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The Nation: Trump's Next Term Will Make His Historical Revisionism Official
The Nation - (archive: https://archive.ph/KKHl6 ) Trump’s Next Term Will Make His Historical Revisionism Official
The president-elect continues to escape accountability for his election denialism and endorsement of the January 6 insurrection.
Chris Lehmann
Politics / January 6, 2025
Instant rewrites of history are an American specialty, as anyone familiar with the career arc of Oliver North or the buildup to the second US invasion of Iraq can readily affirm. Still, on the fourth anniversary of the deadly and delusional uprising at the US Capitol, we’re poised for an unprecedented chapter in the annals of our self-induced amnesia: A concerted bid to overturn the results of a free and fair presidential election will not simply be memory-holed in a second Trump administration; it will be a transformed into a noble civic undertaking.
This was always going to be a key ideological aim of a Trump-led GOP restored to triumphant power: The forces of January 6 revisionism already guided MAGA election strategy during the 2022 midterms, when the party put election-denying candidates before a majority of the electorate. And after Trump announced his candidacy for reelection in 2023, his first rally, in Waco, Texas, featured a modified version of the national anthem called “And Justice for All,” sung by convicted participants in the coup attempt performing as “The J6 Choir.” (The song also featured Trump himself reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, showing that he possesses no practical understanding of the phrase “the republic for which it stands” or the pledge’s socialist provenance.)
During his reelection campaign, Trump referred to the insurrection as a “day of love”—surely news to the seven people who died and the 150 others injured in connection with the attack, to say nothing of the hundreds of lawmakers evacuated under the threat of violence. He has also pledged to pardon the thousand-plus rioters convicted on charges stemming from the coup attempt, calling them “patriots,” “hostages,” and “political prisoners.” That prospect stands out in stark relief against the Trump White House’s plans to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants at the outset of the new administration: Violent and unconstitutional MAGA impunity is to be rewarded and glorified, while a vast population of foreign-born workers will be stigmatized and stripped of their livelihoods, homes, and family ties.
What’s more, the Trump administration will target the public figures who sought to create some measure of accountability for the coup attempt. Trump has called for the jailing of members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Trump’s nominee to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, has endorsed the “fedsurrection” conspiracy theory, which baselessly contends that FBI agents stoked the failed coup in an effort to discredit the MAGA movement. (Patel also helped produce the recording of the J6 Choir’s single release of “And Justice for All.”) A Patel-led FBI would likely be an eager helpmeet of Trump’s rolling campaign of political retribution, particularly since Patel also wants to sever the intelligence arm of the bureau from its law-enforcement functions—a ploy that would greatly increase the White House’s influence over the bureau’s operations.
To draw attention to the overlapping threats of January 6 erasure and an executive branch seeking to prioritize political vengeance, State Democracy Defenders Action, a bipartisan nonprofit group focused on issues of election sabotage and autocracy, held a press event ahead of the January 6 anniversary and the convening of the 119th Congress. Tom Jocelyn, a Republican counterterrorism specialist who was a principal author of the January 6 Committee’s final report, cited Trump’s final weeks in office during his first term—the period during which he promulgated false claims of election fraud and invited supporters to converge on the centers of power in Washington—as a reminder that he will resume the powers of the presidency as a strongman figure courting unquestioning devotion. “Trump has already demonstrated that he will behave as an autocrat and that he will abuse the powers of the executive branch,” Jocelyn said. “Not only does Trump demand servility and fealty, but he also demands this whitewashing of January 6 and scapegoating and blaming others for it.”
/snip
The president-elect continues to escape accountability for his election denialism and endorsement of the January 6 insurrection.
Chris Lehmann
Politics / January 6, 2025
Instant rewrites of history are an American specialty, as anyone familiar with the career arc of Oliver North or the buildup to the second US invasion of Iraq can readily affirm. Still, on the fourth anniversary of the deadly and delusional uprising at the US Capitol, we’re poised for an unprecedented chapter in the annals of our self-induced amnesia: A concerted bid to overturn the results of a free and fair presidential election will not simply be memory-holed in a second Trump administration; it will be a transformed into a noble civic undertaking.
This was always going to be a key ideological aim of a Trump-led GOP restored to triumphant power: The forces of January 6 revisionism already guided MAGA election strategy during the 2022 midterms, when the party put election-denying candidates before a majority of the electorate. And after Trump announced his candidacy for reelection in 2023, his first rally, in Waco, Texas, featured a modified version of the national anthem called “And Justice for All,” sung by convicted participants in the coup attempt performing as “The J6 Choir.” (The song also featured Trump himself reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, showing that he possesses no practical understanding of the phrase “the republic for which it stands” or the pledge’s socialist provenance.)
During his reelection campaign, Trump referred to the insurrection as a “day of love”—surely news to the seven people who died and the 150 others injured in connection with the attack, to say nothing of the hundreds of lawmakers evacuated under the threat of violence. He has also pledged to pardon the thousand-plus rioters convicted on charges stemming from the coup attempt, calling them “patriots,” “hostages,” and “political prisoners.” That prospect stands out in stark relief against the Trump White House’s plans to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants at the outset of the new administration: Violent and unconstitutional MAGA impunity is to be rewarded and glorified, while a vast population of foreign-born workers will be stigmatized and stripped of their livelihoods, homes, and family ties.
What’s more, the Trump administration will target the public figures who sought to create some measure of accountability for the coup attempt. Trump has called for the jailing of members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Trump’s nominee to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel, has endorsed the “fedsurrection” conspiracy theory, which baselessly contends that FBI agents stoked the failed coup in an effort to discredit the MAGA movement. (Patel also helped produce the recording of the J6 Choir’s single release of “And Justice for All.”) A Patel-led FBI would likely be an eager helpmeet of Trump’s rolling campaign of political retribution, particularly since Patel also wants to sever the intelligence arm of the bureau from its law-enforcement functions—a ploy that would greatly increase the White House’s influence over the bureau’s operations.
To draw attention to the overlapping threats of January 6 erasure and an executive branch seeking to prioritize political vengeance, State Democracy Defenders Action, a bipartisan nonprofit group focused on issues of election sabotage and autocracy, held a press event ahead of the January 6 anniversary and the convening of the 119th Congress. Tom Jocelyn, a Republican counterterrorism specialist who was a principal author of the January 6 Committee’s final report, cited Trump’s final weeks in office during his first term—the period during which he promulgated false claims of election fraud and invited supporters to converge on the centers of power in Washington—as a reminder that he will resume the powers of the presidency as a strongman figure courting unquestioning devotion. “Trump has already demonstrated that he will behave as an autocrat and that he will abuse the powers of the executive branch,” Jocelyn said. “Not only does Trump demand servility and fealty, but he also demands this whitewashing of January 6 and scapegoating and blaming others for it.”
/snip
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
What a way to shirk responsibility... write an op-ed about it and then go on to something else. 
(and yes, it is all of our responsibility to prevent this from happening, but, still... )
