To make sense of the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol, many folks have analogized to military conflicts like the War of 1812. A better analogy is rooted in our long history of racial authoritarianism. This wasn’t war, this was a lynch mob. 1/ 👇🏽
Reuters News Pictures Editor @jimbourg tweeted “at least 3 different rioters at the Capitol say they hoped to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor.” 2/ mediaite.com/news/trump-rio…
Elements of the mob were also clearly targeting Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. 3/
A gallows with a noose was erected. Even if you think it was purely symbolic, like the Ku Klux Klan’s use of burning crosses, the symbol alone is meant to intimidate and terrorize. 4/
As CNN notes, along with Trump 2020 banners and American flags, other symbols signaled allegiance to ”white supremacist and extremist groups.” 5/
cnn.com/2021/01/09/us/…
This was mob justice, an extralegal attempt to enforce a particular social order through terror and violence. Yes, the attack was remarkable in trying to overturn a presidential election but similar tactics of collective violence are not rare in America. 6/
As activists like Ida B Wells, the NAACP and the Equal Justice Initiative have documented, there were thousands of racial terror lynchings. 7/ eji.org/reports/lynchi…
As a side note, the celebratory aspects of the attack on the Capitol are also not uncommon. Lynchings were also often festivals of violence. 8/ bookshop.org/books/a-festiv…
Why resort to collective violence? In The Roots of Rough Justice, Michael Pfeifer argues in the mid-1800s, ”white Americans seized upon lethal group violence unsanctioned by law—particularly hangings—to enforce mandates of racial and class hierarchy…” 9/ bookshop.org/books/the-root…
Other forms of mob justice also have deep roots in the US. One hundred years ago during the Tulsa Race Massacre, white vigilantes killed dozens and razed the wealthiest black community in the US. 10/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_rac…
In Buried in the Bitter Waters, Elliot Jasper documents hundreds of similar incidents in which white vigilantes targeted Black communities with collective violence to try and execute ”racial cleansings.” 11/
bookshop.org/books/buried-i…
What lessons can we learn from the past about how to counter mob justice? Pfeifer argues there was once a kind of culture war in America between two models of order: rough justice and due process. 12/
We’re in a culture war now, too. One survey found 45% of GOP voters back the attack on the Capitol. Calls for ”unity” distract from the essential challenge: systems of due process, flawed as they are, must defeat rough justice. In short, sedition must have consequences. /fin
.@DrGeniece notes an important case: ”In 1898, a group of white vigilantes—angry & fearful at newly elected biracial local government—joined forces with area militias to rain terror on Wilmington, NC, then the South’s most progressive Black-majority city.” history.com/news/wilmingto…
.@MrJohnson1942 flags an insightful thread. Author’s fifth point: ”These people are serious & they are going to keep escalating the violence until they are stopped by the force of law. There were many, many people there who were excited by the violence…”
.@bellingcat notes ”On ‘free speech’-focused social media apps like Phoenix Social Network, Parler and Spreely, there have been repeated calls for armed violence and the execution of elected political leaders over recent months.” bellingcat.com/news/americas/…
.@Delavegalaw offers a helpful legal interpretation:
My primary area of research is on civil rights protests in the 1960s. For an overview of that work, see:
For more historical context, see this piece I wrote for the Washington Post: ”Un-American? Actually, the Capitol riot was quintessentially American” washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…
.@unhillbilly recommends this podcast from the superb investigative team at @reveal in which they ”look back to the nearly forgotten election of 1898 in Wilmington, NC, where a coup d’etat gave birth to much of the structural racism that exists today.” revealnews.org/episodes/remem…
Trump’s zeal for rough justice over due process is a defining feature of his presidency. He’s egged on repression against legal protests. He’s cheered police abuse. He’s pardoned war criminals & last night his administration executed a mentally ill woman. thecut.com/2021/01/lisa-m…
New reporting finds mob justice nearly caught Pence.
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