As Trump prepares for a second term, how should we remember Jan. 6 now?
It was a canary. We just misconstrued the coal mine. It was the high watermark for the stubborn fiction that our institutions are truly democratic at all.
“Where were you on Jan. 6?”
This question has become a sort of send-up — a way of mocking someone for expressing a right-wing sentiment, insinuating that they participated in the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot that briefly postponed the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president. Asked sincerely, it serves to cultivate a shared historical memory of collective, vicarious trauma.
That day, thousands of Trump supporters converged on Washington, D.C., to “Stop the Steal,” a slogan based on an unfounded conspiracy theory that the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which Donald Trump lost, had been riddled with fraud. Thousands stormed Congress, attacking and injuring scores of Capitol Police officers and causing millions of dollars in property damage.
In the years since, “Jan. 6” has become a journalistic and political shorthand for threats to “democracy” by Trump and his ilk.
Yet, as we approach its fourth anniversary, democracy itself has returned us to the precipice we faced that day. Trump’s reelection in 2024, following a campaign where he promised “retribution” against his opponents and the “mass deportation” of immigrants, raises the ominous specter of authoritarianism in the United States.
Like each new historical development, Trump’s return to power calls for a reconsideration of what came before — including what Jan. 6 meant, and how we ought to remember it now.
Unlike the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — which have often been remembered as a moment of national unity in defiance of foreign opponents — the domestic terrorism of Jan. 6 has long been characterized by two competing narratives, the result of an asymmetrically polarized media system that enclaves the political right from the rest of our information environment.
According to the narrative proffered by right-wing media, Trump and the hundreds of other riot participants who faced criminal charges for their activities that day did nothing wrong. They are victims of the same “deep state” conspiracy that they had gathered to oppose on Jan. 6, or “political prisoners” of an illegitimate Biden administration.
For the rest of us, Jan. 6 has been a cautionary tale. The “Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol” highlights the cracks and loopholes in our legal system, as well as right-wing organizing efforts, that dovetailed to threaten the ongoing integrity of our electoral system. Remembering that day has meant remaining cognizant of these vulnerabilities while taking solace in the failure of Trump and his mob to prevent a Biden presidency.
Like the famed “star-spangled banner,” Jan. 6 has thus far been a symbol of our democracy’s fragile resilience.
But Trump’s return to power didn’t come through exploiting institutional flaws, like our deeply antidemocratic Electoral College, or wielding the support of right-wing militias. It came by way of the very democratic institutions that we thought would save us. This time, Trump won the popular vote.
Jan. 6 was still a canary. We just misconstrued the coal mine. It wasn’t an example of democratic institutions holding in the face of growing authoritarian impulses on the right. It was the high watermark for the stubborn fiction that our institutions are truly democratic at all.
If you look at polling on many hot-button issues, including abortion and climate change, you’ll note a disconnect between U.S. public opinion and government policy. While our political system does involve elections, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and lobbying by moneyed interests are more determinative of political and policy outcomes than anything approximating the popular will.
Like the famed “star spangled banner,” Jan. 6 has thus far been a symbol of our democracy’s fragile resilience.
For the vast majority of U.S. history, federal and state laws have resulted in nominally democratic institutions with blatantly authoritarian outcomes. When we narrate the United States as a democracy, we make exceptions for the country’s long-standing disrespect of its treaties with Indigenous tribes, for example, not to mention long-standing political, cultural, and social discrimination against women, queer people, immigrants, and racial minorities.
The outlawing of de jure Jim Crow laws in the mid-20th century has been bolstered by persistent de facto racial segregation. The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any “democracy” on Earth, an embarrassment underwritten by decades of bipartisan support for draconian criminal punishments.
Our collective memory of Sept. 11, 2001, is also instructive here. Far from a moment of national unity, the attacks on that day ushered in a patriotic fervor that stifled religious and political pluralism and ran roughshod over civil liberties.
A new domestic security apparatus emerged, reflected in the establishment of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Initially targeting Muslim Americans, domestic surveillance achieved national scale in the years that followed. While some civil libertarian guardrails were added in the wake of Edward Snowden’s exposé in 2013, vestiges remain — as do legal precedents that give presidents considerable executive authority under periods of “crisis.”
When Trump takes power later this month, this already extant and well-established system of state repression will be subjected to his authoritarian whims. It won’t be the first time. Immigrants, people of color, women, and leftists have long borne the brunt of this country’s persistent repressive streak.
If Jan. 6 initially seemed to justify the importance of our “democratic institutions,” Trump’s reelection recasts that moment as revealing the extent to which our institutions’ democratic character is merely customary.
Whether our federal government is wielded toward authoritarian or democratic ends depends on who is doing the wielding. If we desire a return to the institutionalism idealized in our initial collective memory of Jan. 6, we’ll need to undertake the long-neglected work of reconstructing our institutions to make them truly democratic.
A.J. Bauer is a historian and assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama.