White Supremacy at Capitol Hill
By: Mallory Johnson
On Wednesday, January 6th, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol building in Washington, DC. They did this because United States President Donald Trump tweeted to his thousands of supporters that he did not support the results of the runoff election that was held the day before in Georgia. Trump and his supporters still believed that he won the election, even though Joe Biden won fair and square.
At this violent white supremacist protest, most of the attendees were not wearing masks. Five people died, including a police officer. Items were stolen from inside the Capitol building, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. Some arrests were made. There was a huge difference in the reaction from the police at this protest than the Black Lives Matter protests that happened in 2020. The only police officer seen defending the Capitol building was a black man.
This attack was premeditated; Trump tweeted, “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC.” Also, there were attendees wearing shirts that said, “Civil War: January 6, 2021” and a Tik Tok video posted by a Trump supporter before the protest that said, “Wait till liberals find out about Jan 6th.” This changes the charges that the attendees would get (if they are charged at all).
There was also a major lack to call the violence what it is, which is terrorism, and this might be related to the fact that the attendees were majority white people with Nazi flags and Nazi shirts on. This was the first time a confederate flag had ever been in the Capitol building.
Many attendees traveled from across the country during the current COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in them being put on no-fly lists, because of their potential COVID-19 exposure and their terrorist actions.
Trump inciting this violence resulted in him and his ideologies getting banned from many social media websites and apps. These include Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Shopify, Spotify, Pinterest, Google, Reddit, Twitch/Discord, and YouTube. Also, a few White House staffers resigned following the violence. There were calls to impeach Trump, and Democratic politicians are currently in the process of impeachment. Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20th, 2021.