US Capitol riots and Australian acting PM’s remark

Since the start of the US election cycle, Donald Trump has been drumming up conspiracy regarding election fraud, fears about mail-in-voting, and signaling a retaliatory coup within his most devoted support base. In his traditional manner of speaking in narratives rather than facts, during an address at a student rally hosted by Turning Point USA in Arizona in June of last year, he had remarked that “the Democrats are also trying to rig the election by sending out tens of millions of mail-in ballots, using the China virus as the excuse not to go to the polls.”

He had only furthered this conspiratorial narrative since, culminating in a speech he had delivered to a crowd of his enthused and radicalized ‘patriotic’ following at noon on the 6th of January prior to them storming the capitol. He used the collective animus drummed up by the stolen election narrative as a call to action and directed his following to the Capitol building and the congress people within as an expression of their ‘patriotism’ and to undermine the systems of democracy they firmly believed they were there to save. The crowd happily marched along chanting slogans such as “Hang Mike Pence!”

Following this attempted breach of American democracy, Australia's acting PM Michael McCormack, condemned the situation as ‘unfortunate’ in an interview on ABC Radio. He told the host, Sally Sara, “It is unfortunate that we have seen the events at the Capitol Hill that we’ve seen in recent days, similar to those race riots that we saw around the country last year.” Such comments were paired with a disaffiliating reluctance to condemn or even acknowledge Trump’s role in the event. Sally had pointedly asked him if he thought that “his actions and comments helped to incite that unrest” which should be obvious based on both the timeline of events and the driving narrative behind it. McCormack had responded, “Again, look, it’s unfortunate that comments were made on Twitter. It’s unfortunate that, you know, a decision has been made by the American people hasn’t been accepted by him.”

Firstly, let us consider the word “unfortunate”. While the situation definitely was unfortunate in a literal sense, leaving it at that while unable to acknowledge Trump’s role in it only serves to distance his share of the blame from the consequences of the event. Natural disasters and rare diseases are “unfortunate” whereas fanning the flames of conspiracy and watching it predictably boil over into a national security event is not. The root of their motivation to storm the capitol was their collective inability to accept the results of the election, spurred by Trump’s inability to accept the results of the election. Whether it was the countless conspiracies regarding foreign intervention and democrat collusion or the 61 lawsuits they had presented in court before 60 of them were dismissed, Trump was not ready to face the facts and his supporters followed. Bringing fortune into this obfuscates from the real causes of the siege and hand waives any involvement figures such as Trump had in bringing us here. At its core, it is a tepid and cowardly defense for Trump where McCormack is not bold enough to outright defend him but not brave enough to acknowledge his culpability either.

Next let us examine the phrase ‘race riot’. A race riot is a violent conflict between groups of two racial identities that are mutually antagonistic towards one another. What McCormack is referring to are the Black Lives Matter protests that were not about interracial antagonism, rather than the decades of unjust treatment under the justice system that black people have uniquely faced throughout American history. The Black Lives Matters protests themselves were sparked following a string of deaths of innocent black folk such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police officers who did not face immediate and just consequences for their actions. This was emblematic of an overwhelming trend of racial bias in our justice system that conservatives love to debate despite an overwhelming majority of data on the subject pointing to a clear conclusion.

There are two main levels in which this non equivocacy fails: the intention and the violence in outcome. According to a study by the ACLED, 93% of BLM protests last year were non violent but let’s ignore that for the sake of argument. To compare a protest for civil rights (violent or not) to a reactionary violent storming of the capitol fueled by conspiratorial election results denial is a false equivocacy on every level. The concerns of the groups vary wildly in validity whereas one can be supported through empirical data and analysis whereas the other relies on conspiracy and a selective denial of recent events. The responses from police also varied greatly and as a result, so did the escalation of violence. The police have repeatedly broken up peaceful demonstrations and used military tactics and equipment against the BLM protesters throughout last year whereas on the 6th they can be seen letting the insurrectionists funnel into the capitol, taking selfies with them, calmly and patiently tolerating verbal abuse and even holding their hand and walking them down the steps.

This equivocacy trivializes the legitimate concerns and realities that black Americans have to deal with in our country and portrays it as straight forward interracial aggression. This effectively reinforces a white supremacist status quo where any action to promote civil rights for racial minorities is seen as an aggression on the current system rather than an improvement on it.

The writer is a student of University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA