I reckon that since Tuesday we have all declared that representative democracy must not be exposed to a rampaging mob as was the case of the “attack on the Capitol”. In doing so, we have done what is expected of every Democrat. Now we can move forward — both in describing that event and in trying to understand how the left used the “attack” on the Capitol, writes Daniel Kaiser in his commentary for Czech news portal Echo24.cz .
US President-elect Joe Biden called the intruders “terrorists,” a surprisingly strong definition from a party representative who avoided using such a powerful word for Antifa militants and Black Lives Matter supporters when they demolished American cities last May . Most certainly, these groups terrorized local tradesmen, residents, and also Donald Trump supporters if they dared to come and demonstrate against them. It was not until the end of the summer that Biden generally rejected some unspecified “violence”. His weak response at the time is in stark contrast to the behavior of the typical Republican Party politician today. Republicans massively condemned the intrusion into the Capitol immediately and did so often in reponse to the rampage. This applies to Donald Trump as well, no matter how he goaded his supporters before. Trump told the gathered crowd to “show strength” and “go to the Capitol”, he also told them to protest ” peacefully and patriotically” . The fact that only a few of them entered the Capitol building from hundreds of thousands of those presents is also revealing.
Even in Prague, people occasionally go from the city “to the Castle” without anyone seriously considering any threats of violence from such protests. The intruders at the US Congress were all unarmed. To suggest that perhaps they planned to intimidate lawmakers so as not to confirm Biden’s victory is ridiculous. Venting anger is not yet a coup attempt. And yet, such an impression subsequently arose in public space and within the media. An atmosphere of emergency has emerged which all us decent democrats must openly oppose. People on the right are quickly being labeled and demonized. If they have doubts about the presidential election in several US constituencies, when they question the Black Lives Matter movement, or when they do not want to use gender pronouns — all these positions increasingly represent a list of crimes which is constantly expanding. Using an emergency to justify censorship Parts of the left in the United States have been pushing for radical censorship following Jan. 6. CNN is reportedly active in trying to push Fox News off the air . One CNN commentator also complained about companies broadcasting the signal of the conservative Fox News television station, claiming Fox is “inciting violence”. Twitter has canceled Donald Trump’s account with more than 80 million subscribers. At the same time, Twitter is abolishing thousands of subscribers to various better-known conservative or otherwise politically non-conforming Americans, also under the slogan of fighting the words “inciting violence”. Amazon has announced that it is s uspending Parler social network because it does not moderate posts. The Parler platform, which was founded two years ago and actively competes with Twitter, is a social network that was founded two years ago and competes with Twitter.
The move by Amazon was preceded by similar hostile acts from Apple and Google, which booted Parler from their app stores. Parler itself is based on the idea that apart from statements that clearly break the law, it does not censor its users, and it does not recognize the vague category of words “inciting violence”. If Parler, the similar Gab network, or Rumble (a conservative, and unfortunately not very attractive answer to YouTube), are completely platformed by tech giants from their ecosystem, it will take them a long time to develop their own infrastructure. And even then, with a de facto monopoly involving several of the aforementioned giants, success is not guaranteed. The left is exploiting the crisis Even in Czechia, relatively well-known writer Rod Dreher, himself an anti-Trump conservative who condemned the “attack on the Capitol”, likens the left’s reaction to the Reichstag fire in Berlin in the spring of 1933. The assumption that the fire was prepared by the Nazis themselves is obvious, but historians have never found evidence for it. It is indisputable, however, that they used the fire, which never had a chance to kill someone in a deserted building, for hysterical propaganda and a tense strike against the left. In September 2020, the Reichstag got back on the news, and again became a topic prompting hysteria. During the demonstrations against the German government’s coronavirus measures, a fraction of the protesters, about 400, occupied the stairs leading to the historic building. The press and the political elite immediately turned it into an “attack” and in German labeled it a “Sturm auf den Reichstag”. The next day, the Federal president immediately honored the four police officers who had just been on duty on this side of the historic building and aligned themselves against the crowd, at least for a while. But the crowd, like most intruders at the US Capitol, focused on doing selfies. There was not a single attempt to overcome the police patrol. The Federal president has never before or since honored those police officers who faced genuinely aggressive opponents in ultra-leftist actions, for example, three years ago in Hamburg during the G20 summit. The far-left there left dozens of police officers wounded.
Even in Germany, inflating the Reichstag incident with politics and public channels served to discredit the entire anti-lockdown movement. Today, the double standard in assessing political incidents is such that even an experienced observer finds it breathtaking. And we cannot explain it with the peculiarities of one country as it stretches across the West. Of course, we condemn the vulgarity and at the same time unknowingly become cheerleaders of real enemies of freedom. What a situation we find ourselves in. Title image: Workers install a flag on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol as preparations take place for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
