Washington Outwardly, nothing is reminiscent of the terrorist attack that rocked the United States and the world a year ago. The soldiers of the National Guard, who cordoned off the Capitol after the storm of a radical mob, have gone, the barbed wire fences dismantled. But the wounds of the attack of January 6, 2021, which went down in history as an attack on US democracy, are deep.
The country is still feeling the consequences today, admitted US President Joe Biden on Thursday. He gave a speech in Congress. “At this moment we have to decide what kind of nation we want to be,” he said, framed by two US flags in the Rotunda, the historic hall under the congress dome.
“Do we want to accept political violence as the norm? Do we want to allow the voice of the people to be undermined? Do we want to be a nation that does not live in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies? “, Asked Biden and called on the citizens:” We cannot allow ourselves to be such a nation. ”
Typically, US presidents only speak in their State of the Union address on Capitol Hill. But the storming of the Capitol was a terrorist attack never seen in this form, and it was fed by the anger of America’s white middle class. The United States has never come this close to a coup in its modern history.
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Thousands of supporters of then President Donald Trump streamed into the aisles, occupied offices and boardrooms, beat police officers and inventory with baseball bats. Five dead and more than 150 injured police officers, that is the bloody outcome of the riots.
“We have to face the truth, that’s what great nations do,” warned Biden. However, the processing of the events – and the “way forward”, as Biden demanded – is more unclear than ever. Biden started with the promise to alleviate the polarization of the USA. After four years of Trump igniting nationalism, populism and lies, 78-year-old Biden wanted to try a fresh start.
Five people died in the storming of the Capitol.
(Photo: imago images / UPI Photo)
On the international stage he appears as a defender of Western values, in contrast to autocracies like Russia and China. In December the White House organized a global democracy summit.
But in his own country Biden comes up against limits with his efforts. After all, what is probably the greatest American conspiracy theory lives on in many regions of the USA: that Donald Trump was deprived of his victory due to a rigged election. A third of Americans, according to polls, have doubts about the legitimacy of the election, even though it was upheld by more than 50 courts.
Trump feeds the lie of the stolen election, in many states there is a persistent movement under the slogan “Stop the Steal”. In the important congressional elections in November, the so-called midterms, more than 160 Republicans run for offices and mandates that deny Biden’s victory. Many of them are supported by Trump, some also by the German investor Peter Thiel.
Trump is by far the largest fundraiser among the Republicans and has built a powerful network of supporters who are supposed to secure his influence in the midterms and possibly also in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump is directly to blame for the march in front of the Capitol
The then president had directly provoked the uprising and called a heated crowd within sight of the Capitol to march to Congress. A committee of inquiry collected evidence that Trump wanted to undermine the constitutional foundation of the United States in the last few meters in office and usher in the election victory.
According to Franita Tolson, an expert on suffrage at the University of Southern California, only some of the Trumpists would have to be elected to important posts in order to shake democracy in the USA again. Trump’s attempts to sabotage the election result only failed “because a row of state officials opposed it,” she told NPR.
However, one has to wait and see how much success the hardliner candidates actually have in the end, stressed the Republican strategist Whit Ayers in the “New York Times”. Although Trump is the most popular Republican, he is extremely polarizing. The ex-president could catapult candidates into success – or do exactly the opposite. “It’s a very mixed picture,” says Ayers.
Biden attacked Trump sharply on Thursday without mentioning his name in the speech. The “former president” has spanned “a web of lies” across the country, he said. “His battered ego cannot accept that he has lost the election.”
It is questionable whether Biden’s words will have any effect. His support fell rapidly in his first year in office. Quarrels within their own party block Biden’s economic agenda, and successes have become rare. “The Democrats need a miracle to avert impending election losses in November,” said Morning Consult.
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