"Compelling, shocking and profoundly troubling"- Leeds professor on election violence in America

Simon Hall, Professor of Modern History, University of Leeds on the American election events in Washington
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For the millions in the United States, and around the world, who were glued to television screens and Twitter feeds as a mob first surrounded, and then stormed, the United States Congress, the drama was compelling, shocking, and profoundly troubling.

For weeks, now, Donald J. Trump, has whipped up the more extreme elements of his base by making repeated and unfounded allegations about widespread electoral fraud. Aided and abetted by advisers, family members, right-wing commentators and some senior elected members of the Republican Party, he has continued to claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen - despite losing some sixty lawsuits, many of them dismissed by conservative judges that he himself appointed.

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Then, on Wednesday, came the formal certification of the electoral college votes. What is usually a ceremonial, even good-humoured event, was quickly engulfed in a carnival of lawlessness, as mobs, pushing past police, roamed the marble halls, broke furniture and doors, smashed windows, and posed for selfies. When the session eventually resumed, several hours later, 138 Republican members of the House, and a handful of Senators, continued in their baseless and deeply damaging attempts to obstruct Joe Biden’s election, while Trump praised the rioters as “very special”. January 6 2021 will go down in history as a day that shamed American democracy.

Simon Hall is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds.Simon Hall is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds.
Simon Hall is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds.

Historians are struggling to find parallels for the events that have just unfolded. The Capitol Building itself has, of course, long been a target for protests. On March 1 1954 a handful of Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the gallery of the House of Representatives, injuring five congressmen before being apprehended. During the demonstrations against the Vietnam War, some 700 veterans hurled their medals over a wire fence that had been erected to protect the building, following a week-long protest in the nation’s capital. And, on March 1, 1971, a bomb planted by members of the radical Weather Underground organization exploded in a Senate restroom, causing $300,000 in damage (though no one was injured). But one has to go back to August 24 1814 – when occupying British troops torched the place – for the last time that the building was breached by a hostile force.

Before writing off the American experiment with representative government, it is worth noting that the United States has survived grave crises before – not least the attempted secession of eleven southern states, opposed to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, which unleashed four bloody years of Civil War. In a few days, Donald Trump will be out of office, and Biden will get to work on “the restoration of democracy – of decency, honor, respect, the rule of law.” Given the anger, bitterness and divisiveness that have been on very public show these last months, it is clear that the challenges that he faces are formidable. All of us who value freedom and democracy should wish him luck. He is likely to need it.

Simon Hall is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds. His most recent book is Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s