Inderjeet Parmar 
Donald Trump’s latest indictment, for his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol as part of an insurrection against the US constitution, is damning, serious, but also limited, despite what many media outlets are claiming (largely by omission).
While the indictment focuses on Trump’s attack on democracy itself, it fails to say anything about his most serious crime: that he tried to overthrow the government by force and remain in power despite losing the election.
The indictment principally focuses on the charge that Trump took advantage of the January 6 protests rather than having orchestrated, organised, and conspired with others across the GOP as well as numerous openly armed fascistic and white supremacist groups – like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys (who regarded Trump as their leader and inspiration). The latter groups’ members and leaders in fact have been jailed for seditious conspiracy (which is the organisation stage of open treason) for their violent actions before and on January 6.
Why is this? This is a key question largely unaddressed by most media coverage.
A Washington Post investigation published on June 19, 2023 revealed that the FBI (led by Trump appointee Christopher Wray), and the Department of Justice under Biden-appointee Merrick Garland, did little or nothing to investigate Trump and his immediate circle for over a year after January 6, so as not to appear “partisan”.
The Biden administration took almost two years to get to this current indictment. Why? There are three likely reasons:
1. The two main US political parties, despite public rhetoric, etc, are largely similar in philosophy and corporate backing, with due respect to differing electoral constituencies that they have to keep satisfied, mainly through rhetoric. Hence, they are interdependent and seek to maintain one another, even protect one another, especially from mass popular opposition. In addition, the national security state – FBI, CIA, national guard, law enforcement in general – are core elements of the American imperial state, and are in the care of the two main parties. Their own activities and collaborations with Trump and failures to take security precautions ahead of January 6, 2021 enabled the storming of the Capitol building by Trump’s supporters. They have no incentive to thoroughly investigate their own collusion with Trump. Biden’s calls for bipartisanship and a strong GOP further evidence this trend, as does failure to expeditiously indict and prosecute.
2. The build-up to the war in Ukraine and US policy towards it – armed support for Ukraine – required bipartisan support in House and Senate. Prosecuting Trump took a back seat during that process. The spring offensive has gone badly for Ukraine and indicting Trump plays well, especially as he’s regarded by establishment elites to be too unpredictable to be back at the helm (given his pro-Russian views). But Trump’s popularity among GOP voters means he remains influential and a source of disruption, a force of nature not easily controlled, a power partially created by appeasement within a US ruling elite that is increasingly moving to the authoritarian right.
3. Finally, the Democratic party’s 2024 programme rests strongly on the GOP and most likely a Trump candidacy. The fear of Trump is a major motivator of Democratic voter turnout, as well as of independent voters who will most likely swing the election.
In the pages of The Wire, in the wake of the attack on constitutional norms in Brazil earlier this year, this writer noted the following – which remains the case in the current context: Establishment liberals – who publicly take up the mantle of defenders of democracy – are unreliable allies in the fight against fascism. They fear mass anti-fascist marches and movements far more than they fear fascism because at the heart of liberalism is a theory of government, economy and society that is elitist, top-down, anti-democratic, corporate-backed, and tied into the neoliberal project in all its essentials. And massive resistance to all those forces and factors has been mounting across the world – which is why neoliberal establishments and their allies turn to authoritarianism and fascism to divide people on lines of race, ethnicity, religion or other elite-cultivated cleavages in the social fabric
Attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters on January 6, 2021. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
While fascists and far-right groups scream about the rise of the ‘Left’ and minorities and immigrants, liberals downplay fascist threats, disarm ordinary people, and enable more and more restrictive and undemocratic legislation – strengthening police and border force powers, restricting voting rights and rights or legitimate protest. We see this most starkly in the way protesting workers and minorities are policed in contrast with how violent right-wing forces are treated.
It is argued by establishment liberals in both Brazil and the US that prosecuting either Jair Bolsonaro or Donald Trump would be politically provocative and cause more far-right and fascist violence. But we also know that where US Democrats govern cities and states during periods of mass rebellion and protest – such as those following the police murder of George Floyd – they have no qualms in ordering massive policing to quell peaceful protests. And historically, the treatment by the FBI of the civil rights movement and of the Black Panther Party was repressive, murderous, sustained, and anti-democratic. The white supremacist Ku Klux Klan on the other hand…
There is little to separate Democrats and Republicans in those regards, in practice, whatever their political rhetoric may be. This is rooted in a consensus over the basic fundamentals of US society – that it is ‘fair’, that the system ‘works’, and mass protest against forces that protect the corporate-dominated status quo is irrational and dangerous and must be suppressed or lulled or deceived into thinking the fascist danger is over-played or has been quelled.
A CV from Goodfellas
Trump’s CV now reads as especially damning: investigated while in office on charges of collaboration with Russia; two impeachments by the House; an insurrection and coup attempt to overturn the Constitution on 6 January 2021; and several other charges since.
Trump’s self-image as a ‘goodfella has been given a further lease of life. And there’s more to come – especially the investigation of attempts to steal the 2020 election in Georgia.
On a broader note, the whole saga is an indictment of the criminality of Donald Trump, his personalist form of presidential power as if he owned the US government as he runs the Trump Organisation, of the far right GOP that continues to back him. One half of the two-party US political system has turned its back on the basic tenets of the US constitution let alone democracy itself. Meanwhile, Democrats lack a sufficiently authentic and attractive programme to present to the electorate, which faces multiple hardships regardless of party affiliation.
January 6, 2021 – a major turning point
Major issues were raised by the events and immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021. It was suggested by this writer that “President Donald Trump’s attempted coup and insurrection’s political effects are set to continue in the future because the enabling conditions have deep historical roots, its support reaches far into the U.S. state, broad sections of the Republican Party and electorate, military, and law enforcement. It will have national and global implications. There is a feeling that the imperial homeland is on the brink of a descent into the abyss. Although the U.S. political system appears to have squeaked through a major stress test, the political reverberations of Trumpism will remain for some time to come. There is no ‘return to normalcy’ the country craves for, without reforms to a system that advantages the politics of extremism in the Republican Party. President Biden has the challenge and opportunity to extirpate Trumpism and white supremacy from the U.S. body politic –but does he have the political will?”
This latest indictment against former president Trump suggests that the shift towards fascistic authoritarianism in the US establishment’s core parties and institutions has become institutionalised. The United States is in the middle of a simmering civil cold war, divided, factionalised, and unstable.
Can it still be regarded as the leader of the “free world” and champion of democracy against autocracy? A reliable partner for its international allies and partners? A land of opportunity and hope embodied in the American dream? Or is its crisis of authority and factionalisation so deep that there appears no way out this morass any time soon?
The next 16 months running up to the 2024 elections is shaping up as focused on a former president and candidate making numerous court appearances and accusing the legal system of being weaponised against him. And an aging liberal with a record that’s better than expected but considered too little too late, whose main claim will be what it was in 2020: I’m not Donald Trump.
Americans like to think that the “tree of liberty” is nourished by the blood of patriotic martyrs. What happens if that tree comes crashing down?
Inderjeet Parmar is professor of international politics and associate dean of research in the School of Policy and Global Affairs at City, University of London, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a columnist at The Wire. He is an International Fellow at the ROADS Initiative think tank, Islamabad, and author of several books including Foundations of the American Century.