The Coup Isn't Over

The failure on Wednesday of the far-right mob to prevent the formal recognition of Joe Biden winning the 2020 presidential election should not be taken as the end of the Right’s insurgency, but rather another stepping stone in the building of its legend. 

When Trump called upon his fascist followers to muster at the Capitol on Wednesday, it was the last throw of the dice as far as his own presidency was concerned. His legal team had previously raised 62 complaints of voter fraud across the country, in states such as Georgia, Michigan, Nevada,  Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All of these charges were rejected as baseless. Often the depositions were filed without supporting evidence. In Georgia it took judges just one day to throw out the case.

This begs the question: why do it? Why go to the time and expense of taking these issues in front of the courts when those filing the cases knew they were going to be thrown out? In order to answer such questions, one has to appreciate the overall picture. 

Trump’s assault of the legality of the November vote started in March 2020. By May 2020, The Guardian was reporting that Trump had singled out both Nevada and Michigan, both states that he needed to hold but was vulnerable to a swing vote, for making mail-in voting easier. He alleged that ballots would be sent to all registered voters when, in fact, both states arranged for mail-in ballot applications to be sent out. However, the Trump teams raised no complaint when Iowa and West Virginia also send out mail-in ballot applications to all registered voters ahead of the elections. Both these latter states were expected to, and returned, Trump victories. No subsequent allegations of voter fraud was raised, despite the fact that these states acted the same as those Trump complained against. 

One can therefore see that Trump’s team were acutely aware of the states vulnerable to flipping and, in advance, decided to create a case for voter fraud, regardless of facts involved. Where states who did the same thing but were predicted to return a Trump victory, no such concerns were expressed. From this, it is fair to assume that if any of the flip states had gone to Trump, that allegations of voter fraud  concerning those states would have similarly evaporated.

The central point is, as compiled in detail in the paper Mail-In Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign, that Trump, supported by the Republican National Committee and Fox News, ran a disinformation campaign against the American public. This campaign has led to about half of Republican voters continuing to believe that there was indeed wide-scale voter fraud, that Trump had the election stolen from him and therefore the assault on the nation’s Capitol was justified. 

Trump’s selective offensive against mail-in voters in flip states will seem even more logical when the tactics of the 2016 are taken into account. It is true that Mail-In voting makes it easier to vote. It is also true that, in comparison to those registered voters who attend a polling station, those who register for Mail-In voting are more likely to vote. In September 2020, Channel Four News started a series of reports that alleged that, in contrast to traditional voting campaigns where political parties encourage their supporters to register and go to the polls, Trump’s 2016 campaign actively targeted black voters to dissuade them from voting. C4News estimates that 3.5 million black voters were subjected to the “Deterrence” project. For instance, in Georgia, where black voters make up 32% of the population, 68% of black voters where targeted for deterrence campaigning. In total, 54% of voters in the deterrence category were from minorities, while those votes were activity encouraged to vote were overwhelmingly white. Thus another objection to the Mail-In campaigns from flip-states are that it would be defeating one of the weapons used by the Trump and the Republican campaigning team to keep the black vote away from the polls. 

The refusal of Donald Trump to admit defeat at the polls and to encourage his supporters to storm the Capitol ahead of the formal counting of the Electoral College votes cannot be ignored. It can mean only one thing: the insurgency of the far-right in US politics is still ongoing and while they were defeated on the day, the war they are waging against democracy is not over. Some commentators are comparing Wednesday the 6th of January to Hitler’s Beer Hall Putch of 1923, which at the time was a bit of a farce but led to Hitler being given a national platform to make his party’s case during the subsequent trial. I am in little doubt that the legend of the stolen vote and storming of the Capitol is exactly what those who seek to overthrow democracy in the USA is seeking to gain from perpetuating the lies sown by Trump and the Republican National Committee.

Why do I emphasise the role of the RNC? As shown by a series of votes surrounding Biden’s confirmation as President Elect, the war within the Republican Party is ongoing. Eight Republican senators backed Trump’s version of events but, more importantly, so did 139 members of Congress. The insurgency of the Far Right into the Republican Party is far from over. Even if the Democrats are successful in getting Trump impeached and thus not able to stand for the presidency again, if his successor does not come from his immediate family, it will certainly come from one of these Congressional hopefuls. That is if the Republican Party fails to counter this takeover. So far they have failed. Today’s video appeal from Arnold Schwarzenegger to can be seen as part of the fightback of those within the Republican Party who still support the democratic process. Those 147 elected members of Congress and Senate who still back Trump may also support democratic methods, but they also seem quite willing to back undemocratic methods too. 

One last reflection on the events of the 6th of January. Many have already noted that compared to the response to the Black Lives Matter protests, the police response to the storming of the Capitol was muted to say the least. There has been much evidence that the far-right has been working very hard to infiltrate the police and military. There must have been hope that instead of resisting the invasion, the police on duty would have actively gone over to side with the insurrection. That did not happen but it cannot be taken for granted that it will always be the case. Rather than “defund the police” a much more urgent case can be made to deradicalise the police: that is root out those members would willingly back the overthrow of the US Constitution. I would expect that in light of how the invasion played out, the fascist insurgences will redouble efforts to get more of the nation’s security forces over to their side.

So while the far-right insurgency in the United States has stalled for now, one must not make the mistake that the removal of Trump from the presidency is the end of the matter. It isn’t. The fight against authoritarianism must be the leading task of the Biden presidency. It will take many forms, including improving the lives of Americans who have lost out in the current system. All policies must have the common thread of fighting to support democracy and improve the lives of all Americans. Otherwise, the high ideals of the USA may well be lost forever.

  

 

Statues and Empire

I once had an idea. Take pictures of all the statues in Edinburgh and then research their stories. Who are these people? How did they come to prominence and who is it that thought so highly of them that they raised the funds necessary for a statue, often in a prime location? Then I was going to stick it all on an app and flog it to Edinburgh’s many tourists as a series of walking tours. Naturally I did nothing of the kind and, with the current demonstrations in support of Black Lives Matter, I am kind of glad the effort necessary was put into other projects. Another side of me wished I had done it because I would have been in a prime position to give an informed view on whose monument is based upon the fruits of slavery. 

There are many that say you don’t need statues to tell history. For the history of the individual who is being commemorated, that is perfectly true. We don’t need statues of either Hitler or Stalin to tell their stories. But they are terrible examples to hold up. For one thing, both were being honoured in life as part of a totalitarian cult of personality. Their statues were built on order of the state. The case of Edward Colston, whose image in bronze was torn down by demonstrators on the 7th of June 2020, is far more interesting. That particular statue was not erected until 1895, one hundred and seventy years after Colston’s death. There was no state directive to be obeyed, no one was impelled by the threat of force to do this. What Colston’s statue is is hard evidence that the values of late Victorian Britain held up someone who had build their fortune upon the trading of mass human kidnapping and enslavement as someone whose virtues outweighed these crimes.
Of course, I am looking at Colston’s statue through the eyes of a 21st. Century liberal. It is quite possible that those who erected the Colston statue did not either know of his links to the slave trade or, if they did, that they did not care nor even regard it as a crime at all. 

Now, before I continue, am I outraged that Colston’s statue took a dip in the River Avon? Not particularly. I certainly don’t think anyone should be charged with criminal damage for this. It is clear from media accounts that there was a long-standing local campaign to have the statue removed and that parts of the Bristol establishment consistently vetoed its removal. Throwing that statue into the river is totally understandable. What worried me is what comes next.

“What comes next” has already started. The weekend of 13th of June has seen violence on the street as far-right activists have appeared on our streets “to defend the statues”. The recorded fact that these people throwing straight-armed Nazi salutes and punches at the police who were actually defending The Cenotaph and Whitehall cannot be mistaken for anything else but intimidation, designed to keep Black Lives Matter supporters off the streets. 

A bit more of a genteel example was the gathering in Poole, Dorset, to defend the statue of Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts movement.  Anti-colonial campaigners would point out that Baden-Powell was charged with the illegal execution of Matabele prisoners of wars. He was acquitted of any crime but that might well have been a reflection of values of the day and that the the prisoners were black, for they were certainly shot. Baden-Powell’s statue was also a possible target because of his encouragement of the Hitler Youth movement and recorded admiration for Mein Kampf. This did not stop B-P ending up on the Nazi’s infamous “Black Book” list. The truth is always more complicated. The Scout movement has, and continues to do, much good in the formation of young people across the globe. 

So what is at risk here is a proxy war between racists and human rights campaigners, with a new battlefield being over lumps of carven sandstone and moulded bronze. There has to be a better way and there is. It is called education and it is at the heart of Black History Month. It is a profound criticism of history teaching in the United Kingdom that there has to be a Black History Month at all. The British Empire is fundament to 19th Century global history but is only part of the picture.
Naturally one has to be selective about the history taught to children, purely based upon time available but one has to worry about the flow and material. While I was studying my A level in the subject (The Cold War is already being taught in some current syllabi) I pretty well just got modern history 1880 until 1945. There was also options on the Late Anglo-Saxon period and the Norman invasion. All good stuff but apart from the naval arms race in response to German demands for “A Place in the Sun”, empire did not really feature. My daughter’s more recent exposure to history education in Scotland, covered the medieval wars of independence from England, The Scottish Enlightenment, World War Two and the US Civil Rights in 1960s America. Upon checking the BBC Bitsize GCSE history site, the AQA board specifically teaches empire, and OCR teaches immigration. The rest do not. 

Black History Month is more that British and Empire history and that is fine. A lot of black history is British history too. Whether it is the slaves, sugar, tobacco and cotton triangle between Britain, West Africa and the Americas, or the plantation of people from the Indian continent into East Africa, it is really history that everyone in the UK needs to know about. Fortunes were created which went to build up cities like Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow and London. Individuals were glorified which brings us back to the statues. 

Not all statues are worthy of preservation but how is that to be judged? Some would say take them all down, others keep ‘em all up. Others say preserve them in a museum. None are perfect solutions and the museum solution could end up costing a lot of money. I have a possible compromise which does not lead to destruction. Monuments dedicated to those directly in the slave trade should be removed. Space for them can be made in a local park - not in a prominent place - and the monuments displayed together with explanations of their history. The history should be the good, bad, downright monstrous and why others thought these people worthy of honour. Such a grouping can be used to educate school parties as part of British and Empire history: that should be part of the history curriculum. The freed up spaces in our city centres can be used to honour later generations.

What of the really famous figures? Nelson who married into a rich plantation family in Nevis and defended the slave trade? Wellington defeated Napoleon but he gained his military experience in India. According to Elisabeth Longford, the sacking of Mysore in 1799 brought the young Arthur Wellesley a £50,000 share of the spoils (equivalent to £5.7million today), paid by the East India Company. This was all legal. Wellesley himself was concerned with the common soldiery looting, having several flogged and four hanged. Churchill was prime minister during the 1943 Bengal famine as supplies were shipped to feed Britain and our armies. Did Churchill set out to kill three million people? Almost certainly not but appears to have been callously indifferent to their fate.  These histories should be known but for their service to the nation, the honour also remains.

The key does remain with education and I suggest that even the controversial monuments have their role in this. Statues erected willingly by choice, as opposed to those erected by totalitarian regimes, have their place. It just may not be where they were originally placed. 

The real issue is that the people of the United Kingdom, all of us, are going to have to face up to our own history. There are times when it was not honourable, never mind glorious and victorious. Some of time we were the downright bad guys and, in terms of human rights, sometimes not so bad. The important thing is that we are taught it, as Cromwell might have said, warts and all.