 It's been one year since he attempted insurrection in Washington, D.C. One year since thousands of Donald Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, hoping to stop the certification of Joe Biden as the president. In the intervening weeks and months, there have been a lot of analysis of its consequences and causes. Many assumed that the incident would mark the end of Donald Trump's political career. However, the reverse has happened. Trump continues to be as popular as ever. The Republican Party seems to be completely under his control. And many of his supporters continue to believe that he actually won the election in 2020. What is the secret of Trump's popularity? What does it say about the American political system? Eugene Pourrier of Breakthrough News explains. I think January 6 really underscores the reality of Trump's popularity, is that it's not necessarily based on any great respect for democracy or any great respect for the truth or for facts. It's a political agenda that, of course, is an extreme right-wing hypercapitalist elite agenda, but it's clothed into rhetoric of oppressed populism, as it were. And that, in fact, instead of representing a tiny group of the 0.1% of people in this country who are the wealthiest, it's actually an agenda of a minority of patriots who are deeply embattled by a coalition of liberal billionaires, the deep state of the FBI, apparently Venezuela and China, as well as numerous other actors that are taking down the American way. And so since Trump has mobilized his support in this sense and in many ways around the delegitimization of most American institutions, and many of them don't need that much help to lose their legitimacy amongst the populace, that sort of appeals to authority in the sense that the response to January 6 from the Democrats, from Congress, from many sort of grandees in the media actually seems to reinforce the Trumpian narrative, that there is a vast conspiracy of the deep state and of their liberal billionaire friends and the sort of quote-unquote globalist, the global rich elites to make sure that the voice of these individuals is not heard. And since they already believe that the election was stolen, you can't really necessarily appeal to them on the nature of, well, these various governments did recounts and said that the election was not stolen. Well, those people are just in on it too, or that this was some major issue because they'll look and say, oh, well, they say this was so bad, but what about the uprisings that happened in 2020? So every sort of appeal to some form of fact or some form of authority or whatever it may be falls on deaf ears in this population because of the nature of the critique itself makes those sorts of appeals ring hollow. And I think part of the reason why Trump has actually grown stronger is that the response to January 6 has in many ways conformed for his base of supporters or confirmed rather for his base of supporters that their basic narrative is true, that the vast majority of the media, that almost all the political sphere certainly the Democrats, that all of the big liberal foundations and others are all arrayed against them. And that in fact they're all colluding once again to try to prevent the true voice of their true voice from emerging as a political force in the country to steal from Donald Trump what is rightfully his. So I think it's a complicated reality that we're existing in in the United States. I think the sort of post truth era concept is a little bit overplayed, but I think there is a certain truth to it, in that the sort of positions and of authority in the private sector from the media whether it be in the government or whatever it may be are themselves already thought to be in that narrative to be a group of people that will lie cheat and steal in order to get their way and they certainly are no wrong about that. And so ultimately it means that appeals to those kind of fact based realities, which by the way are often manipulated by the media and Democrats for sure for their own ends, but that it really just ends up confirming the narrative, and radicalizing the people that they have to push back and fight even harder for what they would like to see, and that they need to get even further away from the mainstream in terms of their media and how they organize and so on and so forth. Over the past year, a number of investigations have taken place into the incidents of January 6, 2021. Many have been arrested, some have been sentenced. However, most of them have been foot soldiers. None of the masterminds have been brought to justice. What is the state of various investigations into these events? The Democratic Party has been in the forefront of these investigations. How are they treating this incident? What has been their role? Eugene explains. I would say a year on, we have a good sense of who is involved and some sense of who is responsible, but there's still quite a bit of gray area about how exactly it all played out. About 725 people have been arrested. I think there's actually still a few thousand that are sort of out there as potential suspects, but the 725 people who've been arrested seem to be the core in terms of, you know, those for whom the government feels criminal action can be brought against them. If you go into a lot of different categories, you know, there's essentially what's being used as a law or a law saying you can't obstruct actions of Congress and there are a wide range of things you can sort of throw under that. So there are some people who have been arrested that are arrested for like minor trespassing type charges. There are other people, you know, who were super well armed to committed serious violence against people and so on and so forth. Some of that seems unconnected. Some of it seems connected to groups like the Oath Keepers, which is a major right wing militia and other similar sorts of organizations. And then of course there's the broader reality of, you know, the event itself, how did it take place and, you know, there are multiple forces involved here. I mean, there are a number of very high level, very well resourced elite billionaire funded right wing organizations that were involved, Turning Point USA, which is the right wing youth organization, the Republican Attorneys General Association, which is the association of all Republican liberals, so big organizations like that to small organizations that no one had ever heard of, one that people have just started talking about the First Amendment Pretorians. Yes, they're called the First Amendment Pretorians it's run by Michael Flynn. There's the proud boys. There's Alex Jones and his forces. And it's still not 100% clear what the relationship between all these people were there's a lot of different ties between all of them. Everyone is now saying well, I didn't do this this person did that I didn't know about that. So I think in a lot of ways there's still a lot of gray area but I think the bottom line for what we know right now is this that the organizers of the rally portion of January 6 that was in the ellipse by the White House were 100% aware that they were bringing tens of thousands of people to the nation's capital that amongst those people were many individuals who were willing and ready to do battle they were openly talking about it on the internet all over the place, and that many of these organizations and individuals had a long history of right wing vigilante violence all around the country. Now whether or not they plan to, you know, storm the capital. I can't say whether or not they knew it was going to happen and acquiesce to it. I can't say whether or not it was just some opportunistic groups and individuals within the crowd who decided themselves either before on the spot whether to storm the capital. I can't necessarily say, but what I can say is from top to bottom from the right wing vigilante militias, the average ranking file person who showed up to the billionaires that were pouring money into this event to make sure that it could happen to the White House staff, every single person there involved knew they were bringing tens of thousands of people to Washington DC, that many of those people were ready to fight, maybe we're going to instigate fights, and that many of them had a long history of it. So there's really no way you could have organized such an event. And again, the White House knew about it the top Republicans knew about it, they were all involved, there's no way you could have brought that sort of event together without knowing that something like this could potentially happen. I think the democratic response to January six has been, you know, mainly grandstanding I mean to some degree the Democrats have been right about some of the realities of what was really going on on January six, how far to the top it went how mainstream it was, but all in all I think they have really sort of decontextualize it to a large degree. I mean one they've absolved themselves of any and all responsibility for why we're even in this situation where Trump is the president, and the fact that they have gleefully participated over decades with the neoliberal scorched earth policies that have created the political space for the far right to gain ahead of steam. But they've also engaged in a whitewash of the authorities and the police, because one thing we know for absolute certain is starting really in late December but this is something that was clear in many ways as early as the fall prior to the election, but certainly since late December, certainly in the three days leading up to the event. It was 100% clear that there were a number of people who were coming on January 5 the FBI had a report from one of their field offices saying people were coming to DC prepared for war. On January 3 they said that the Capitol police had something that said that they were prepared for serious violence on January 4 300 law enforcement officials got on a call and prepared for what to do if it turned into a mass casualty event. But despite all of that, the Capitol police, the National Guard, DC government, the FBI, all of these forces responsible for security that day in some way shape or form downplayed lessened their security presence, rather than heightened it. I've been at protest of like 300 people that were like, you know, how to use like peaceful religious people I don't know how to describe them that had more cops than this. And certainly no one was online talking about they were going to break glass and fight the police and storm the Capitol, which some people were saying on on Facebook and things like that beforehand for January 6. And the Democrats have totally whitewatched this. They made it all just a bunch of proud boys and you know Trump supporters and stuff like that, who came and were terrible people, and the cops were great and they were the great heroes. When quite frankly it seems that it was the so called law enforcement officials who facilitated the possibility of this even taking place by essentially deciding that again despite the fact that it was clear many people who are coming were planning violence, or at least willing to that this was somehow not a threat that these people were basically okay that nothing was going to happen and that's been whitewatched by the Democrats so I think the Democrats have been mainly using this as a political point of grandstanding, and they have really not open the door to a broader debate the political moment that we are in and how we are even here and be they clearly don't want to get to the bottom of how deeply involved the sort of law enforcement legal establishment of Washington DC was in making sure that there was no significant security response on January 6. And I think the reason for that is obvious, because this was an extremely elite event that was organized by rich and powerful people including the President of the United States. And so from their point of view, that's not a threat, but a mass peaceful protest of people against the war in Iraq of which I've been a part of 1020,000 people at DC to 456 times the number of police around the capital because that is a threat. So it goes deeply I think to the true politics of the establishment in the United States. Many commentators have seen the incidence of January 6 2021 as an aberration. However, is that really the case. What is the impact of these incidents on American politics and its establishment. What is the future of the country. Eugene explains, you know I think the past one year I mean you know January 6 in some ways can just be seen as a, you know an reboot of this period from 2020 to right now in early 2022, where I think we have seen the ruling class elite in the America just show that it is, you know an emperor completely without clothes it's completely decrepit it's totally unwilling to help its own people. It's deeply embroiled an elite in fighting to take advantage of whatever small game people can make to push agendas that have nothing to do with the welfare and the well being of the people of the country. I mean, you know, just you look on so many different levels not only did one of the major coalitions of capital launched this mob attack on the seat of the United States Congress, but you've got, you know, a governor in Virginia, who's allowing you to freeze on a highway during a snowstorm. You've got the fact that nothing substantive in any way shape or form is being done via climate change. You've got California and Texas where the deregulated utilities are causing mass havoc including huge wildfires in California, and the unpreparedness that led to the cold snap that killed people and left millions without power for weeks and the earlier part of this year. I'm going to go on and on and on and on but I think January 6 just has to be put in context of what is obviously a decline in American power. I don't know exactly where that's going but it just seems 100% clear that even the most basic mechanisms of society are failing to function are functioning in ways that are extremely destructive towards the well being, not just a poor working in a press people which is every day facts in the United States, but almost all people when you think about the climate catastrophe and the climate collapse. And quite frankly, I think, you know that what we saw in January 6 what we see with the broader political sharpening and polarizing in the United States that's happening right now is really just a symptom of the fact that neither of the major political parties are willing to to offer real solutions to major problems that are facing all of humanity, and the fallout from that is creating more and more political turmoil. So yeah, I'd see the ruling class in the United States has totally lost the plot, hands off the wheel, the country's careening on a ice covered road back and forth constantly, and it's really just the average everyday folks who are really hurting because of it.