By Askia Muhammad, Senior Editor
- January 5, 2022
FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2021 file photo, violent rioters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington. The horror of Jan. 6 has been reduced from a stunning assault on American democracy to another political fight. Rather than unite behind a bipartisan investigation like the one that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Republicans are betting they can regain at least partial control of Congress if they put the issue behind them as quickly as possible without antagonizing former President Donald Trump or his supporters. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
WASHINGTON—America vs. America. It is the undoing of a great superpower, and it’s occurring at the dawn of 2022, right before our eyes.
In the early days of 2021, on Jan. 6, a violent, armed mob of mostly White Americans intent on overturning the majority 2020 presidential election result, did what no foreign power could ever do: they stormed the U.S. Capitol, the seat of the United States government, some waving secessionist Confederate battle flags.
The mob attacked and beat Capitol Police officers and called for the hanging of Mike Pence, the U.S. vice president at the time, who was presiding over the Electoral College certification of the defeat of President Donald J. Trump’s reelection bid. Five people, four of them Capitol Police officers, died as a result of the melee.
Now, after interviewing hundreds of witnesses, issuing more than 50 subpoenas, and reviewing more than 35,000 pages of documents, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is revealing some of its findings. At the same time, some critics warn that Jan. 6 may have been just a dress rehearsal for another attempted coup to come, a fascist takeover that would guarantee outright White supremacy in this country, even as Whites become a minority population.
WASHINGTON—America vs. America. It is the undoing of a great superpower, and it’s occurring at the dawn of 2022, right before our eyes.
In the early days of 2021, on Jan. 6, a violent, armed mob of mostly White Americans intent on overturning the majority 2020 presidential election result, did what no foreign power could ever do: they stormed the U.S. Capitol, the seat of the United States government, some waving secessionist Confederate battle flags.
The mob attacked and beat Capitol Police officers and called for the hanging of Mike Pence, the U.S. vice president at the time, who was presiding over the Electoral College certification of the defeat of President Donald J. Trump’s reelection bid. Five people, four of them Capitol Police officers, died as a result of the melee.
Now, after interviewing hundreds of witnesses, issuing more than 50 subpoenas, and reviewing more than 35,000 pages of documents, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is revealing some of its findings. At the same time, some critics warn that Jan. 6 may have been just a dress rehearsal for another attempted coup to come, a fascist takeover that would guarantee outright White supremacy in this country, even as Whites become a minority population.
The investigation appears to be drawing closer to Mr. Trump and his allies. While they appear to be trying to stop the committee from getting the information it wants.
Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump try to break through a po- lice barrier Jan. 6 at the Capitol in Washington. U.S. Capitol Police officers who were attacked and beaten during the Capitol riot filed a lawsuit Aug. 26, against former President Donald Trump, his al- lies and members of far-right extremist groups, accusing them of intentionally sending insurrectionists to disrupt the congressional certification of the election in January. AP Photo/John Minchillo
Numerous videos of the incident reveal there was some military-style communication among the attacking throng. But even more para-military intrigue was revealed recently.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported that the committee is interested in the phone calls Mr. Trump made late on the night of Jan. 5, before the insurrection, to two so-called “war rooms” at the Willard Hotel, just one block from the White House complex. One war room contained lawyers and the other non-lawyers.
Mr. Lowell reported that on at least one of the calls Mr. Trump made in the hours before January 6, he tried to press his allies into a scheme to replace Mr. Biden’s certified Electoral College electors with uncertified electors pledged to him.
With former White House advisor Steve Bannon, and presidential lawyer Rudolph Giuliani presiding over the “war rooms,” they even assigned a code name—“Green Bay Sweep”—to the operation, according to writer Heather Cox Richardson.
A Harvard-educated member of the insurrection team, who says he devised the scheme, said the strategy was perfect. They would exert maximum pressure on Vice President Pence to block the certification of the Electoral College votes from swing states, by drawing out the proceedings on national television for as long as 24 hours.
Rioters confront U.S. Capitol Police officers outside the Capitol in Washington. The House panel investigation of the riot at the U.S. Capitol issued sweeping document requests on Aug. 27, to social media companies, expanding the committee’s investiga- tion as it seeks to examine the events leading to January’s insur- rection. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
“It was a perfect plan,” Peter Navarro, then-President Donald Trump’s trade advisor, told the Daily Beast. “We had over 100 congressmen committed to it.”
Mr. Navarro’s recently published memoir details how he stayed in close contact with Mr. Bannon as they put the Green Bay Sweep in motion with help from members of Congress loyal to the cause. While their plans may have been well thought out, they were far from being perfectly executed.
But the notion that Jan. 6, 2020 may have been a “dress rehearsal” for the uprising which eventually installs a dictatorship in this country is not so far-fetched.
In fact, three retired Army generals—former Major Gen. Paul Eaton, former Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, and former Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson—wrote in the Washington Post recently that they were “increasingly concerned” about the 2024 election and the “potential for lethal chaos inside our military” if certain military units don’t agree with the election outcome.
“Lethal chaos” would justify urgent, dictatorial measures, the suspension of Constitutional guarantees, the suspension of various legal protection, after of course the “fascists”—as more and more analysts have begun to describe the right-wing forces—take firm control of the levers of power.
The ongoing conflict and strife being witnessed in America is further evidence of a country falling apart as taught by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad. What he revealed decades ago is coming to pass. “America, in trying to hold her place as the greatest power among the nations of the earth, is one of the most troubled countries on earth today,” Mr. Muhammad wrote in his book, “The Fall of America.”
His top student and National Representative, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, told the world in early 2020 that what was being witnessed was the “unraveling of a great nation.”
“When you unravel something, you undo twisted, knitted, or woven threads; you investigate and solve or explain something complicated or puzzling. The condition of America is puzzling. The world is looking at a country going to hell,” Min. Farrakhan stated during his Saviours’ Day message February 23, 2020, in Detroit.
A Capitol Police officer warned that the Jan. 6 attackers were in fact aided and abetted by members of Congress. Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, who was injured in the Jan. 6 attack, told Congress last July that he believed he was going to be killed by angry Trump supporters during the riot, and he told NPR in December that he and his colleagues are worried it will happen again—and again.
“A lot of the officers have in mind the possibility of this being a recurring annual or every four-year thing, which is why officers like myself are being outspoken about it, because we don’t want to go through this again,” Officer Gonell told NPR.
“It’s mind-boggling to hear some of the things that are coming from some of these elected officials. But at the end of the day, our job is to make them safe and make their work environment safer, regardless of our opinion or political affiliation,” he said.
Mr. Trump, and the Jan. 6 insurrection; the 2017 Unite the Right, rally in Charlottesville, Va.; and Kyle Rittenhouse, are all linked to burgeoning White supremacy in this country. And White people are not bashful about it any longer. And conversely, at their core, claims of “voter fraud” are “anti-Black,” pure and simple.
President Joe Biden may have even caught on. In a recent speech at Washington’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, Mr. Biden described the January 6 insurrection as being about “White supremacy.”
“The violent, deadly insurrection on the Capitol nine months ago, it was about White supremacy, in my opinion,” Mr. Biden said of the riot, during a speech acknowledging the 10-year anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. “The through-line is that hate never goes away,” the president said.
Mr. Trump, however, is resorting to every means at his disposal to prevent the facts of what happened that day from being revealed, thus shielding him from accountability for his actions. His latest legal maneuver was a Supreme Court filing, amending an appeal before the court. It cites a Washington Post article which he asserts, proves that Congressional Democrats are on a “political witch hunt” to bring him down.
According to Courthouse News, Mr. Trump is asking the justices to review the article, which he claims proves that the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) admits that the committee wants information to determine if they will make a criminal referral to the Justice Department. In his new filing, Mr. Trump claims these statements prove the committee is “acting outside its authority.”
Mr. Trump’s claims have been repeatedly rejected in courts, since the election, even by judges he appointed to the bench. At the same time, GOP Congressional leaders, many of whom are being revealed as being complicit in the plot, insist nothing untoward happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Citizens were merely expressing their free speech rights, they claim. They condemn the presidential election, even though they were themselves chosen for office on those same ballots.
Freshman Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) feels otherwise. She sent out a tweet Dec. 27 urging her fellow House members to pass a proposed bill that would investigate and ultimately expel members of Congress involved in the January 6 attack.
Rep. Bush stated that House of Representatives should “commemorate the 1-year-anniversary of January 6th by passing my House Resolution 25 to investigate and expel the members of Congress who helped incite the violent insurrection at our Capitol.”
“Whereas despite losing the popular vote by more than 7,000,000 votes,” the resolution reads, “Donald J. Trump, together with Republican Members of Congress, have commenced a near daily assault on the legitimacy of the 2020 election.”
This includes “the decision … to join efforts to invalidate votes in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin suppressing the votes of millions of people,” as well as “refusing to concede the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election and raising baseless allegations of fraud in States in which Black, Brown, and Indigenous people have been instrumental to the election outcome,” according to the bill. “This is sedition,” she said.
Her bill references Section Three of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. This clause states that “no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States…who…shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”
A conservative Republican Congress member openly expressed her anti-Black feelings, defaming Kwanzaa as “fake religion.” And a prominent mainstream Christian clergy have defamed Black social causes as “pseudo-religions.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) referred to Kwanzaa as a “fake religion” on Twitter Dec. 26. The message came on the first day of the weeklong holiday celebrated by millions of Black people. Rep. Greene made the remark in response to a Twitter post by the College Republican National Committee (CRNC), a group of conservative college students. “Stop. It’s a fake religion created by a psychopath,” Rep. Greene tweeted back to the group’s message. “You aren’t bringing in new voters, you are turning them away. People are tired of pandering and BS.”
Meanwhile, Archbishop José H. Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke out against “new social justice movements” such as Black Lives Matter during a speech in late December, decrying them as “pseudo-religions” that ultimately serve as “dangerous substitutes for true religion.”
Archbishop Gomez, heads the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He delivered the remarks in a video message sent to a meeting of the Congress of Catholics and Public Life in Madrid. He argued that the United States, like Europe, has been subject to “aggressive secularization,” insisting that “there has been a deliberate effort in Europe and America to erase the Christian roots of society and to suppress any remaining Christian influences.”
Unspoken, but taken for granted is that “Christian influences,” mean White supremacy.
