On January 6th, an intruder at the Washington Capitol walks with a Confederate flag at the entrance to the second floor of the Senate. On the front wall is a portrait of the abolitionist Charles Sumner. Washington/Reuters Yonhap News
▶ U.S. President Joe Biden used the word’integration’ ten times in his inauguration speech on the 20th. This is a speech made by those who are trying to overturn the results of the presidential election they have been elected at a place that was made into a sackcloth just two weeks ago. It was as if I was believing that the more I used it, the faster the integration would be. But he also admitted that “democracy is weak.” Americans have expressed pride in the oldest modern democratic system. The polarized American politics and society may be examples of democracy’s self-destructive nature. At the root of the conflict surfaced by the riots, there is a contradiction that has not been resolved during the creation and development of this country. This possibility of intensifying infighting will have a significant impact not only in the United States but also in the world as a whole.
“Sumner, I carefully read your speech twice. This is blasphemy against South Carolina and my relative Butler!” Scaringly to finish the talk, a thick cane began to strike the opponent’s body. The blood of an unconscious person stained the floor of the Senate hall. The perpetrator was Democratic Congressman Preston Brooks, and the victim was Republican Senator Charles Sumner. Fellow lawmakers tried to stop it, but the Democrats who accompanied Brooks shook pistols to stop it. It was revenge for Sumner, a free-lord from northern Massachusetts, for accusing him of “virgin rape” in his speech two days ago to turn frontier Kansas into slavery like the South. It was also an outrage for Brooks’ cousin, South Carolina Democratic Senator Andrew Butler. This is because Sumner ridiculed Butler in the same speech as Don Quixote, who possessed a pure sex slave only in my eyes. This incident, which took place on May 22, 1856, appears regularly in American history books. It’s not just because of the shocking scene. This is because it symbolizes the extreme confrontation between the North and the South, Liberalism and Slavery, Republicans and Democrats, and foreshadows a civil war five years later. 160 years after the outbreak of the Civil War, the US Capitol was occupied by intruders. The first thing that caught the attention of Americans immediately after the January 6 riots, where six people died, was a grotesque figure of a shaman named Q Anon, who is a follower of conspiracy theories, wearing half-naked fur and a horn on his head. Afterwards, the image of the person holding the Confederate flag in the capitol was emphasized. Many people say this scene is a nightmare. What is superimposed on their eyes? Kevin Sifried of Delaware was also one of the’patriots’ who occupied the Capitol. His son Hunter also went to the capitol next to his father. It was a fire that Hunter boasted that he was there too. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which was reported by Hunter’s co-worker, captured the rich man by comparing the picture of the scene with the picture of the driver’s license registration. Although he was only one in thousands of intruders, Seafried emerged as a national figure. This is because it is a Confederate army with a star drawn on an X-shaped line. Seafried stated that he had pulled the flag that was usually hung in front of his house and marched to the Capitol after attending a rally in front of the Washington Monument in front of the then-President Donald Trump. Americans are expressing shock by seeing the picture of Seafried, saying that it was not even during the Civil War. The Confederate forces once threatened Washington in July 1864, looking at the Dome of the Capitol from a distance of about 10 km. The Potomac River flowing under Washington was so urgent that President Abraham Lincoln’s emergency escape ship was waiting. However, the surprise was stopped, and the Confederate flag did not fly over the Capitol. Cyprid finally did it.
Donald Trump supporters with Confederate flags and stars and stripes confront the congressional police blasting tear gas in front of the Washington Capitol on the 6th. Washington/Reuters Yonhap News
Cyprid was not the only one who shook the Confederate flag at the rally, but the portrait taken in the background made the scene more dramatic. The protagonist of the portrait was Sumner, a famous victim of the 1856 Capitol Violence. Sumner, who had been unable to appear in the Senate for three years due to serious aftereffects, was the most radical egalitarian who struck Lincoln for being passive in abolition of slavery. Upon his death in 1874, he was honored to the point that his body was placed in the Rotunda under the dome of the Capitol. Until then, only three people, including Lincoln, who were assassinated in 1865, had been settled in Rotunda. Sumner has been watching parliamentary democracy as a portrait across the street from the Senate Assembly Hall, the scene of the assault. The US media and others lamented,’Sumner would not have imagined that the Confederate flag would fly in front of him.’ In the background of Seafried’s action, there is a fierce’symbol struggle’ that has unfolded in recent years. In the past, the Confederate flag hung in some private houses in the southern region was considered a geek. In some ways, the statue of Robert Lee, commander of the Confederate Army, was also recognized as a historical material for the country’s history, which is not long. But things changed before and after the white nationalist coalition rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, the first year of Trump. Two years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, a white supremacist killed nine people in a black church. The movement to demolish the symbol of the Confederacy, a symbol of division, has begun. In line with this, when the city authorities in Charlottesville renamed the park after General Lee to Liberation Park and tried to demolish the statue of General Lee, 20,000 people protested against it. Far-right white nationalists such as Alternative Right, New Southern Allianceists, Neo-Nazis and Neofascists from all over the country launched a riot. It was an event that showed the strength and unity of the far right, who seemed to be disastrous. The Capitol riot re-stimulated wounds and divisions. On the 25th of this month, a fence was installed around a large statue of General Lee in the center of Richmond, the capital of Virginia and the capital of the Confederacy. This is because the statue again emerged as a hot controversy immediately after the riot at the Capitol. Blacks flocked to demand the demolition, and groups that support gun ownership held a crossfire rally. The dispute over the statue of Stonewall Jackson, another confederate military hero in Charleston, West Virginia’s capital, has also reignited. In South Carolina, there is a proposal to ban the Confederate flag on license plates.
In front of the statue of Robert Lee, Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Army in the center of Richmond, the capital of the Confederate during the Civil War, protesters on the 18th are calling for the removal of the statue. Richmond/AFP Yonhap News
What happened at the Capitol, which President Joe Biden called the “Citadel of Freedom,” is a sequel and extension to the Charlottesville case. Encouraged by Trump’s rule, the white nationalists rushed to Charlottesville, desperate by his real power, and rushed to the Capitol. The person who spoke for the shock of the incident was Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former actor and former governor of California. He said he thought of Krystalnacht (a night of broken glass) when he saw the broken windows of the Capitol. Krystalnacht is a case in which Nazi troops and others destroyed synagogues and Jewish shops across Germany in November 1938 and arrested 30,000 Jews. It was a flare to signal the frenzy of Nazism. The US media has been dealing with a large amount of newly revealed facts three weeks after the incident. The scenes recorded in photos and videos are amazing, but what happened outside the camera lens is just as creepy. It is a scene of a pro-week coup, a bloody revolution, and a street purge. Among them, the report of Republican lawmakers and White House officials described a situation that was far more horrifying than it might seem. At the time, the Republican leadership, who took a gas mask and evacuated to a hideout in the Capitol, called and begged the president to be stopped by anyone who could reach him, including Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka. ‘We have been loyal to Trump. I will cast a vote against the electoral corps voting certification.’ In particular, it was later revealed that Vice President Mike Pence, who was the chairman of the Senate, escaped anger due to a slight difference. Pence, his wife, and his daughter were evacuated one minute before the intruders struck the entrance to the Senate area. The first hideout was only 30m away from the intruders. Intrusive particles shouted, “Where is the fence” and “Let’s hang the fence.” The stimulus was that Trump accused him on Twitter during their march, saying, “Pence doesn’t have the courage to do what it deserves to keep our country and the Constitution.” Trump was passive even though his aides begging for their lives less than 3km away. I couldn’t even make a direct phone connection. He is said to have been obsessed with broadcasting on-site at the Capitol. One aide reported that Trump was excited when he saw the results of his’flame and anger’. When he lost power, he was like Mao Zedong, who purged his comrades by encouraging the Red Guard.
On the 7th, a colonnade of the building stands straight through the window on the east stairway of the Washington Capitol, which was broken in the process of intrusion by Donald Trump supporters demanding a nullification as a result of the previous presidential election. Washington/EPA Yonhap News
Trump called the rioters “special people” and “great patriots.” There were also really special people. Curenon, who attracted attention because of his horned figure, is the most unique among the riot groups, but it is estimated that it has millions of followers. They believe in the claim that the Democratic Party’s pedophile traffickers dominate the United States, posted on the Internet by an anonymous person named Q in 2017. They are obsessed with absurd arguments such as “Kim Jong-un is a puppet of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).” At the scene, many people with the’Q’ mark on their clothes stood out. The group’Proud Voice’ is a neofascist group, and as the name suggests, only white men are eligible to join. They also destroyed black churches in massive protests in Washington last month. In particular, the militias who participated in the riots emerged as a direct threat. ‘Buguru’, whose members were charged with murdering police officers last year, is an organization that calls out for a second civil war with the federal government. They tried to kidnap Michigan Governor Grachen Whitmer in October of last year, but they were only attempted. It was shortly after Trump incited “Let’s liberate Michigan”, angry at Whitmer’s criticism of the White House’s response to the Corona 19 virus and taking reinforced quarantine measures. ‘Os (Vow) Keepers’ and’Three Percentres’ are also militia organizations with former soldiers and police officers as members. The t-shirt phrase ‘6MWE’, which stands out even at the scene of the riots at the Capitol, proves how extreme they are in accidents. 6MWE means ‘6 Million Wasn’t Enough’, which means we cannot be satisfied with the scale of the Nazi massacre. Publicly holding a rifle and threatening public institutions became a common sight before and after the Capitol riots. On January 6, the day the Capitol was attacked, State Secretary of State Brad Rapunsperger evacuated in a police escort from the Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia. This is because protesters armed with guns flocked to arrest him. After it was reported that Trump had called for “find my 11,780 votes,” referring to the gap between him and the Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden in Georgia in a call with Secretary Rapunsperger. Since then, armed people have also protested around state capitols in Ohio, Texas, Michigan, and Virginia. It can be seen that the rioters are just marginalized extremists. However, looking at each one, they are’normal citizens’ such as teachers, former officers, reservists, former police officers, and active duty legislators. There are also congressional police officers who have been suspended while supporting the rioters. They are increasingly armed with a common sentiment and ideology. Just as revenge for immigrants led to Germany’s Krystalnacht, the unappealing defeat of white nationalists broke the windows of the Washington Capitol. The title of the rioters’ meeting was “Stop theft.” It was Trump’s appeal to overturn the results of the fraudulent election that brought the miscellaneous group together. The sense of crisis that something was being stolen and lost triggered the uprising. The roots of that feeling can be found closely in Trump’s agitation. It can be traced far back to the political and economic polarization after the mid-1990s, and even further back to the black civil rights movement in the 1960s. The traditional hate slogan of’the corrupt elite of Washington’ and the’deep state’ conspiracy theory are also the basis of their ideology. Obsessions are finding deeper roots. Seefried’s Confederate flag symbolizes it. Southern whites were defeated in the civil war, but did not give in in their hearts, but kept the Han and the ideal under the name of’Lost Cause’. In his article, Professor David Blight at Yale University said, “The’The Lost Cause of the Southern Union’ is one of the deepest myths in American history.” The’lost cause’, which regards the southern system and culture of chivalry as a noble ideal, argues that black-and-white and gender distinction and discrimination are necessary, and that slavery has contributed more to the welfare of black people. This ideology not only contributed to overcoming the sense of defeat, but also showed great power in reality. Twelve years after the war in which more than 600,000 died, the ‘1877 Compromise’ became an opportunity to preserve the’Southern ideal’. The Republican Party, which was nearly 300,000 votes behind the Democrats in the general election of the presidential election, swapped the position of president with the’independence’ of the South. Instead of giving the White House to the Republicans, the Democratic Party in control of the South stopped federal-led reconstruction of the South and withdrew federal troops.
On July 4, 2013, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a reenactment event commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a turning point in the Civil War, is being held. Gettysburg/EPA Yonhap News
This notorious era of’Jim Krobeop’ has begun. The South promised to respect the rights of black people, but time went backwards. Black-and-white separation and discrimination were prescribed by law. Black people’s right to vote was denied because of their illiteracy and the absurd reason that they did not have the right to vote from their ancestors. Black men who barely visited the polling place were threatened with assault and murder. President John F. Kennedy’s speech condensed the situation when two black students were blocked from admission to the University of Alabama despite a 1963 court ruling, urging a civil rights law to overcome a “moral crisis”. “It’s been over 100 years since President Lincoln liberated his slaves, but his successors and grandchildren aren’t completely free,” said Kennedy. “In spite of all its hopes and pride, this country is not completely free until all citizens are free.” . The guarantee of black citizenship in the South as a result of the civil rights movement was a great step forward in American democracy. At the same time, it was a pain for the white supremacists. In addition, Asians, Hispanics, and even Jews appeared to undermine the status of whites. For them, the country was stolen. ‘Let’s get the country back’ became the slogan of white nationalists. In this regard,’theft election’ is not Trump’s original concept. It is rooted in the perception that the exercise of suffrage by unqualified people is not a concrete suspicion that election officials are manipulating the count. Fear that people who are difficult to recognize as equal citizens dominate American politics, coupled with Republican strategy, has fostered distrust in the electoral system. Republicans have been trying to lower black and immigrant turnout by strengthening their electoral status in states they dominate. It was a behavior that resembled the era of Jim Crow’s law. White nationalists, in particular, accepted the birth of the first black president in 2008 as the last days. John Calhoun, a South Carolina native, former vice president and senator of the Civil War, warned that “the political and social status of black people will be higher than white people” and that “the country will pass over to slaves.” With Barack Obama’s election, Calhoon’s’prophecy’ seemed more relevant. It was difficult to beat Obama’s popularity, so the frame was mobilized at the time as well. That is the’birther movement’. The birth certificate that Obama was born in Hawaii is falsified, and in fact, it is claimed that he was born in Kenya, his father’s motherland. For those who make such claims, the 2008 presidential election was an election that was stolen by black people who did not have the right to vote. Trump also took the lead in the Berser movement. Trump won the 2016 presidential election, but claimed that millions of votes were stolen, leaving behind Hillary Clinton in the general vote. The 2020 presidential election, which failed re-election, is an election that has been more stolen by him and his supporters.
Republican Party
The rise of extreme right politics, characterized by racism and deterrence, is not unique to the United States. Even in Europe, far-right political parties have grown up. However, even though some of the far-right political parties in Europe are not growing enough to dominate state affairs in general, even if some have set foot in the coalition government. Meanwhile, there is no party in the United States that can be clearly defined as an extreme right party. If so, the risk of extreme right politics in the United States may be considered less, but the story will be different if the Republican Party, which has taken power in turn with the Democratic Party in the United States, which is a model of two-party politics, becomes a far right party.
※ Click the image to see it larger.
The reinforcement of the color of the far right of the Republican Party is based on deepening confrontation with the Democratic Party and political and social polarization. Cross-voting in the parliament disappeared, and the legislators of both parties became a big success following the party argument. The filibuster trying to block the other party’s legislative law has been aggravated and emotional confrontation has intensified. This phenomenon coincided with the weakening of common interests and values as the support bases of both parties have diverged over the decades. The Republican Party attracted conservative whites and Protestants from the South, while the Democratic Party consolidated support from East and West coastal states and ethnic minorities. The decisive turning point was the Republican Party’s’Southern Strategy’ in the 1960s. The Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) were enacted, and the Republican Party, formerly Lincoln’s party, embraced the southern Democrats and took on a racist color. The problem is that it ran too far to the right. That made Trump president and called the Capitol riot. After Trump’s rule, the Republican Party is being evaluated to stand shoulder to shoulder with the European far-right parties in surveys including the’Global Party Investigation’ involving 2,000 experts from various countries. Harvard professors Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Giblatt co-authored that the anxiety caused by the increase of immigrants and the spread of a liberal culture is making the Republican a militant far-right party. In the eight presidential elections since 1992, only 2004 has the Republican candidate lead the general vote. The Republican Party is trying to break through the unfavorable structure by calling for electoral garrimandering, electoral law amendments, and white nationalism. The severity of political extremes on the Republican side can be seen through public opinion polls before and after the Capitol riots. On the 3rd to 5th, just before the incident, 75% of those who voted for Trump in a poll by Yugov, a public opinion poll, said he should not give up. 88% said there were election frauds that changed the results, and 64% demanded that Congress should deny the election results. Immediately after the riot, a Yugov survey found that 45% of Republican supporters supported the capitol occupation. Only 27% of Republican supporters said the incident was a threat to democracy. Shortly after the incident, two-thirds of the Republican House of Representatives opposed the voting certification for the presidential elections. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted a day before his retirement to reaffirm how much the perceptions and sentiments of key Republicans fall into’white fundamentalism’. “Walkism (the claim to be aware of and monitor racial and social inequality), multiculturalism, all these doctrines are not America. These things distort our glorious founding and everything that made our country. Enemies encourage this division to weaken us.” Trump just threw a ember into an already-soaked pot. The percentage of American respondents who say they prefer “strong leaders who don’t care about parliament or elections” in the international research program’World Values Survey’ increased from 25% in 1995 to 38% in 2017. Even if Trump doesn’t return, far-right Republican supporters and white nationalists are likely to wait for another messiah. “Everyone who lives in a city anywhere in the world mentally had two motherlands, the country where they were born and the United States.” In his autobiography, British historian Eric Hobbsbaham described the dominance of American culture. Professor Joseph Nai from Harvard University popularized the concept of’soft power’ in a similar vein. “Attraction is always more effective than coercion, and many values such as democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are very attractive,” Nai emphasized soft power in America’s’World Management’. From that point of view, America was not only a world policeman, but a teacher. Regardless of what it may be, many Americans have prided themselves on being the oldest modern democratic state and at the forefront of cultural and spiritual values. George Kennan, who advocated a blockade of the Soviet Union and is called the’Father of the Cold War’, expressed that pride in the way that we Americans have a persistent tendency to judge others by the degree to which they strive to be like us. People in many countries think and act on the basis of the United States.
‘Whatever we are the best’ pride collapses
Great influence on the American view of the world
Intensifying strategic competition with China
The rush of the post-American era
This incident, which occurred after the’Black Lives Matter’ (black lives are also precious) movement, which burned out last year due to police violence, broke not only the windows of the Capitol, but also this illusion. Turkish President Rezef Taif Erdogan, who himself has been accused of human rights abuses, said the Washington Capitol riot was “a shame of democracy.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump had given Russian President Vladimir Putin the “biggest gift”. The loss of’moral authority’ is expected to weaken the soft power and urge the decline of the US influence. “The US’s ability to emphasize democracy and the rule of law will weaken,” said Richard Haas, president of the American Foreign Relations Association. “If you try to teach or sanction the government of a specific country, would you not shout that it is hypocrisy?” “Trump’s last action accelerated the start of the post-American world,” he said. “The post-American era is coming earlier than expected because of what the United States did to itself rather than the inevitable rise of other countries.” This is why the Biden administration is advised to focus on the recovery of domestic democracy prior to the’D-10′ initiative to respond to China as 10 democratic countries by adding Korea, India, and Australia to the seven major countries (G7). Immediately after the incident, President Biden’s remarks, saying, “Dignity, respect, tolerance, this is what we are, and we have always been,” met with cynicism in the United States and abroad, saying that’such a country is gone’. The justification for the US’ nuclear nonproliferation efforts was to stop the unstable regime from possessing nuclear weapons, but this incident has faded that cause. Above all, it is not unusual for the US infight to become serious in the face of rising strategic competition with China. The United States increasingly emphasizes alliances, but Europe, a traditional and powerful alliance, is out of time. The European Union (EU) and China announced on December 30 last year that they agreed in principle to a’comprehensive investment agreement’. This is unpleasant news for the US, which has been pursuing decoupling (decoupling) with the Chinese economy. In particular, the European Union announced this without waiting for the inauguration of the Biden administration, which had only 21 days left at that time, and the United States expressed a sense of betrayal. The relationship that has been estranged since Trump took office and the change of attitudes of Europeans are often discussed as the background. At the end of last year, in a survey of 15,000 people from 11 European countries by the European Association for Foreign Relations, 60% answered that they should maintain neutrality in the US-China conflict. Only 22% of respondents said they had to join the US Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a video opening speech of the Davos Forum on the 25th, “Every country has its own history, culture, and social system, and no one is superior to other countries.” It also warned to stop promoting the New Cold War, as if targeting the United States. He may have thought of the U.S. Capitol riot by saying this. By Lee Bon-young, staff reporter [email protected]