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Street vendors selling President Donald Trump memorabilia are seen on the sidewalk near the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, January 6, 2021. /Getty
Editor's note: Harvey Dzodin is a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
Here in Vienna, Austria I woke up to the shocking news out of Washington, where I had worked in the Congress and in Jimmy Carter's administration, of what appeared to be an armed insurrection and a riot by Donald Trump's supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.
I thought it was just my nightmare that my country was still fighting the Civil War that we were taught had ended in 1865 but the attack on the Capitol and the Congress it houses was all too real and people died.
Washington had seen nothing like this since the British burned the city in the War of 1812 but in fact the American Civil War, which had its roots in slavery centuries before, is still being fought in the now "Untied" States of America.
Despite all the flowery rhetoric to the contrary like all men (and women) being created equal and endowed with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," racial hatred and intolerance have been a constant theme running through American history until this very day.
From colonial slavery to a constitution that explicitly valued slaves as three-fifths of whites to the present, the most positive observation we can make is that it's been two steps forward and one step back, and it still is. President Trump's time in office culminating with the riot he nurtured and unleashed is proof.
Trump has been egging on his followers, mostly aggrieved white, less-educated men who feel that the system has abandoned them in favor of giveaways to non-whites, even before the 2016 campaign. As a property developer, he lost many court cases based on his alleged use of a variety of dirty tricks to cruelly and illegally remove poor, Black and Hispanic tenants.
If political speech had to meet standards of truthfulness, which it doesn't, his signature "Make America Great Again" theme would have to be reconfigured to "Make White America Great Again."
Thousands of Donald Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol building following a "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, January 6, 2021. /Getty
This was obvious months into Trump's presidency at the "Unite the Right" rally in August 2017 at Charlottesville, Virginia. They were opposed by centrist and liberal groups. Trump famously said that there were "very fine people on both sides." These were the same "very fine people" who just stormed the Capitol. Many of them carried Confederate flags, symbol of an earlier treasonous insurrection based on racism.
Trump told the mob that they would "never take back our country with weakness." Moments earlier Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, urged the crowd to engage in "trial by combat" against the Democrats to win the election. If this wasn't inciting violence, then the law should decide what is.
Racism also seems to have played a major part in the inadequate police presence at the Capitol. Despite intelligence on social media about violence for weeks beforehand, not only weren't the Capitol Police prepared, but they actually turned down proffered assistance from the Defense Department of National Guards three days before the riots, and when the chaos did occur, the Trump administration was slow to respond. The Capitol Police claimed that they were prepared for "First Amendment activities," the translation of which may mean a peaceful assembly of white extremists. This is an oxymoron, if ever there was one.
By contrast, here was the complete opposite to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) summer demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere when thousands of unidentifiable guardsmen were deployed by the Trump administration against protesters, including the clearing of a path from the White House using tear gas, stun grenades and military helicopters, so that Trump could perform a photo-op in front of a church. It also reminds us that some white police in many cities in which there were BLM protests, were seen high-fiving and fist-bumping white counter-protesters.
Trump is being retired as president in less than two weeks.Racism, Trumpism and the mobs who support them, will still be a potent disruptive force that will have to be controlled, as if Joe Biden and his team don't have enough on their platter, starting with defeating the coronavirus tragedy which is another part of Trump's legacy.
Propelled by racism, the Washington insurrection has driven a stake through the very heart of the American experiment. Sadly, it appears that unless the U.S. can pull together, we may have reached the Humpty Dumpty moment where the "Untied States of America" can't be put back together again.
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