Jan. 6, Donald Trump & Fascism: Warren Wilson Weighs In
Sierra Davis & Quinn Bonney | January 27, 2022
“We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s capital for one very, very basic and simple reason,” said former President Donald Trump eight minutes into his infamous noon speech. “To save our democracy.”
Quinn Bonney
Bonney in attendance at the MAGA march as a photojournalist.
Just over a year ago on January 6, 2021, a premeditated siege of the U.S. Capitol to “stop the steal” of the presidential election took place. Though this date normally goes unnoticed by the masses, January 6 is the day joint congress counts electoral college votes. However, last year the events of the day were headed by a Trump speech and followed by a Make America Great Again (MAGA) march ending in the infiltration of the Capitol building.
While many Warren Wilson College (WWC) community members were watching and listening in their own parts of the world, one community member was in the midst of the chaos as a journalist. Quinn Bonney, a photojournalist for The Echo and first-year, was working as a press photographer for publications in central Virginia, covering civil rights and political marches for the last year and a half. While searching for ledes, Bonney saw message boards discussing a march on January 6 that would end in a siege of the Capitol “by all means necessary.”
Initially, everything seemed like other MAGA rallies that Bonney had covered, but then the noon speech from Donald Trump began.
“It seemed like a little picnic party,” Bonney said. “Then Trump spoke. If that wasn’t the scariest speech I’ve ever heard. … And Trump was, in as few words as possible, egging them on, … and people were getting riled up, for sure.”
This speech consisted of many themes citizens have grown to associate with the Trump presidency: the “China virus,” fake news, voter fraud, Big Tech, the radical left and the bad republicans. This speech also harped on patriotism, tradition and strength in the face of criticism. Though this attack on the Capitol was planned prior to January 6 to varying arguable degrees, Trump’s words of encouragement validated his loyal followers and got them revved and ready for what was to follow.
“Just remember this,” Trump cooed to his followers. “You’re stronger, you’re smarter, you’ve got more going than anybody, and they try and demean everybody having to do with us, and you're the real people. You’re the people who built this nation. You’re not the people that tore down our nation.”
Trump went on to say something one could find in a dystopian fiction, given the context.
“Our country has had enough and we will not take it anymore, that’s what this is all about. … And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”
Quinn Bonney
Former President Donald Trump giving his speech prior to the march to the Capitol building.
Around 1 p.m., congress was preparing to finalize the election results in favor of Joe Biden. Just outside, the Capitol grounds were breached and barriers were broken by emboldened Trump supporters clashing with police officers. At 2:12 p.m., the first rioters entered the Capitol building. By 3 p.m., the joint session was closed, senators were evacuated, one woman was fatally shot, and D.C. police have called for outside assistance. Rioters inside destroyed property and attacked the Capitol police in an effort to locate legislators. Seemingly, everyone but those parading through the U.S. Capitol and Donald Trump, who did not ask for his supporters to go home until 4:17 p.m., was ill-prepared.
“While I was there I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, I’m witnessing history in person,’” Bonney said. “I called my mom and told her ‘Hey mom, they’re raiding the Capitol.’”
This day, which many were not expecting, is now known as the worst assault on the Capitol building since the War of 1812 with the riot being classified as an attempted insurrection, a failed coup and domestic terrorism. Though there were previous talks of a possible election disruption during the campaign, Kyle Cole, a WWC professor of journalism, says news coverage dropped at a critical time.
“... Up until the election, there was a lot of coverage about how this election could be disrupted and everything,” Cole said. “And then once the election occurred, and Biden was named president, the coverage really dropped. You know, there wasn't much and then all of a sudden you get these inklings about people reporting about (how) January 6 is a big day. … So, until a day or two before, I think journalists started realizing that democracy was at stake. … It's one thing to say it on the blog, and another thing to actually get out and act. I think on January 6, people showed a certain segment of society was ready to act in a big, public way.”
While many viewing and listening to this monumental event were in shock and disbelief at what they were witnessing, some felt they were re-living history. Liz Colton, diplomat and journalist-in-residence of WWC, explains this is something the country has faced before.
“In the civil rights time and during the Vietnam war, in which I was very active, the country was split in half just as it is now, where people couldn't talk to their own families, whether about civil rights issues or war issues,” Colton said. “The cities were burning. I point this out not to say ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve been through this.’ I am saying we have survived this before and that’s why I have hope. It’s a pretty dismal view right now to see the country split … people not able to agree on anything. I remember cities burning, people protesting, people going to jail, students shot down and killed. It was a rough time. These things come and ideally go, people come together for at least a little while, then it maybe blows up again.”
Quinn Bonney
Woman holds sign saying “Stop the Steal.”
However, no matter the optimism that comes from this sentiment, the lack of accountability the country has for those higher in power does not bode well. Even during the Watergate scandal, Colton felt justice was eventually dealt.
“The people and media have raised the question ‘Is justice doing its work?’” Colton said. “… It doesn’t appear to be on the scale it should be for such a crisis situation in our history. Without some kind of accountability, there is encouragement for something like that happening again.”
Ben Feinberg, anthropology professor and creator of the WWC class, the making of Trump’s America, shares a similar sentiment to Colton. Feinberg, on the other hand, is much less optimistic about whether there ever will be true accountability where it matters.
“It doesn't really look as though Trump himself or his inner circle is gonna ever face any kind of accountability,” Feinberg said. “Which makes it seem as though there were these bad, violent kinds of people, but ignores people with a greater responsibility.”
Feinberg notes that this lack of accountability is a bit of a slippery slope for the U.S. to go down, especially coupled with the fascist and Nazi-like rhetoric of the ex-president displayed both before and on January 6.
“He’s not going away, and if he does happen to have a heart attack from eating too many hamburgers or whatever, what he represents has not gone away,” Feinberg said. “Because there’s a lot of historical patterns behind it, it’s not saying that kind of a full descent into complete authoritarian fascism is inevitable, nothing is inevitable, but we’re still being affected by gravity pulling us toward an unfortunate direction unless something really transformative happens from the other side.”
Some may call this pessimism, but Feinberg’s view is largely based on the fact that these actions are not as new as many say they are. According to him, and many others who study American history and politics, the race-based entitlement to violence to preserve the interests of a privileged class is nothing mind-reeling — the only thing new is that it was able to happen on a national-government level.
“Just in the big picture, right, we have society with this incredible concentration of wealth,” Feinberg said. “And you’ve had a bipartisan commitment to preventing any kind of alternative to that. … The same forces that have made any alternative to neoliberal capitalism impossible have kind of made fascism inevitable. … The lack of any alternative that suggests that we’re in it together and that we can prevent this concentration of wealth benefits the people who want to use scapegoats to say the real threat is immigrants or people of color.”
On the other hand, it’s becoming more clear by the day that you don’t just need a college degree to be worried, according to recent polls. An NPR/Ipsos poll reports that 64% of Americans are concerned over U.S. democracy being "in crisis and at risk of failing." The same poll states that only 65% of Americans accept the outcome of the conspiracy-laden 2020 election, and when looking at those consuming largely right-wing news, the numbers drop to less than half.
Other surveys convey slightly differing numbers: an Axios-Momentive survey reported that only 55% of Americans believe Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 election. This same survey suggests that 53% of U.S. adults believe tensions are higher than ever before, and don’t see these tensions subsiding any time soon.
These numbers, as surprising and maybe even frightening they may be, are not unexpected when dealing with authoritarianism. As Cole mentioned, Donald Trump was beyond media savvy for his target audience, and he knew social media posts would greet the masses without going through press and PR officials consistently. Feinberg also commented on Trump’s ability to create truth, the only truth, for his followers tethered to the scapegoating and anti-media slander that is prime real estate for a fascist label.
“Fascism in the United States is nothing new, right? I would say that fascism is an American tradition,” said Feinberg. “It's there, and I don't really have a problem with naming it when it's relevant.”
With these worrying statistics and events of the past year, it’s hard for many to see the other side the country will eventually come out on — whether that side is considered good or bad. While Colton remains hopeful about the future, believing truth will come about in the upcoming years, Cole is less optimistic of the near future. However, he shares the sentiment that down the road things will clear up in the political forecast, though he doesn’t suspect that will happen until maybe a decade down the road.
“I think you have to, sometimes you have to go through hell to get to the otherside.”
Feinberg and Bonney hold similar predictions moving forward — grey skies and turbulent times ahead. Bonney explained his work in civil rights media has largely influenced his grim perspective of the American political sphere.
“As soon as I graduated high school, I went right into the civil rights movement as a journalist, and, I don’t want to say ‘the things I’ve seen,’ but the attitudes people carry themselves with are frightening,” Bonney said. “People have no respect for human lives. They will say the most violent and grotesque things about people only because they have slightly different viewpoints. If those people are going to be around, they always will be around. It’s generational. … At January 6, I saw people with their families — there were just kids out there. They were chanting with their families. … It made me feel very bad about future generations.”
Quinn Bonney
Insurrectionists scaling the outer wall of the U.S. Capitol.
Feinberg gave a breakdown of how he sees the next few years playing out, calling on the historian Timothy Snyder for inspiration.
“I think in 2022, a republican party completely dominated by Trumpist ideology will come back to power in congress,” he said. “I think there’s a really great chance then that he (Trump) will come back to the presidency in 2024. … I think there will be a lot of people who want to, what Snyder calls, ‘obey and advance,’ and that means attacking the people they think the leader wants you to attack, and I think if he (Trump) or people who share his role within the Republican party fully come back to power in the next few years, I think that they will be emboldened to make much greater and dangerous and violent threat than they did the first time. So, I’m not particularly optimistic about the future.”
Despite this dejected view, Feinberg urges people to keep democratic values and spirits in mind during these trying times. Bonney, though, hopes he never has to document history in this context again.