Four years later, the consequences of our failure have just begun. The insurrection has gone international.
| JIM STEWARTSON JAN 6, 2025 |
Four years ago, I watched in horror as the violence I had warned would happen on January 6th rolled out almost exactly as predicted. This was our Beer Hall Putsch, but being planned right out in the open.
I was deeply affected by this day, as were so many other Americans. Just to think this could happen in the seat of American democracy was gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, and surreal. But to know it could, and should, have been prevented was infuriating.
However, I did feel an underlying hope. I believed that despite everything, we could finally take the opportunity — with a good man as President, and the searing memories of January 6th as our collective trauma bond — to set America back on track. The writing, after all, was right there in front of us, in blood.
I was so naive.
In 1923, Hitler tried and failed to execute a violent coup against the Weimar government. He was given a slap on the wrist and spent less than a year in prison while he wrote “My Struggle” aka Mein Kampf. Hitler learned that a coup from the outside would never succeed, so he spent the next 8 years arranging for the Weimar government to hand over total power to him voluntarily.
We are now in March 1933 and Joe von Biden is boasting about the “peaceful transfer of power” and “restoring tradition” in the Washington Post — which failed to endorse Biden’s Vice President in the election because oligarch Jeff Bezos aggressively obeyed in advance.
Recently appointed as German chancellor, Adolf Hitlergreets President Paul von Hindenburg in Potsdam, Germany, on March 21, 1933. This pose was designed to project an image of Hitler as non-threatening to the established order. This particular image is from a popular postcard. The photo also appeared widely in both the German and international press. Hitler appears in civilian dress, bowing in deference to the heavily decorated von Hindenburg. The March 5, 1933, elections had conferred legitimacy on Hitler’s leadership.
To add insult to national injury, the lame duck in the White House used the example of “a bomb” that “was found near the location of the incoming vice president, threatening her life” to tut-tut “rioters” — while the person who definitively placed the bombs is trolling me publicly on social media.
These are completely separate realities. Biden really seems to have no idea what happened four years ago, and left the power to find out for himself on the table, while ignoring the citizens who did the work of his Justice Department and FBI for him.
But the consequences of our failure go far beyond our own shores, the insurrection is now international. The half-trillionaire who bought the presidency is trying to overthrow other nations using the same methods he used in the U.S.
Most recently, he is literally trying to replace the British government in the name of “America” — using vile psychological warfare tactics.
A failed insurrection with no consequences is practice. The planners of J6 regrouped, prevented legal consequences for themselves and recruited the oligarchy to steal the next election for them.
Now they are repeating their success in the U.S. all over the world, exactly as Putin wants it.
The stark reality is that America is part of the New Axis Powers now, an agreement between fascist, expansionist, imperial dictators to slice up the world, steal our resources and enslave our citizens. This is a monster that wants to remake the planet.
With apologies to R.E.M., it really is the end of the world as we know it. The only question now is what the new world that emerges from WWIII will look like, and how many of these fascists survive it.
Happy Insurrection Day.
