 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. We're joined by Eugene Pudir of Breakthrough News and we're speaking the day after the riot, the armed introduction that took place in Washington, D.C., where Trump supporters encouraged and egged by Trump and his close aides actually stomped the Capitol building. They were also interrupting another, for lack of better word, fives where Republican legislators were trying to block the certification of the results are now with their election. And this has thrown up a lot of questions. Everyone has seen the visuals and truly shocking, but also says a lot about the situation of the country right now. So Eugene is here with us to talk more about this. Thank you so much Eugene for joining us. No, thank you so much for having me on. Right. Eugene, first question. So I mean, I think across the world, one of the things probably popping up in people's minds is the fact that this is Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. So much money and attention spent on security. We've seen over the past few months, anytime protests have taken place, the kind of brutality the police has exhibited. And here we have people openly armed, completely contemptuous of any kind of restrictions that were just storming into the Capitol. So maybe I think the first question is how did this happen or what happened exactly? Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable. I once was threatened by a Capitol Police officer to be maced in the face at point blank range because I was talking too loud. So I have to say, I was quite surprised to see the way they were acting here. I think sort of one of two things happened. I mean, certainly the official narrative is that they were unprepared. And what the most extensive things that I've seen so far in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and a few other outlets that have been talking to these various officials, there was some decision allegedly made maybe about a week and a half ago that they were not going to have heavy security. Like they knew, despite the fact they knew a lot of people were coming, despite, in fact, even at the end of last week, they had said there were 5,000 people coming. They actually upped the estimate to 30,000 people. So they knew tens of thousands of people were going to be there. They were monitoring their chats and some of which were public, seeing that people were at least thinking about storming the Capitol, certainly about bringing weapons, which was a huge, in the United States, a huge conversation. In the lead up to this was people bringing weapons to Washington, DC, which is basically totally illegal in the District of Columbia, but that there was going to be a big push around that. So they know all these things are happening, but that they decided that they were going to have a low presence. And it seems, if we can believe this, for PR reasons, that the military was concerned about how they had been looking over the summer when they had been cracking down on demonstrations against racism. And they just didn't want to be embarrassed, I guess, in terms of how that was, that the police felt that they had been embarrassed in the context, both federal and local, in the context of the last move by the Proud Boys, the pro-Trump group, into Washington, DC, where a number of people were stabbed and they came in with a very critical presence. And then it seems like the leadership of the District of Columbia was trying to make it seem as if they had everything under control and wanted to have a low, not a big presence of uniform police officers in the general area, if they could, in order to create, I guess, a presence that, oh, well, it's not a big deal. So at least the official narrative seems to be that the authorities in DC were so unconcerned with these right-wing, fascist, violent forces, even though we know everything they bring, we've seen what they've done so far, you can see them openly calling for violence and disruption on the internet in the lead up to a tens of thousands of people, that they didn't take it seriously, they didn't care, they didn't seem to mind, and that they had no real prepared security against these individuals, which I think leads to the second narrative. And I think the second question that myself and a lot of people have is how much direct collusion was there between these two groups. I mean, one of the things that we have certainly seen over this summer, but over the past few years, revealed in a big way, is many of these pro-Trump entities are deeply in the security forces. Every single police union endorsed Trump. The Washington DC police union actually almost broke apart in 2016 because they endorsed Trump. But nevertheless, the federal police, the state police, the Capitol police, they're shot through with people who, while they're in uniform in the Capitol, when they're off duty are in the same Facebook groups, the same chats, the same WhatsApps, the same whatever, with all of these individuals who are out there. And when you see cops taking selfies with some of the people, you look at some of these actions that were going on where they didn't seem to be trying too hard. They certainly weren't aggressively pushing back. And then you see the one photo that I think has gone around the world or a video of them opening the gates and allowing people to come through. It seems clear that there was also some level of chumminess, some level of coordination that was going on here. So it seems the way this really happened, and it's either through some, probably through some combination, it seems to me, of both direct collusion and just a complete lack of concern about right-wing fascist violence that allowed this to happen. It was allowed to happen. There was no attempt to really prevent anything like this, even though they knew it was coming. So it was not an accident at all. This is definitely, whether by omission or commission, it was definitely facilitated by the state's security forces for them to be able to do this and for so few people to be arrested. Absolutely. And this context also wanted to look at some of the responses. I mean, globally, we've had the ironic site of leaders running on for their attacks on democracy expressing concern. You have Macron from France, Louis Del Magro of the OAS, Modi from India, all of them expressing concern. And even within the United States, there's a very strong strand which has been going on talking about how this is really not America and this is an apparition, something that needs to be condemned. And then we sort of move on and talk about rebuilding a lot of the speeches in Congress after the riots also reflecting that kind of tone. On the other hand, what we I think know over the past many months, past many years, is that this is not really an apparition at all. This is a very systematic structural process that has been happening. No, I think that's a very good point. I don't even know what these people are talking about nine times out of 10 when you look at U.S. history. I mean, of course, the most relevant precedent, reconstruction, which was basically exactly this situation where the black political power that had come in after the Civil War was destroyed because of a deal that was done between the Democrats and the Republicans. But that was in the midst of massive violence. There was the 1898 Wilmington massacre where a progressive government led by black Republicans, reconstruction politicians with a lot of poor whites, they were overthrown by an armed militia. An armed militia just overthrew an elected government in 1898. That was the official end of reconstruction in the United States of America. Of course, Jim Crow, which was a fascist dictatorship, that's the only way to describe it for almost 100 years in the South where massive violence was used to prevent Democratic structures from operating at all. And of course, there's the DNA of the United States abroad where they're constantly overthrowing governments, getting involved in different political movements, and doing all these sorts of similar things that they're saying, oh, well, this is so terrible to see happen in America. So I would say that this is really, to use the Malcolm X quote, it has a little bit of a chickens coming home to roost aspect of it, that the history of the capitalist regime here in the United States that has used these divisions, especially around the issues of racism, immigrants, refugees, over the past few years, trying to use quote unquote, crime as a wedge issue to divide working class people of all different types from one another so that the Trump and his friends who got, I mean, the profit rate shot back up during the Trump administration. The corporate taxes went back down. I mean, they're manipulating all these things. That's as old as America. It's exactly what America is, but it's completely predictable that something like this would happen when you can see the most powerful figures. And yes, many ruling class people were opposed to Trump, but you see many of them were for Trump. They are happy to see these sorts of tactics from him. But this is where it ultimately leads, because they've stoked this movement based on lies, and they promised people that they can change everything about their life with these nonsensical neoliberal politics, which is not true. So when that's not happening, then of course, the level of violence is increasing amongst these forces, because they feel that they're being kept out of the political system. So I would say this is a combination of the long history of the use of division by the ruling class in this country to stay on top. But I would say more specifically, and to your point, this is the pull past four years of the Trump strategy of trying to take advantage of the contradictions of neoliberalism and the impact of them to push forward an extremely neoliberal policy, ironically enough, under the veil of criticizing it, has led to this point where these mass mobs feel very disenfranchised by what's going on in the country and are willing to radicalized and want to take more direct action against the state to push their views. So it is exactly what America is. And quite frankly, half the people making the speeches say this is not what America is, have been participating in this over the past four years and have been the number one advocates for many of the most disgusting things that we have seen in this country in terms of repression and the like, racism, xenophobia and all of that. So in a way, it's almost like a parallax view. But because the mainstream media in America is equally as committed to this view of America is fantastic and great and anything that goes wrong is not us. There's really no counter voice outside of independent media and what people do on social media. So it helps create this this bizarre bubble that I think people know isn't real, but it's not challenged enough, we're at the scale that it can de-thrown this official narrative. Absolutely right. And usually in this context also wanted to ask you about the coming days and weeks ahead because of course, Trump has willingly given a very weak concession, so to speak, saying that there'd be an orderly transfer of power. But nonetheless, the fact remains that his supporters are very much defined and there's an entire, like you said, there's an entire industry with the help of the media building these narratives about how the election was stolen. It's a whole ecosystem of information out there. And so we do see that this issue is not really going to die down anytime soon. And more importantly, the idea that there was a betrayal, so to speak, is not definitely not dying down as far as sections of the Republicans are concerned. I think that's a very good point. I mean, they're going to turn DC into an armed camp. So they may be able to tamp that down. But as we already saw, there was the demonstrations at state capitals. I suspect that could continue. And even if over the next couple of weeks leading up to the inauguration, it sort of seems to calm down a little bit. I view what happened yesterday as quite frankly, a great recruiting tool for the far right. I mean, ultimately for the quote, unquote, MAGA forces that support Trump, I mean, this really sort of confirms their whole narrative that it's the establishment versus us. And I think that they will continue to radicalize on that basis. When you look at a lot of the individuals in the crowd, you have people like Matthew Heimbach, a Nazi who played a big role in the Charlottesville demonstration, a lot of people like that, who are obviously looking at this as an opportunity to recruit, to bring people in. People who, just like Trump, I was able to take advantage of people who feel marginalized, feel pushed out, that they can use this to show, hey, we're strong. We can do things. We have powerful supporters. We have to fight. So I think even below the surface, we're going to see more organizing from these far right fascist, semi-fascist type forces. And because we're in an interesting situation where so many of them are tied into the state security forces, I'm very curious to see how this really plays out in terms of preventing these things from happening. Because I think at the state level, at the local level, there are many law enforcement officials who want to see these kinds of demonstrations happening. So I think ironically enough, things could become more serious vis-a-vis this. And I think having the Democrats in power will just create more of the perception that they're marginalized and have to fight and they can only push it out. So I would say over the next few months, I suspect, given that there's tens of millions of people, 15% of registered voters told you, Governor Powell, they thought these people were patriots. Well, 15% of the people who voted in last November is 23 million people. There are tens of millions of people who are angry. They're pissed off. They believe all of this propaganda. They believe the election was stolen and the new government will be totally illegitimate. And they have a lot of support amongst the police at the federal and state and local level. So I think this could actually get a lot more serious. And I think the fascist threat will grow. And the final point I'll piece I'll put on it is progressive movements are gearing up to make a big push against President Biden and the Democratic and Congress to deal with the economic crisis, to deal with COVID, to go beyond that and really solve people's problems. And I think the countermobilization of the left pushing for the right thing and the right pushing this fascist agenda, it's very dynamic. And I think that this 2020, there's a lot happening. 2021 has already started off at 100 miles an hour. And I don't know if it's slowing down anytime soon. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Eugene for talking to us. I understand that you'll be going live in a couple of hours soon. So looking forward to that. And we'll talk soon too. Thank you so much for having me. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.