Explosive testimony suggests Trump was set on a coup that evokes America's darkest hour

[marmar]

Explosive testimony suggests Trump was set on a coup that evokes America’s darkest hour
Sarah Churchwell

The 6 January hearings already confirm a plan for insurrection and recall the civil war and its ‘lost cause’ aftermath
Sun 3 Jul 2022 03.30 EDT


(Guardian UK) ‘I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan, and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists of 6 January 2021,” declared congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the select committee, as he opened the 6 January hearings last month.

That drop of American history was quickly lost in the cloudburst to come, the extraordinary revelations culminating last week in the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows. But Thompson opened proceedings with that reminder for a very good reason: because the 6 January insurrection did not merely resemble the dark history of the civil war and its aftermath, it continued it. “Some people are trying to deny what happened,” Thompson added. “To whitewash it. To turn the insurrectionists into martyrs. But the whole world saw the reality of what happened on January 6th. The hangman’s gallows sitting out there on our National Mall. The flag of that first failed and disgraced rebellion against our union, being paraded through the Capitol.”

The denial that followed that first disgraced insurrection – the civil war – was a myth-making disinformation campaign known as the “lost cause”. Slavery, southern apologists said, was a mere pretext for the war, which, they insisted, was started by an aggressive and spiteful north, much as Trump and his defenders claimed for many months that the 6 January insurrection was, in fact, planned and carried out by antifa.

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In 1934, a retired major general named Smedley Darlington Butler testified before Congress that he had been approached in 1933 by America’s financial leaders to spearhead a coup against Franklin Roosevelt, a plan backed by the American Liberty League. Butler said he was asked to mobilise an army of disgruntled veterans to march on Washington and install a military fascist dictatorship.

Butler was widely accused of being a fantasist and historians later followed suit in suggesting that the Business Plot, as it was known, was an empty threat that shouldn’t have been taken seriously. Many said the same thing about Trump – until the events of 6 January. Historian Robert O Paxton, for example, America’s pre-eminent expert on fascism, had long resisted calling Trump a fascist, but wrote in the wake of the insurrection that he had changed his mind.

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As the testimony of Hutchinson makes clear, Trump had done everything he could to seize the laurel crown and declare himself an American Caesar. He hasn’t given up yet – and, what is more, neither have most of his supporters. ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/03/explosive-testimony-suggest-trump-was-set-on-a-coup-that-evokes-americas-darkest-hour