Hold Friends and Family to Account for Supporting Insurrection

Credit: Win McNamee
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The fascist insurrection in Washington D.C on January 26 was encouraged and incited by President Donald Trump, there is no denying this. This mob intended to overturn the results of a free and fair election, and evidence suggests that at least some in this mob intended to execute members of congress. Several insurrections were photographed with weapons and zip cuffs. Bombs were planted at the DNC and RNC headquarters. A gallows was erected in front of Capitol Hill. A truck full of weapons and explosives was found.

There have been discussions in his cabinet to invoke the 25'th Amendment; Representative Ilhan Omar (D. MI) has drawn up articles of impeachment; several Trump administration officials have resigned over the insurrection. This is the least of what needs to happen, but it's a start. 

However, those at the top are not the only ones who need to be held to account for the insurrection and terror that this fascist has wrought on our nation. Those at the bottom need to be held to account as well. And those at the bottom are our friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers.

A very salient, engrained, and dangerous fascist movement has taken hold in the United States. Even when Trump and his collaborators are gone, the 74 million people that voted for him are not going to disappear. Those that have supported the terror, the white supremacy, the fascism, the negligence, the brutality, the racism of this administration need to be held to account for the fact that they helped to make this happen through their votes.

I am in no way suggesting that these people should be arrested (unless they were among the insurrectionists) or met with violence. They exercised their right to vote just as we did. However, they should have to answer for why they support someone who caged children in concentration camps, who pressured a foreign leader to interfere in our election, who pressured and threatened the Georgia secretary of state to falsify election results, who actively downplayed the severity of the pandemic that he knew was going to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, who purposely let the virus spread in blue states so as to hurt his political opponents, who used secret police and paramilitary forces to arrest peaceful people protesting police brutality and systemic racism on American streets, who committed and continues to commit crimes against the American people every day. 

I say all of this with a lot of privilege. My bubbles, both physical and virtual, keep me insulated from the worst of these beliefs. I no longer live in the United States. I face no threat of the loss of familial and fraternal relationships. I have it easy and I have asked a lot of all of you, especially those that live in and among these fascist enablers. However, if we don't face this reckoning, if we don't make these beliefs intolerable and inexcusable, if we don't face the very real, existential threat to our democracy, then we will lose it, and the blood will continue to flow.