Was it an attempted coup? Not exactly, but it's not over either
Experts say that the recent actions of President Trump and his supporters are harder to stop than a coup, and offer as an example the democratic setbacks of countries like Turkey and Venezuela.
The actions of President Donald Trump and some of his supporters - including the president's attempt on Saturday to pressure the Georgia secretary of state to change the results of the presidential election and his outright incitement to a violent mob who then attacked? the United States Capitol — constitute an attempted coup?
If the question is whether those actions are as serious as a coup, the answer is yes, said Erica de Bruin, a political scientist at Hamilton College who has investigated coups for more than a decade.
But the violent and undemocratic attack on the Capitol building does not fit the technical definition of a coup, even though the president incited and encouraged it. And, according to experts, that matters, because different measures are required to prevent these types of attacks from damaging democracy.
A coup is an illegal attempt to seize power through force or threat of force that often involves at least one faction of the military or formal security forces, although sometimes it is backed by paramilitaries or other armed groups.
That was not what happened Wednesday in Washington.
Although the people who broke into the Capitol building were in some cases armed, they do not appear to be part of any organized army or rebel group. And, while President Trump encouraged the insurgents in his role as leader of that movement, he did not try to get the military to support them or use other of his formal presidential powers to help them, said Naunihal Singh, a professor at the School of War. Naval whose investigation focuses on coups.
But the story does not end there.
These days, democracies tend to collapse after gradual relapses that fall short of the technical definition of a coup but turn out to be more damaging. In countries around the world - including Turkey, Russia, Hungary and Venezuela - a clear pattern has emerged in which leaders come to power through elections but then undermine norms, dismantle institutions, and change laws to remove them. restrictions on their power. In the end, their countries are, except in name, dictatorships.
Yesterday's attack, and the support it received from President Trump, fits very well into that category. And fighting that kind of undemocratic pushback requires different tactics than would be used against a coup.
"We know how to prevent blows," said De Bruin, who has literally written a manual on the subject. “We have a collection of measures that international organizations, army officers, people can use. But we know much less about how to prevent anti-democratic actions. "
And whether it succeeds or fails, since a democratic relapse is less absolute than a coup, which usually ends in a couple of hours, stopping it requires a longer political intervention. Legal solutions, such as arrests and impeachments, can help put a stop to these democratic relapses. Political solutions, such as political parties withdrawing the budget from those who participate in anti-democratic activities, and complaints by party elites, are also helpful.
The more subtle answers also matter.
"Authoritarian leaders are terrified of making a fool of themselves because so much of their power derives from social connection," Singh said. Treating them as if they were respectable reinforces that power, he said, but treating Wednesday's attack and Trump's support for it with the "scorn and resentment it deserves" is one way to neutralize any insinuation that it is legitimate or was carried out with authority.
Some Republican officials did so yesterday. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who for weeks after the election remained silent when Trump spuriously denounced electoral fraud, told the Senate on Wednesday that overriding the will of the voters would “forever harm our republic. ”.
Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican and former presidential candidate, was even more outspoken.
"We came together because of the wounded pride of a selfish man and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed in the past two months and moved into action this morning," he said when the House reconvened after the attack. "What happened here was an insurrection incited by the president of the United States."
But the reaction was not uniform at all. In Congress, 147 Republican legislators, including eight senators, voted against the certification of the election results. One of them, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, had earlier been photographed waving a clenched fist at the mob of Trump supporters, many of whom later participated in the attack on the Capitol.
De Bruin cautioned that democratic coups and setbacks are not mutually exclusive and that, in fact, they could reinforce each other.
"Of course, the coup attempts happen in a context of violent protest," he said. "That makes them more likely."
