Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the insurrection of the Capitol by violent Trump supporters on January 6th. I won’t write about the political circumstances and ramifications, since there are much more qualified pundits for that, but a year later I still can’t shake the images. I watched everything live on CNN last year, because I wanted to see the certification of the votes for Joe Biden, and I remember how the mob came closer and closer to the Capitol. Back then, watching it live on television, it was the most surreal atmosphere: you really didn’t know how it would unfold and if these angry believers in the Big Lie (Trump refusing to accept his election defeat) would harm or even kill members of the Senate and/or Congress. I felt a sense of unease that made me want to retreat to a primal need for comfort and safety in my own apartment (it was during the second hard lockdown in Austria, after all).
For anyone who wants to know more about the fateful day that are investigated by Congress at the moment and lead to Trump’s second impeachment trial, the New York Times put together a visual investigation of how the events unfolded. Please be warned: this video contains graphic violence and its images are intimidating, frightening and infuriating.
For the bigger picture, it’s important to remember how incremental Trump’s role was in all of this, inciting the crowd before the attack and telling them that he “loves them” in a video that was supposed to calm them down after they violently entered the building. There’s an in-depth investigation by PBS’ Frontline, in cooperation with ProPublica, that documents the circumstances leading up to and surrounding January 6th, from Charlottesville to the consequences of the attack on the Capitol. You can watch the full documentary on YouTube.
One might almost lose hope in humanity after watching these videos, but events like this are also a strange reminder for me to instead focus on what’s good in the world and what everyone of us personally cherishes – despite the destruction, polarization and anger in the world. Not everything is lost.