlin survived. Nonetheless, thereafter putsch attempts were pretty common in Germany, so the word made its appearance in the reports of English-speaking journalists, who unproblematically described Adolf Hitler’s 1923 failed power-grab as a putsch.

Of course, comrade Rees is using the Munich beer hall putsch as a synonym for failure. But the fact of the matter is that Hitler’s attempted coup was not totally misconceived.

Germany was in the midst of hyperinflation, with unemployment soaring, and had a highly unstable coalition government. To make matters worse, French troops moved to occupy the vital, heavily industrialised Ruhr region. Germany had failed to meet the onerous reparations payments due under the terms of the Versailles treaty (which also stripped Germany of territory and permitted only a pocket-sized army). In response to the occupation of the Ruhr there were government-sponsored mass strikes and numerous acts of sabotage. Needless to say, though, the far right made liberating Germany from the humiliation of Versailles their holy cause. Those who signed it in November 1919 - those who “stabbed the army in the back” by agreeing the November 1918 armistice - were branded the “November criminals”.

Since September 26 1923, Bavaria had been under a state of emergency. Prime minister Eugen von Knilling, state commissioner Gustav Ritter von Kahr, police chief Hans Ritter and Reichswehr general Otto von Lossow ruled with dictatorial powers. Basically what Hitler gambled on was teaming up with this far-right Bavarian government and staging a march on Berlin in the manner he imagined Benito Mussolini had done with his highly theatrical march on Rome the previous year. In actual fact, Mussolini’s entry into government had been agreed beforehand.

Having surrounded and then invaded the Bürgerbräukeller beer hall, where von Kahr was addressing a 3,000-strong audience, Hitler persuaded him and the other Bavarian dictators to accede to his plan - with the help of his drawn pistol.

Led by Hitler and World War I hero, general Erich Ludendorff, some 2,000 Nazis headed off to occupy the Bavarian defence ministry. However, in the city centre, they were met by a police cordon. Four policemen and 16 Nazis were killed. Many more were wounded, including Hitler, who was spirited off to safety in the countryside. Two days later he was arrested and charged with treason.

The putsch brought Hitler to the attention of the whole of Germany. There followed a 24-day trial before a set of highly sympathetic judges. Allowed to make long speeches and constantly interrupt, he used the trial to attack the “November criminals” in Berlin. Nonetheless, Hitler was found guilty and sentenced to five years in Landsberg Prison. Here he dictated MeinKampf to fellow inmates Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess. One of the main lessons he drew from the beer hall putsch was that next time he needed the “highest school of the German nation” - the army - fully on board.⁵ On December 20 1924, having served just nine months, Hitler was released.

What about comrade Rees’s response to Trump’s so-called non-coup attempt? Street fetishism is combined with pure bombast: “For now the left needs to get on the street and turn this around with a Venezuelan level of mobilisation that sweeps these scum into the gutter.”⁶ So the left in the US takes to the street. So far, so normal. But it has no state machine to mobilise on Venezuelan levels. And is comrade Rees really suggesting an armed assault on the Boogaloos, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Takers, etc? If not, how else does he propose to “sweep these scum into the gutter”?

Two-tone

Jim Creegan comes to roughly the same sort of conclusion as John Rees and his Counterfire crew. January 6 was an extreme form of protest, a “riot” - not a coup. Well no-one, but no-one, is claiming that Trump staged a successful coup. But what was he attempting to do? Stage a riot? Hardly. No, the House of Representatives has adopted just one article of impeachment: incitement of insurrection. Through provoking the storming of the Capitol and putting pressure on election officials in Georgia, Trump sought to derail Joe Biden’s presidency and thereby somehow keep hold of the keys to the White House.

Having run out of legal options Trump turned to his base of ‘deplorables’ (they turn out to include plenty of serving police officers, army vets and small business people). The January 6 crowd cheered, they were fired up, when their president told them to “fight like hell” and to “stop the steal”. Presumably, Trump’s desperate hope was that this barely organised army would persuade, terrify, force Congress - vitally including vice-president Mike Pence - into not certifying the election of Joe Biden. Maybe, with members of Congress held at gunpoint, he could have declared martial law. All very improbable - nonetheless, what other outcome did Trump have in mind? Surely, the “intent was to overthrow the government” - Chuck Hagel, former defence secretary under Barack Obama (2013-15) and Republican senator for Nebraska (1997-2009).⁷ January 6 makes no sense otherwise.

Like Counterfire, comrade Creegan seems to paint from a very limited palette. He too defines things relating to January 6 according to just two categories. There is ‘fascism’ and there is “the sanctity of elections and the ‘rule of law’”.⁸

I agree with him that as a class the American bourgeoisie “has no need of fascists” at this present moment of time. No leader of the Boogaloos, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Takers, etc is just about to be lifted onto the saddle of power by a desperate bourgeoisie. They face no threat from a mass left party, no destabilising strike wave, no danger of the class struggle running out of control.

What about “the sanctity of elections and the ‘rule of law’”? It is clear that a big majority of Republican senators and representatives are quite prepared to go along with Trump’s fraudulent claim that the November 2020 presidential election was a “steal”. Some out of conviction, some out of calculation. Hence, one thing is for sure: the impeachment trial will not end in Trump’s conviction. Meanwhile, Republican gerrymandering and disenfranchisements become ever more outrageous, ever more egregious.

As for Trump, as an individual, he did have the need for fascists. Not that we should categorise him as a fascist. No, he was an aspiring Bonaparte who was willing to flatter, promote and mobilise America’s second-rate fascist fighting formations. Naturally, in America Bonapartism takes a strictly American form. France had its Napoleon I and Napoleon III to save the bourgeoisie from the threat of civil war, to act as an arbiter appearing to stand above the contending classes. America had a reality TV showman and property billionaire to stand against the tide of political correctness, black rights and me-too feminism. Much is lost in translation. Although one of the alumni of the New York Military Academy, Trump is no Napoleon. Whereas Napoleon was a military genius and fought 60 (still much studied) battles, Trump avoided the draft for Vietnam five times - once pleading bad feet, four times pleading college studies. Yet through sheer chutzpah and an almost instinctive ability to articulate popular fears and grievances and offer easy solutions, Trump became the uncrowned king of the Republican Party and the saviour-hero of around half the US electorate.

Trump was, though, never the culmination of some grand Republican “strategy long in the making”.⁹ Despite being the scion of the capitalist class, he was hardly the preferred candidate of the Republican establishment in 2016. The Twitter-baiting, rabble-rousing, fact-denying Trump was always an outsider. Whether Mar-a-Largo is to be his Elba or his St Helena remains to be seen.

Full-blown

Bradley Mayer does not want to come to a definite conclusion.¹⁰

On the one hand, he says this:

Immediately, January 6 was an ad hoc insurrection consciously fomented by the Trump clique in conspiracy with Congresspeople from Alabama and Arizona, who provided for the rally crowd at large and in coordination with various fascist gangs. This mixed composition is one key difference with both the Beer Hall Putsch and the March on Rome. The Trump clique would whip up and herd the general crowd toward the Capitol building, where a select cadre of fascists had prepared the ground with the intention of storming the Capitol. The object was to dislodge the presidential confirmation proceedings - not merely for hours, but for days - where the still president Trump could possibly declare a state of emergency and block the January 20 inauguration.

On the other hand, he says:

The efforts of January 6 did not rise to the level of a coup, as they lacked any real institutional support from the security, intelligence and military agencies of the US regime - agencies that certainly know how to pull off coups. It was not a mere ‘riot’ either, as this was a coordinated effort led by a presidential clique and Congresspeople - prepared with a months-long Big Lie propaganda campaign to delegitimise the 2020 election. But, however hare-brained and absurd in its execution, January 6 could remain a ‘teachable moment’ - a data point on an ascending line from proto-fascist incubus to a full-blown fascist movement - given the long history of US cold war regime coddling of the radical right, while repressing the radical left, at home and abroad.

So we have an “ad hoc insurrection” prepared months in advance and coordinated by a presidential clique with the view of dislodging the “presidential confirmation proceedings” and keeping Trump in the Oval Office by declaring a state of emergency. Despite this, comrade Mayer insists that, while it was no mere riot, it “did not rise to the level of a coup”.

Yet, as the old saying goes, ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.’ By the same logic preparation for an insurrection and a state of emergency probably means that January 6 amounted to a coup. A failed attempt, yes, because it lacked support from the police, the CIA and the army. Therefore not rising to the level of a successful coup - again absolutely right. But, nonetheless, the attempted self-coup was as much of a coup as the 1920 Kapp putsch and the 1923 Beer Hall putsch, surely.

Then there is the common, mistaken, dangerous habit on the left of seeing fascism in every anti-democratic tendency, every horrible law, every police attack, every rightwing demagogue, every military coup. ‘Official communism’ peddled this vulgar claim in the late 1920s and early 30s. Everyone and everything suddenly became proto-fascist or outright fascist: left social democracy, right social democracy, reactionary conservatives, monarchists, even FDR’s ‘new deal’.

The soi-disant new left did the same in the 1960s. Capitalism, it was claimed, has an innate tendency towards fascism. The democratic gains made by the working class under capitalism were too often lazily described as ‘bourgeois democracy’, as if the main driver of democracy is capitalist accumulation, and not the counter-power of the working class. So democratic gains are not to be defended, built upon and made into the main road to socialist revolution. No, on the contrary, so-called bourgeois democracy is dismissed as fascism in disguise. Hence, one presumes, John Pilger’s tweet: “The made-for-media theatrics on Capitol Hill were not an attempted ‘coup’. Coups are what the CIA stages all over the world. Neither was ‘democracy’ in peril. What democracy?”¹¹

Clear message

We now come to Daniel Lazare.

For this comrade, January 6 was the “genuine article: an attempted coup that was all too real”.¹² No disagreement here. But he continues:

Had it succeeded - and there is a significant chance it could have - it would have plunged America into the depths of authoritarianism. After all, once Donald Trump had succeeded in grabbing a second term, there would have been few constitutional guardrails left in place to prevent him from wreaking vengeance on a mile-long list of enemies. The courts, the Democrats and the corporate media would have all trembled before the spectacle of unrestrained executive power.

But it did not succeed. To have “plunged America into the depths of authoritarianism” Trump would have needed more than the diminutive, half-crazed, disordered ranks of the Boogaloos, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Takers, etc. Okay, if they had captured Nancy Pelosi, Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell and forced them at gunpoint to declare that the whole certification process was a fraud and that Trump was the real winner in November’s election, what would have happened then? True, no-one knows. But comrade Lazare has the top brass of the armed forces hesitating, Trump acting decisively. Doubtful, very doubtful.

Comrade Lazare dismisses as “20:20 hindsight”¹³ my citing the stated refusal by the Pentagon to go along with the coup attempt. “There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election,” army secretary Ryan McCarthy and chief of staff general James McConville loudly declared.¹⁴ A stance backed by all 10 living previous secretaries of state for defence - including James Mattis and Mark Esper, who both served under Trump. In a joint letter published in The Washington Post they warned: “Efforts to involve the US armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.” They ominously concluded that civilian and military officials “who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic”.¹⁵

I would have thought all that to be a clear enough message. The military top brass are sworn to defend the existing constitution ... not to defend one man, even though that one man happens to be their commander-in-chief. True, Trump’s cabinets were ram-packed with military men and he clearly hankered after a martial-law regime and a suitably restricted electorate. However, note, the only time martial law has been tried on a national scale in the US was when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus rights during the civil war. He wanted to shut down pro-Confederate dissidents in the north. Even then, with ‘ex parte Milligan’ (1866), a hostile Supreme Court ruled that Lincoln had overstepped legitimate bounds. Martial law could only operate in areas of “military operations, where war really prevails”.¹⁶

Nevertheless, lieutenant general (retired) Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security advisor, openly advocated just that course in an interview with Newsmax in December 2020. Trump, he said, should “take military capabilities, and he could place them in those [swing states], and basically rerun an election”. Other Trump insiders urged him to use a declaration of martial law, combined with the powers of the Insurrection Act, to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.¹⁷

But if martial law had been declared, even confined to Washington DC, my guess would be that it would have been Donald Trump who found himself at the pointy end of state power. In the name of defending the constitution, the top brass would have acted decisively. Trump would have been discreetly frogmarched out of the White House by CIA operatives and then placed in a suitably secure mental hospital. A pliant medic would have read out a carefully drafted media statement: Donald J Trump has suffered a debilitating mental breakdown, etc, etc.

What actually happened on January 6 cannot be easily dismissed. There are good reasons why what happened, happened.

Trump’s final throw was pathetic, a farce, precisely because it was not supported by big business, the corporate media, the courts, the police, the CIA, the armed forces ... let alone the majority of the population. Why, after all, would they want to elevate Trump into a Bonapartist president for life? Why quake before Trump’s authoritarianism, when you can have that mild-mannered ‘return to normal’ president-elect, Joe Biden.

Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte meticulously planned his December 2 1851 coup - carried out in the name of a new constitution and restoring universal male suffrage. Kapp won sections of the army to his coup, had monarchist, nationalist and far-right allies, and managed to temporarily seize Berlin. Mussolini and Hitler marched at the head of disciplined, battle-hardened fighting formations.

On January 6 Trump had no army generals, no military units, no disciplined fighting formations. Instead he desperately gambled on mob intimidation … and then at a safe remove.

His hour-long speech on January 6 repeated the standard steal allegations and he pointedly attacked Mike Pence a good half a dozen times. Yet, while promising to walk with the Save America crowd to the Capitol, he himself quietly headed off to the White House. There, surrounded by CIA operatives, he watched events unfold on TV. His occasional tweets hardly amount to decisive leadership.

Timeline

11.00am: The Boogaloos, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Takers, etc gather before the Capitol and begin pushing at police barricades.

12.00 noon: Trump starts his speech.

1.00pm: Senators and the vice-president enter the House chamber. Pence releases a letter stating that the constitution prevents him from unilaterally interfering with the electoral college vote.

1.05pm: Congress meets in joint session to confirm Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

1.09pm: Capitol police chief Steven Sund asks the House Sergeant at Arms and Senate Sergeant at Arms to declare an emergency and call for deployment of the National Guard.

1.10pm: Trump ends his speech. He urges the crowd to head to the Capitol: “We’re going to try and give them [Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

1.12pm: Representative Paul Gosar and Senator Ted Cruz object to certifying the votes made in the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. The joint session separates into House and Senate chambers to debate the objection.

1.26pm: Capitol police order evacuation of at least two buildings in the Capitol complex, including the Cannon House Office Building and the Madison Building of the Library of Congress.

1.30pm: The police are overwhelmed and forced to retreat up the steps of the Capitol.

1.34pm: District of Columbia mayor Muriel Bowser requests that army secretary Ryan D McCarthy provide an unspecified number of additional forces.

1.35pm: During Senate deliberations, majority leader Mitch McConnell warns that refusing to certify the results of the presidential election under false pretences would push American democracy into a “death spiral”.

1.49pm: Capitol police chief Sund requests immediate assistance from District of Columbia National Guard (DCNG) commander, major general William J Walker.

1.50pm: DC Metro police on-scene commander Robert Glover declares a riot.

1.59pm: Sund receives the first reports that rioters had reached the Capitol’s doors and windows and were trying to break in.

2.12pm: First rioter enters the Capitol through a broken window, opening a door for others.

2.13pm: Vice-president Pence is removed from the Senate chamber to a nearby office. The Senate is called into recess.

2.14pm: As Representative Gosar speaks to the House against certifying Arizona’s electoral votes, House speaker Nancy Pelosi is removed from the chamber by her protective detail.

2.20pm: The House adjourns and starts to evacuate.

2.22pm: Army secretary McCarthy telephones mayor Bowser, her deputy, John Falcicchio, together with the director of the Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency and leadership of the Metro Police, requesting additional support.

2.24pm: Trump tweets: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

2.26pm: After receipt of a call from Mayor Bowser indicating that the Department of Defense had refused to send assistance to the Capitol, the public safety secretary of Virginia, Brian Moran, dispatches the Virginia state police to the Capitol, as permitted under a mutual aid agreement.

2.30pm: Secretary Miller, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, general Mark Milley and army secretary McCarthy meet to discuss Capitol police and Columbia government requests for extra forces.

2.38pm: Trump tweets: “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

2.44pm: Pro-Trump rioter Ashli Babbitt is shot by Capitol police, while attempting to force entry into the speaker’s lobby adjacent to the House chambers.

3.00pm: Acting defence secretary Miller decides to deploy all available DCNG forces to reinforce Metro and Capitol police, as they attempt to re-establish security in the Capitol complex. Army secretary McCarthy orders the DCNG to prepare guardsmen to move from the DC Armory to the Capitol complex, pending formal approval from secretary Miller.

3.04pm: Secretary Miller, with advice from senior defence leaders, formally approves full activation of the 1,100 soldiers in the DCNG. Army secretary McCarthy orders the DCNG to begin full mobilisation.

3.13pm: Trump tweets: “I am asking for everyone at the US Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, we are the Party of Law and Order - respect the law and our great men and women in blue. Thank you!”

3.15pm: First assets from Virginia begin rolling into DC.

3.32pm: Virginia governor Ralph Northam orders the mobilisation of Virginia National Guard forces.

3.37pm: Maryland governor Larry Hogan orders the mobilisation of Maryland National Guard forces in anticipation of a request for support.

4.05pm: President-elect Biden holds a press conference calling on Trump to “demand an end to this siege”.

4.17pm: Trump uploads a video to his Twitter account. He says this:

I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us - from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.

4.18pm: Secretary Miller, general Milley, army secretary McCarthy and general Hokanson discuss the availability of National Guard forces located outside of the immediate DC Metro area. Secretary Miller verbally authorises the deployment of out-of-state National Guard forces to DC.

4.32pm: Secretary Miller authorises the DCNG to conduct perimeter and clearance operations in support of the Capitol police.

5.40pm: 154 DCNG soldiers arrive at the Capitol complex, swear in with the Capitol police and begin support operations.

5.40pm: The interior of the Capitol is cleared of rioters, and Congress leaders state that they will continue tallying electoral votes.

6.01pm: Trump tweets: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love and in peace. Remember this day forever!”

7.00pm: Facebook removes Trump’s posts from Facebook and Instagram for “contribut[ing] to, rather than diminish[ing], the risk of ongoing violence”.

7.02pm: Twitter removes Trump’s tweets and suspends his account for 12 hours for “repeated and severe violations of [its] civic integrity policy”.

All that tells us that the counter-coup was far better organised, far better armed, far more determined, far more socially rooted than the final throw of the self-coup maker.

Nonetheless, what Trump drew on will not evaporate with Biden. There exists profound disenchantment with the old order. For millions the American dream has turned into an American nightmare. Bankruptcy, squeezed middle class incomes, student debt, homelessness, unemployment, desperation, fear, defiance, resistance and hope are growing apace. Centre politics - the cosy middle-ground consensus - finds itself pulled, challenged, torn apart from left and right.

Those muddled old men, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are not the future. But they point to a clear future choice: barbarism or socialism.

1. www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/21966-why-trumpism-must-be-defeated-reactions-to-the-capitol-chaos.↩︎

2. forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/09/13/trump-says-he-will-negotiate-third-term-because-hes-entitled-to-it.↩︎

3. See brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/01/08/no-its-not-a-coup-its-a-failed-self-coup-that-will-undermine-us-leadership-and-democracy-worldwide.↩︎

4. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/putsch.↩︎

5. A Hitler Mein Kampf London 1992, p255.↩︎

6. www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/21966-why-trumpism-must-be-defeated-reactions-to-the-capitol-chaos.↩︎

7. tortoisemedia.com/2021/01/18/former-us-defense-secretary-the-attack-on-the-capitol-was-a-coup.↩︎

8. ‘Republicans at odds’ Weekly Worker January 28 2021.↩︎

9. Ibid.↩︎

10. ‘Old regime is cracking apart’ Weekly Worker January 28 2021.↩︎

11. twitter.com/johnpilger/status/1347871961175744512.↩︎

12. ‘Trump’s ‘march on Rome’ Weekly Worker January 14 2021.↩︎

13. ‘The meaning of January 6’ Weekly Worker February 4 2021.↩︎

14. taskandpurpose.com/news/army-secretary-chief-2020-election-mike-flynn.↩︎

15. The Washington Post January 3 2021.↩︎

16. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte_Milligan.↩︎

17. cato.org/blog/trump-cannot-stay-power-declaring-martial-law.↩︎