It is difficult to forget the iconic picture of the racist, homophobic and xenophobic mob that stormed Capitol Hill on January 6. The objective was to put pressure on the US Senate not to certify Joe Biden’s election though it is a largely ceremonial but necessary event. It is not a case of exceptional deviation but an advance warning for every country where the leadership has a problem of accepting diversity and people would like to play ball with mythmaking.
It is beyond any doubt that the US, which was a deeply divided society, was held together by rule of law, institutions, decorum and political savviness. Its constitutionalism faced deep faultlines when a barbaric belief system was encouraged to trump the rule of law. It was both a function of historical overhang and inappropriate stirring of the mob.
Why did it happen? Is it because Donald Trump as the president moulded the opinion of the white people as such? Citizens’ mental space is not a “tabula rasa” nor it is like moulding clay. It is nonetheless moldable by directing already developed minds by way of reinforcing what they are predisposed to. Trump got 11 million more votes compared to his 2016 tally, even though it was seven million votes less than Biden’s. But the former’s claim of the election being stolen was almost a spectral vision though it was an incontrovertible loss for Trump, whose lies had fed the grievances of his supporters. Clearly, Trumpism has prospered on marketing a lie that he was a victim among his acolytes despite it being baloney.
Trump, with his myriad weaknesses, spoke convincingly to something in those 71 million people. The belief was that white people are supreme and the US is only for them. He instilled the fear which majoritarian leaders often reinforce. The fear of the minority and the deep-rooted anxiety that the minority would take away something which the majority holds. It is based on the fear of the “other” too.
Post-9/11 inflammation of fear was strategic but not the same. For that matter, any supremacist or majoritarian view is premised on fears of “others” becoming equal or even surpassing “us”. An underdog fixation is planted and everyone always looked to paint herself as an underdog. Though even a white working class person is not worse off than a working class person of colour, Trump in turn had offered to end the “American carnage”. It required building up a cult-like figure who gave the assurance that their anxiety was correct and he was the one to defend them.
But the subscript was he required a kind of authority, unfettered and unaccountable. Majority insecurity is often heightened by these populist figures relentlessly pointing to the alleged “appeasement” of the minority, often propped by social media.
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Anarchy very often helps tyrants because the latter can address the worst instincts of a mob because he himself is ruled by these same instincts, says the Economist.
US President Donald Trump gives an address, a day after his supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington. Photo: Donald J. Trump/Twitter via Reuters
Pervasive mythmaking
Democracies have their institutions to calm those anxieties down. Debate and deliberation in the legislature tone down the inflammation. But if someone who is stewarding the ship stokes hateful sentiments and undermines democratic institutions, the latter will clearly prove themselves to be unequal in keeping pace. Everything said and done, democracies are not built to handle the combination of lies, half-truths and mythmaking without checks and balances.
Every nation and regime is built on some well-meaning, sometimes innocuous and often expedient mythmaking. The US was built on the myth of white homogeneity, which was Janus faced with supremacy. This led to native Americans being pushed to the reservations. Slavery enabled the continuance of exploitation and racial prejudices.
Whether it is acknowledged or not, genocides did happen in both events. This was the background of the nation’s mythmaking of the ‘land of the free and bounty’. Both the monikers were for the European settlers until 1961, when Black people were given civil rights. But deep discriminations continued relentlessly because of the design of the structure. Resultantly, slavery could be abolished but not the related myths harboured in the societal structure.
This was fertile ground for history to be twisted to make the interpretation parochial and inward-looking. The myth attained a life of its own when the protector became a predator and institutions were becoming sclerotic.
It only required someone like a president to decorate it with yarn, heightening majority supremacist feeling directly or indirectly. Others will be around to twist facts, making hateful attributions and drawing convoluted conclusions from the correct facts. These are ingredients of mythmaking and they will have to go on regardless to sustain themselves.
Ironically, this myth was hurting white people too, with exacerbating economic and racial inequality. Rule of law can be roadblocked here. But given that institutions can be captured, it becomes a glide path when the impediments are either attenuated or removed. Everyone involved in this lie was wrong that mobs can be confined to the designated side of the political spectrum when they were being instigated.
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Every society runs the risk of falling into this trap which we saw in the US. Instead of the country trying to be better, it starts looking inward, convinced that attempts to progress are of second-order importance. Meanwhile, that part of the stagnating society keeps on protesting even if they are more privileged.
Mere hoarding of rights, wealth and privilege cannot take the country forward. This is evidenced by China sneaking up on the US, in terms of trade, manufacturing and military, while the US was busy playing on the fears of the relatively better off. Fragmented societies find it difficult to be prosperous societies because there is too much suspicion and a lot more violence.
The learning should be to make societies less divisive and not to hammer it into a homogeneous template. It is the job of the leadership to mediate to keep things calm, understanding sober and discourse civil. In no event should they be tempted to stoke the fire of anxiety. If they do, the country will be in peril, hurtling down the path of no return.
Meanwhile, nurturing democratic institutions, mitigating too much inequality, taming money in politics and enabling checks and balances suffer endlessly. Is the politics of the 21st century ready for a rewind? That is the question.
Satya Mohanty is former secretary to the Government of India. With inputs from Sukanya Mohanty, an independent social commentator. Views are personal.