The events that took place on January 6th, 2021 after the election results were announced in the US have put strain on USA’s position as the mightiest democracy. Now whether you agree with the Auth-Conservative politics of Donald Trump, or the borderline Neo-Liberal stances taken by Joe Biden and most of the DNC, we all can agree that what happened at the US Capitol was in fact, an attempted coup.
Supporters in the thousands rallied in Washington DC, with the crowd mostly chanting things like ‘WE WANT TRUMP’ and asking for a return to normalcy. One extremely important point was that almost no supporters were wearing masks, and when multiple reports asked them why, the most common responses included “We aren’t scared of this China Virus. The US is better than this!” and “This is just another flu.”
(These quotes are taken from this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN7E4xN2Ivo)
One thing that should be noted is that this rally was mainly coordinated on social media platforms, notably Twitter. During this whole ordeal, multiple news outlets, like The Washington Post attempted to reach Trump and ask for his statement, but none of this reached Donald Trump, and his adviser gave the statement: “He was hard to reach, and you know why? Because it was live TV. If it’s TiVo, he just hits pause and takes calls. If it’s live TV, he watches it, and he was watching it all unfold.”
The rally started out peaceful, with most left-leaning outlets like CNBC covering the few rowdy protesters, and right-wing news channels like FOX, mainly focusing on the peaceful side, and comparing it to the BLM protests and riots that took place during those same weeks.
Before the capitol riots though, Trump addressed the crowd, calling all Republicans, who didn’t oppose the election results ‘traitors’, which is especially ironic considering that what happened at the capitol could be considered a mass act of terror.
After the riots, Twitter banned Donald Trump, and so did other private big tech conglomerates, like YouTube (although that didn’t affect his social activity owing to the fact that his YouTube channel isn’t very active).
This move put Big Tech under a lot of scrutiny. Some republics called for the nationalization of Silicon Valley, which ironically lines more with the ‘commies’ they oppose than their own values. Twitter did not reinstate his account, further clarifying that the ban was permanent, calling the ban justified as it is against Twitter TOS to incite mass violence. This move should be questioned though, considering the fact that during the same days, coordinates riots had also occurred, with Twitter being the platform of communication. Imagine a world where a private company could cut access between the people and one of the most powerful individuals on the planet, in mere minutes. This move calls into question the power of Big Tech, especially considering that most online interactions happen on these platforms.
All in all, the capitol riots seem to be an event that will forever stain USA’s history and seems to be an event that will especially be brought up during Democratic-Republican debates.
This article is supposed to be mainly informative, with a few of my opinions peppered in. In case you think I’m biased, know that I’m a Bernie Sanders supporter, so I lost the race three months ago.
– Harshit Gupta, 9E