There is a fierce debate currently happening around the storming of the Capitol on January 6th as well as the Trump presidency more generally: Do we hold these individuals and groups accountable for their actions or do we leave these things in the past and move forward to unite the country?
This is a false dichotomy. Unity and accountability are not mutually exclusive, and I would argue that neither can exist without the other. True unity cannot be established without the assurance that certain rights and principles will not be violated, and true accountability cannot be effected without an agreement as to the types of behavior we will or will not accept. This is the entire foundation of living within a cooperative, democratic society and we cannot take the stability of this foundation for granted. We are constantly reevaluating and adjusting what our society is and how it works through a complex equilibrium of changes in policy and law on the one hand and shifts in social and cultural norms on the other. These systems are vast and fluid and depend on a sense of trust that has become increasingly fragile.
So, do we agree on what behaviors are acceptable and what rights we will protect? It is no great secret that we ostensibly do, but in reality, the rights and privileges awarded vary wildly, as do the sanctions applied for unacceptable behavior, depending on whether a person belongs to a group the larger society has deemed worthy.
The majority of all terrorist incidents in the U.S. since 1994 have been perpetrated by far-right extremist groups, yet the FBI only uses about 20% of its counterterrorism resources on these threats. From 2011 to 2019, the House Committee on Homeland Security refused to broaden its scope beyond Islamist extremism and the chair of the committee brushed aside domestic threats as he referred to neo-Nazis as “isolated madmen.” However, these groups are linked to a growing international movement that American intelligence and law enforcement have been reluctant to address.
Many of us fail to see far-right extremism as another manifestation of the many ways our society displays a complete disregard for certain human life, like the disproportionate siting of toxic industries near communities of color and the devastating health disparities that have resulted as detailed in Harriet A. Washington’s book, A Terrible Thing to Waste. Or the fact that between 2015 and 2019, 91% of use of force incidents by Baltimore Police Department Officers targeted black residents despite making up only 62% of the population. There are also the 100,000 people of Flint, Michigan, who were poisoned for 18 months by their drinking water before there was a word of acknowledgement from the state. Or the more than 400,000 people that have died and the growing numbers facing food insecurity because we refuse to use our immense resources to support and feed families and to enable them to isolate and stay healthy during this global pandemic.
This is the country where a national political party can claim in its handbook that “this is a white man’s country,” lead a racist mob to oust an entire fairly elected government, kill scores of African-Americans, and permanently alter the demographics of a thriving city, and over 100 years later we are still teaching our children that the leaders of that mob were good people.
Accountability for the mob violence at the Capitol is not just about that incident, or the incitement of the mob by the former President, or even about the growing global threat of far-right terrorism. It is about the corrosive effect of our society’s utter failure to consistently protect the human rights and dignity of all people.
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