The lawfare against Trump is a monumental act of self-harm by a desperate establishment. At home, the previous propaganda smear of Russiagate was a flop. Insurrection is the new trumped up charge to protect the racketeers in power from any democratic consequences for their actions.
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| Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images |
With the New Year came the return of a new ceremony: the ritual performance of the January 6th “insurrection” narrative.
On the eve of the third anniversary of the protest at the US Capitol, President Joe Biden warned that “democracy was on the ballot” in 2024 – because Donald Trump threatens to destroy it.
Describing the events of January 6th, 2021, Biden said:
Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault. They were insurrectionists, not patriots. They weren’t there to uphold the constitution. They were there to destroy the constitution.
Now, with yet another appearance in court, Donald Trump has described his resulting indictment as a “witch hunt.”
“It’s all a conspiracy to try and get Biden into office,” Trump said, as reported by Fox News on January 11. “The American people get it.”
With the narrative of insurrection, what the American people get – and what they are given – are two different things. Here I examine the case against Trump, the nature of “insurrection” and its dangerous use in a performance to pervert democracy – disguised in claims of its defense.
The charge of violent assault
For a gun-owning nation such as the United States it is remarkable that an event described as a “failed coup” and a “violent assault” on democracy saw no shots fired by any protesters. In fact, the only person to die that day as a result of gunfire was Ashli Babbitt, killed by a police officer whose identity was protected by the Biden administration for months.
Even if the charge were true, the United States was born as the result of an armed insurrection. The right to rebel – the idea that a people collectively tyrannized is justified in overthrowing an unjust system – is often cited in support of the legitimacy of the American Revolution.
Some argue that the U.S. Constitution itself upholds a “right to revolution.” This natural right, as it is understood, is said (by CNN among others) to be “absurd” in a democracy – where the people can overthrow the government in an election.
Of course, the whole issue here does not rest on the charge of violence against Trump, nor even whether a rebellion or revolt is a legitimate course of action.
The question is whether the United States is still a democracy at all. This is the true source of the insurrection narrative, and understanding this is the key to the interpretation of the actions of a political and media elite terrified of having ever being held to account on the matter. The characterization of Donald Trump as a threat to American democracy is meant to hang the destruction of American democracy around his neck, because it has already taken place.
The narrative of insurrection is a tale told to protect the guilty, and to punish the innocent.
The birth of a narrative
The official narrative, of course, is a different story altogether. So where does their charge of violent assault originate? The remarks of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are often cited as the origin of this phrase. On January 8, 2021, he said:
What we witnessed was an assault on democracy by violent rioters, incited by the current president and other politicians…
The claim of “violent assault on democracy” became a stock phrase, repeated in the mainstream media and by political commentators. This first stage of narrative creation was succeeded by the routine addition of the name of Donald Trump.
By June 2021, January 6th was, as CNN framed it, “Trump’s Insurrection.” Later that year, CNN and many others wrote of a “failed coup” by the then-president – another line echoed by the January 6th Committee charged with the investigation – of a foregone conclusion with a long pedigree.
Information warfare to lawfare
It has become commonplace to hear of “Trump’s Assault on Democracy,” as the New Yorker reported in 2022.
The next year saw this slogan reinforced, as Trump was indicted for what Special Counsel Jack Smith called “an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.”
Yet according to Tucker Carlson, and also to legal commentator Victor Davis Hanson, the use of the law to destroy the leading presidential candidate on the charge of insurrection “looks like the end of American democracy.”
Carlson and Hanson agreed in their October 2023 exchange that Trump’s appearance in court to face numerous indictments “wasn’t a legal proceeding. It was a grotesque parody of the system our ancestors created.”
The main charge is that of inciting the so-called violent assault on American democracy. Yet this charge was crafted long before January 6th – and its scope was worldwide.
Two years before the alleged “insurrection,” neoconservative commentator Max Boot wrote of “Trump’s Latest Assault on democracy” in a 2019 article for the Washington Post. Yet the narrative of Trump as a threat to democracy did not begin with this, and was not even the first attempt to discredit him through the repetition of baseless accusations.
In January 2018 Zachary Cohen reported for CNN on “Trump’s fueling global assault on democracy.” It relied heavily on the annual report from Soros-backed U.S. NGO Freedom House, which said Trump’s “smears..on the [US] media and judiciary… threaten to undermine their legitimacy.”
According to Freedom House, Trump’s refusal to accept the deliberate sabotage of his political career by the same media and judiciary became, by 2023, “a strain on U.S. democracy.”
Cohen’s piece also mentioned Trump’s “attacks on the press,” and cited a smear in support of this narrative: the fabricated “Russiagate” allegations against Trump. This was a rebellion against the truth in service of the same cause, and using the same methods, as those seen to drive the U.S. to war in Iraq.
Taken together, the history of the insurrection narrative reveals its purpose, as well as the methods and motives of those who advance it. It is a means of self defense. – not of democracy – but of an elite whose power to define it in their terms is their only chance of remaining in control.
The rites of ‘insurrection’
In moves which give new meaning to Biden’s claims, Donald Trump has been provisionally barred from the ballot in the states of Colorado and Maine. Is this what “democracy on the ballot” means – to ban the leading candidate from appearing on it?
This is the democracy that is defended by the charge of insurrection – a charge for which no one has been found guilty – not Trump, nor any of the January 6th protesters. It is a “democracy” defended by lies, and the public display of fake emotions reminiscent of the “struggle sessions” seen in Maoist China.
News anchors and members of Congress have wept on command when recalling events at which they were not present.
Recently, CBS anchor Jonathan Capeheart burst into tears at the mention of January 6th. This was a repetition of an established rite, pioneered by a squeaky-voiced congresswoman.
A week after the “insurrection,” in which velvet ropes were respected by the violent rebels, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bewailed the “extremely traumatizing event” she had suffered over some people walking into a building she was not in at the time.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that many many members of Congress were nearly assassinated,” she said, clearly exaggerating.
“AOC” later simulated crying, as she recounted her “PTSD” resulting from an event which never took place.
A month later, the then-FBI Chief Chris Wray termed January 6th an act of “domestic terrorism.” He should know, given there were so many people present who were connected to federal agencies that the FBI lost count of them.
Cortez’ fellow “squad” member Rachida Tlaib also repeated the ritual, weeping at a lectern for a rebellion as real as Dylan Mulvaney’s womanhood, whilst Ocasio-Cortez was present to comfort her comrade.
Fake tears, fake news, fake rebels to fake a narrative of “insurrection.” An orchestrated effort to stop a genuine champion of the American people. These performances are also a display of loyalty, however humiliating personally, showing complete devotion to the Regime and its sponsors by leading the people astray.
This is a performance which enjoys bipartisan participation, with the donor class uniting around the defense of an industry which sponsors them all.
A threat to the neocon project
Death cult neoconservative William Kristol ceaselessly clutches his pearls over the “violent coup” led by Trump on that day. He is silent on the endless wars he and his Kaganite faction have started, leading the United States and the West into a thirty year quagmire of death, destruction and corruption. Their business model of “regime change” is destroying democracy as completely at home as it wrecks nations for profit abroad.
It is the defense of this industry, which has replaced diplomacy with diktats and common sense with censorship, which has mobilized the establishment against Trump.
Kristol has devoted his energies to a “Never Trump” campaign designed to prevent the most popular candidate from becoming president.
He claimed in a 2022 interview for the Washington Post that “the GOP under Trump can’t be saved.” His opinion reveals the reason behind his tireless efforts to destroy any chance of his winning a third election in 2024. Donald Trump is “anti-elite.”
An end to ‘forever wars’
This means Trump is a threat, because he is serious about ending the “forever wars” – which have all been lost. Winning is not the point, however, and nor is the human cost – which is never counted.
The profits from these wars, donated to the donor class by debt creation, sponsor a political and media elite entirely corrupted by the three-decade racket of “regime change.”
It is this which funds the “swamp” Trump famously threatened to drain. It permits the perpetual plunder of the U.S. Treasury, even making this a moral duty to be celebrated. Opponents of vast donations to the war industry which has bought politics are routinely smeared as traitors. Anyone who questions the 900,000 deaths and near nine trillion dollars poured into wars the U.S. has lost since 2001 is a friend of the enemy.
It is your patriotic duty to impoverish America and destroy its prestige, lest you too be accused of sedition.
A neoconservative project
If we understand this criminal enterprise as American democracy, it is clear to see the danger represented by Trump.
William Kristol, Robert Kagan and his wife Victoria Nuland, Liz Cheney, Lindsey Graham and Nikki Haley are but a few of the many beneficiaries of the destruction donor class which has displaced the democracy they claim to defend.
These people have no honor nor party allegiance. They campaign for endless wars, and clothe them in principled talk of democracy.
Theirs is the neoconservative faction which sees its capture of the United States government as under threat. It is a sign of their power, and their vanity, that so much of the media will reflect their claim to represent the highest ideals of liberty and the cause of the people, when they have done so much to destroy both. The aim of this project was to establish a global U.S. empire by military force.
It has resulted in the use of the same tactics of regime change at home – propaganda, censorship and the perversion of power against the people – which it has employed routinely overseas.
Unfollowing the money
Trump has vowed to stop the “forever wars” which fund them, threatening the grotesque establishment which fuels and feeds on them. This includes most of the U.S. media, including figures such as Max Boot and David French whose job, it seems, is to cheerlead whichever war is coming next.
In March 2023, Trump vowed to halt these wars – and to put Americans first.
“We are never going back to a party that wants give unlimited money to fight foreign wars – that are endless wars, that are stupid wars – but at the same time demands that we cut veterans’ benefits and retirement benefits at home,” Trump said.
He described the Republican party as one “ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open-border zealots and fools, but we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush.”
As The Hill pointed out last October, the world was safer under Trump. World safety is the greatest danger to the neocon faction which dominates U.S. politics and media. Trump threatens the livelihood and political future of an entire class. This is what is meant by William Kristol’s description of Trump as “anti-elite” – he is a danger to people like Kristol, who believe only they have a right to rule.
In this upside down world, the men who start wars for personal profit are heroes of democracy, and those who seek to end them are its enemies.
How it started, how it’s going
The narrative of insurrection is as fake as any of the charges against Trump, whose collective purpose is to secure the grip on power of a corrupt elite whose war racket has made them the true enemies of any people, anywhere.
None of the so-called January 6th “rioters” have been charged with insurrection either. Ray Epps, who urged the crowd to march on the Capitol, walked free this week – having denounced the “Trump cult” in court.
Though the establishment media dismiss suspicions he was a federal agent, even the Washington Post admits that his actions on the day saw the crowd denounce him. In video seen by the court, it reported that, “Members of the crowd chant ‘Fed! Fed!’ at him at one point.”
Yet the media maintain the accusations of Epps’ being a federal agent are the result of him being “scapegoated by the far-right media.”
Some genuine media scapegoats faced the most serious charge – of “seditious conspiracy” – which saw Enrique Torres of the Proud Boys get 22 years. It is a charge which could more properly be leveled against the so-called defenders of democracy themselves, who shamelessly speak against the facts, and in this case, against the voice of the people.
The legal defense of crime
This is a further reason for the narrative of insurrection. The decline of U.S. democracy and diplomacy is an obvious crime committed against the American people by an unjust elite, which has resulted in the use of the law as a cheap political instrument to prevent a free election.
For a glimpse at how the attempt to smear Trump with this lie is going, see Matt Taibbi’s excellent takedown of Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s January 6th case, The United States of America vs Donald Trump.
As Taibbi notes in his piece, titled The Electric Kool Aid Trump Indictment, the case functions as a totem of the fake democracy we inhabit. Legitimate in appearance – but deranged in reality.
Taibbi writes:
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment is a case within a case, a prosecutorial enchilada filled with things for people of all political persuasions to hate.
He continues to describe this well-crafted attack, designed to capture the broadest political support, “The outside is a shell of a conventional conspiracy prosecution, and these parts are genuinely damaging for Donald Trump.”
Yet the product behind the brand is something else entirely.
“Inside, it’s a deranged authoritarian fantasy, at times reading more like a 45-page Louise Mensch tweet than an indictment.”
Taibbi’s detailed examination of the case from August 2023 concludes with a stark verdict on American democracy: that the narrative of “insurrection” relies on framing any objection to state corruption as treason.
“…false statements, private gatherings, and words that ‘erode’ trust in government could end up defined as elements of felony conspiracy, maybe even sedition.”
This is a definition, he argues, which betrays the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
“That’s a concept that would make John Adams or Mitchell Palmer blush.”
An appeal to heaven
The case against Trump makes the defense of democracy an act of rebellion. This is a dangerous lesson to teach a people whose republic was founded on a justified revolt. It reminds people that a legal insurrection is possible – and sometimes necessary.
The “natural right” to rebellion against an unjust government is a Liberal principle outlined by John Locke, the British 17th century philosopher. The same mainstream media which “defends democracy” tells us this argument is no longer relevant – and is even “absurd” when we have free and fair elections.
Locke said in his 1689 “Letter Concerning Toleration”
… there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.
His argument, which inspired the American Revolution of Independence, was that the government is just only if it enjoys the consent of the governed – and protected the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. If the government abandons these duties and has lost the consent of those it rules, then there is a right to revolution – which Locke called “an appeal to heaven.”
Again, the narrative of insurrection brings us back to the question – is America still a democracy?
Making belief
Let us consider the definitions given by the “defenders of democracy.” To them, a walk into the Capitol is a “violent insurrection.” The people have no right to enter the palace, and must be punished for their presumption to do so.
Yet actual war is a defense of “our values,” of democracy itself. The name of the wars change – but it is always business as usual.
What “democracy” means to these people is simply this: permanent war, and the capture of government through its profits. Anyone who notices the difference between this and democracy must be stopped.
Trump is a threat to an insurrection which has already taken place, a coup d’etat which began with Kristol and Kagan’s Project for a New American Century and which has ended in an empire of lies, financed by violence abroad and the vertiginous perversion of justice and democracy at home.
The lawfare against Trump is a monumental act of self-harm by a desperate establishment. At home, the previous propaganda smear of Russiagate was a flop. Insurrection is the new trumped up charge to protect the racketeers in power from any democratic consequences for their actions.
Abroad, every war which they have sold to the public has been bought at a tremendous cost in human life and economic damage. All these wars have been lost, and have taken much of the American way of life with them. A far greater loss now looms than even the humiliations of Afghanistan and Ukraine.
The consequences of violent insurrection
Another storm is brewing as the direct result of the policies of these people, with the conflict in Israel threatening to spark a conflict which none can hope to contain.
Three days after the third anniversary of January 6th, General Mike Flynn warned of the destination of this destruction of democracy: a world war.
“We are in the initial stages of a much bigger, global conflict, and the conclusion & consequences are far greater than anyone can currently say. We simply don’t know how this will end…we just know things are not going in our favor principally due to those leading our nation.”
Flynn, who is fighting a case alleging he “plotted” an insurrection which never took place, had this to say on X:
“War is a failure of policy (and our U.S. foreign policy, globally, is a disaster), war is a failure of leadership at the highest levels (and man, have we seen a complete breakdown of leadership in the WH, the IC, at State, and most recently at DOD), and lastly, war is a racket.”
Trump has promised to bring back Flynn when he wins in November 2024 – a likelihood admitted by even William Kristol. With an eight point lead in Michigan – a state which has never seen Trump take this position – victory for the “anti-elite” opponent of “forever war” seems likely.
This is the reason for the narrative of insurrection: to stop the man who could save the world from the one that has already taken place, and whose business of violence threatens to destroy the world.
(Article by Frank Wright republished from LifeSiteNews.com)