There were two images that stood out for me the most: one was the single-file of “stormers” walking along the rope barrier in one of the halls of the Capitol with phone cameras in their hands. The other was the footage of the people leaving in silence from the Capitol, followed by the freshly arrived “real” police.
Both images betray the paradox of the epistemic subjectivity as well as the ontological uderpinnings of the protest. Throughout the day, I watched intermittently the live footage unfolding by the barricades in front of the Capitol. The live feed captured the exchanges between the boldest of the protestors (those who pushed to the barriers themselves) and the police. The protestors largely stuck to these 3 arguments:
1. We are with you guys. We respect and support the police. We are against defunding you and hate those looting ANTIFA libtards.
2. You are sellouts if you are against us. After all, we support you and we pay your salary.
3. You should join us in this.
Thus, the protestors had not just respectful but reverential relationship with the enforcers of power, the power whose absolute iteration’s legitimacy they were protesting (US Congress).
It is no wonder that when they were finally ushered into the inner sanctum of the power, all that zeal and anger seemed to dissipate and turn into a kind of a dazed restrained awe. Sure, there were several whose energy didn’t abate once inside (one got shot trying to reach the part of the corridor in which the members of Congress were huddled in hiding, but the footage of the shooting shows only 4 people smashing the door, the mob behind them seemed indifferent at to the urgency of the endeavor. It seemed more like “Do we get to tour another attraction? What’s next on the itinerary?” The shooting itself certainly added further deflation and indifference about the urgency and purpose of the whole thing.
There is a deep sense of the anti-climactic catharsis sweeping through the mob as they begin to mill around the Capitol. The representation of the power seemed to slowly pacify and overtake the mob’s collective emotions. They are after all “patriots” — USA, USA, USA! and this is, in their collective political-historical imagination, as “USA” as it gets.
It is why, I am convinced, the powers that be, “handled” the “attempted coup” with such kid gloves. Can you take the mob seriously with its claims of “power illegitimacy” when the same mob, in addition to Stars and Stripes, also brought Israeli flags?
Once inside, the mob finally faced itself — what exactly were they going to accomplish once inside — other than loot, pillage, desecrate, and destroy? Sure, there were some who were hoping for some genuine “action” (kidnapping and taking politicians hostage, burning the Reichstag. assassination, barricading themselves inside with demands, etc?)but for the majority, the breach brought forth the ontological reckoning of the “movement” — how, indeed, do we realize the goal of toppling the power to whom we are foundationally and structurally ideologically tethered to?
This attempt was about the mob that wanted to realize itself as a mass subject but failed because it succumbed under the symbols of its social cohesion: the building which is the citadel, the bunker of power. The docility of the mob in those two images is stunning because it reveals the realization that in this act, the essence of their Idea was hurt and violated. They self-violated that which they hold the most sacred.
The Right-wing ideology fetishizes the hetoropia of the government and the power that it disseminates. On one hand, government is the problem, the true villain. On the other hand, it reveres it and elevates it to the status of the Supreme Techne (while arguing for the primacy of small town, Main street, mom-and-pop Yankee Doodle autonomy). Right-wing ideology treats the sphere of politics and power as heterotopia — a regulatory and normative realm whose innards are obscure and thus ripe for projections, conspiracy theories, and repressed symbolisms and yearnings. Breaching into nothing less than the Womb which they violated, the shame on many was visible, palpable. They had sensed that they raped their Mother in an attempt to protect and free the endangered Father. They sensed that it is the Mother, perhaps, who calls the shots…that you can replace the Father, the Ruler, but the Rule itself (the will of the Mother) — never?
At the end of Rambo (the first one), Rambo emerges quiet, victorious yet somehow beaten. The sheriff puts a coat over his shoulders and puts an arm around him in the total act of emasculation and Rambo’s ultimate defeat.
This is not to say that the mob will now finally “shut up and go away” from the American public discourse sphere. If for no other reason, the media will need Trump for revenue and it will keep Trump’s corpse on life support for as long as they can. Any “Trumpian” stirrings will be amplified and rebroadcast in pursuit of the last possible click. But some will go silent and acquiescent in wait for the next election. Most will simply momentarilu retool their rhetoric, pass the blame (“all the destruction was committed by ANTIFA infiltrators-agitators”. I am sure there were infiltrators-agitators but to deny the variance in the intensity of the zeal that brought all those people to the Capitol is beyond naive. In every and any mob, there will always be those who simply just want to “fuck shit up”. In archetypal sense, not every protester can be the Herald, the Ally, the Hero, or the Guardian. There will always be Tricksters and Shadows. Most significantly, because this is all about politics and power, there will always be the omniscient and omnipotent Shapeshifter.)
The point is that this protest was not arguing for redistributive economy (eg calling for curbing of the obscene accumulation of wealth at the top). This protest was also (unlike BLM protests) not calling for dismantling of the justice and penal system which protects the very accumulation of wealth (police and military). If there were even a smidgeon of these kind of progressive/populist ideas in that crowd, the police would had been there in full force. But it is obvious that they system never considered itself threatened! Imagine: thousands gathered in front of the Capitol which is also in session at that moment! Thousands who, even a child knows this, are armed to the teeth! The Establishment knew that its existence or legitimacy was not under a threat of revision. It knew who was at the gate and it let them have a minute in its warmth. Sure, it has and will cruelly make an example of a few, but by and large the focus is already on how this spectacle (and that’s what it was) can be made useful as a catalyst to ream measures which will ensure better protection from the true threat: the Left who is agitating for redistributive and restorative policies, and who — god forbid — might get ideas from this.
