Where do we stand, one year after the January 6th Capitol insurrection?

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

This is a guest post from our friends at Over Zero, contributed by their Regional Director, Laura Livingston and Executive Director, Rachel Brown

In the year since the January 6 Capitol insurrection, the U.S. faces continued, even heightened, risks of political violence as the structural vulnerabilities that presaged the attack intensify, narratives valorizing the insurrection are mainstreamed, and new, previously mundane, apolitical spaces–school boards, public health commissions, and local election boards–become sites of contestation and threats of violence. These risks are especially concerning amidst the United States’ unaddressed history of political violence and the mainstreaming of white supremacist ideologies that seek to exclude certain communities from political life. History instructs that unaddressed or unaccounted-for violence only begets further harms, sparking cycles of retribution and ceding space for politicized and false narratives to entrench and further divide the public. The lack of a shared narrative and accountability for January 6th further fuels risks for violence.

Philanthropy, with its resources, expertise, and social capital, is well-situated to address these risks. But doing so requires a sober assessment of the dynamics that brought us to this moment and an acknowledgement of the continued risks for violence they pose.

A Deeper Look: where are we one year later?

A year ago we wrote that the violence on January 6 did not materialize overnight, but rather, it was an outgrowth of several dynamics and realities working in concert:

• structural vulnerabilities deeply embedded in the U.S., including democratic disillusionment and weakening institutions
• inflammatory public rhetoric, amplified through social media
• a growth and normalization of extremist groups and ideologies
• asymmetric and affective polarization, whereby one political party is particularly accepting of winner-takes-all politics, including violence
• a history of unaddressed political violence aimed at systematically excluding certain groups from participating in U.S. political life
• a climate of heightened political violence and intimidation.

We noted that, layered onto the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn, these vulnerabilities created the “grievances, space, and normatively permissive environment for individuals to connect, coordinate, and undertake political violence directed at overturning the cornerstone of our democratic system: free and fair elections.”

One year later, these vulnerabilities remain and are aggravated by efforts to rewrite and even valorize the Capitol attack.

Notwithstanding a brief moment of cross-partisan solidarity in condemning the violence, narratives about the election and the insurrection have since devolved into partisan talking points, with many Republicans attempting to trivialize or even celebrate the attack as a patriotic uprising. Elected Republican officials and other public figures have characterized the insurrection as a “normal tourist visit” or “rowdy people walking through a hallway.” Some have maintained that antifa provocateurs staged the violence, while Marjorie Taylor Greene recently ranted that the insurrection was what the founders had provided for in the Declaration of Independence. These falsehoods serve to frame January 6 as an appropriate, necessary, even praiseworthy response to a “stolen election.” Republican leadership, rather than rejecting and condemning those who violently stormed the Capitol, has instead focused on sidelining those committed to investigating and ensuring accountability for the attack. House Republicans voted to oust Liz Cheney from leadership after repeated criticisms of Donald Trump’s role in January 6, while state GOP chapters likewise censured Senators and Members of Congress from their districts who voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.

Traditional and social media further fuel these narratives. In a three-part documentary series, Tucker Carlson, the most watched cable news host, called the insurrection a “false flag operation” and related arrests “a patriot purge” that amounted to a “domestic war on terror…going after half the country.” The series prompted two Fox News commentators to resign. Coordinated campaigns on social media stoke election-related mis- and disinformation, targeting communities vulnerable to such claims through powerful algorithms. Social media platforms have made limited changes despite both internal and external documentation of their role in stoking violence; one year later, 66% of Americans view them as responsible for the January 6 violence.

Even as a majority of Americans (83%) disapprove of the violence that occurred on January 6 (including 76% of Republicans), support for current accountability efforts–the House Select Committee, the over 700 individuals charged and facing prosecution, and ongoing investigations that paint a fuller picture of that day (and the insurrection’s near-success)–falls along partisan lines. While 63% of Americans overall and 82% of Democrats support a congressional investigation into the attack, the number drops to 40% among Republicans (still a non-trivial figure, to be sure). According to Pew, between March and September 2021, the share of Republicans who think it is very or somewhat important for law enforcement to find and prosecute those who broke into the Capitol on January 6 dropped 22 percentage points.

In other words, efforts to rewrite the Capitol insurrection appear to be working. As of December 2021, a majority of Republicans (52%) characterize those involved in the attacks as “protecting democracy,” in what most describe as a legitimate protest that got out of hand. And support for the “big lie” that brought us to January 6 holds steady: as of December 2021, 71% of Republicans still do not believe Joe Biden is the legitimate President; only 38% of Republicans believe the ballots will be accurately counted in the midterms. Put differently, a significant portion of Americans doubts the integrity of our elections.

These sentiments build on the institutional distrust, polarization, and misinformation that brought us to January 6, including the false claims that there was “massive fraud” in Atlanta, Detroit, and Philadelphia (cities with sizable minority populations), and that we need to “fight like hell” to save our country from a “stolen election.” They also come amidst rising support for political violence: as of December 2021, 1 in 3 Americans thought that violence against the government is justified at times, the highest figure in decades. Separate research has found that 39% of those who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump agree with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” These statistics are alarming amidst calls for a “national divorce” or even “secession” and the continued mainstreaming of dangerous conspiracies like “the great replacement theory,” which holds that there is a plot to replace white citizens with nonwhite immigrants and has been linked to participation in the the January 6 insurrection. The public has taken notice: over two-thirds of Americans view January 6 as a harbinger of increasing political violence.

As support for violence increases and public officials continue to propagate dangerous conspiracy theories and debunked stolen election claims, there has been a spike in threats and harassment targeting election officials. Even after recounts, audits, and state and federal litigation have discredited claims of fraud, average Americans and higher profile public figures alike have called for firing squads, hanging, and capital punishment for election officials that they believe are complicit in rigging the 2020 presidential election. One third of election officials have reported feeling unsafe because of their jobs. Elections officials have sued Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and One America News Network for spreading conspiracy theories that have physically endangered them. Amidst these conditions, more than one in six surveyed election officials plans to retire before the 2024 election, with others questioning whether they can continue the work amidst “the threats, the stress, the attacks on democracy on the officers, on the staff.” Such resignations bring the loss of elections expertise and cede additional space for politically-motivated and anti-democratic actors to oversee elections. They also mirror those driving public health officials and school board members to resign amidst harassment and threats surrounding coronavirus restrictions and curriculum addressing racism in America.

A series of state laws restricting voter access and increasing partisan oversight of the election process only further reinforce stolen election narratives and mobilize individuals around the engineered (and false) existential threat that voting access poses to our democracy. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of December 2021, over the past year 19 states had enacted 34 laws that make it harder for Americans to vote. Eighty-eight voting restriction bills that did not reach a final resolution in 2021 will carry over into 2022, while another 13 new bills restricting access have been pre-filed for the 2022 legislative session.

Building on the vulnerabilities that brought us to January 6, these recent dynamics have helped diffuse flashpoints for violence throughout society, including at the state level and in previously innocuous and apolitical spaces, such as local election bodies and school boards.

At the same time, there is an unprecedented level of attention to these risks, with organizations across sectors and political affiliation working to understand and address them. We still have agency and an opportunity to push back.

An Urgent Call to Action: what can we do?

The frog in boiling water apologue is well known: You put a frog in boiling water and the frog will jump out and survive; but if you instead turn up the temperature slowly, the frog, oblivious to the escalating threat, will unknowingly allow itself to be boiled alive. For years, we’ve been like frogs in water that’s gradually getting hotter as risks of political violence and to our democracy–the structural vulnerabilities highlighted above–incrementally increased. January 6 represented a crescendo of these vulnerabilities, a quick uptick in the water temperature that, for many, served as a wakeup call to take action and get out. But over the past year, the temperature has continued to rise, and it’s essential that we do not become complacent.

As philanthropy reaffirms its commitment to creating resiliency to risks for political violence, it is well-positioned to bolster and scale promising work that is already underway. As we’ve written with colleagues from New America and Thought Partnerships in greater detail here, doing so will require an ecosystem of approaches that operate at the local, regional, and national levels, engage diverse stakeholders, and address both acute and longer-term risks. This work can be integrated into well-established funding verticals to strengthen institutions, stem polarization, counter misinformation, and ensure accountability. Examples of critically important immediate-term work foundational for addressing more systemic issues include:

• Building a rapid response infrastructure that can identify and address risks for violence in the same way we do public health and climate disasters will be essential. This infrastructure should connect groups, geographies, and interrelated issue areas to ensure that monitoring and risk assessments are connected to response capacities. It should include investments at the national, state, and local levels.
• Bolstering democratic institutions against acute risks through supporting efforts to challenge legislation that interferes with individuals’ voting rights or introduces partisan oversight into elections while supporting efforts to expand voter access. This also includes providing support — security, legal, social and emotional — to public and election officials facing threats, harassment, and intimidation.
• Addressing the growth of extremist groups and ideologies through investing in research to monitor extremist groups and piloting and testing interventions to counter their recruitment. This can also include providing tools to the communities that these groups are likely to target. Efforts should also address extremist infiltration of law enforcement.
• Improving the communications landscape that reinforces and amplifies divisive and dangerous narratives, including through continued advocacy for social media platforms to reform their algorithms and rigorously testing interventions to reduce the reach of mis/disinformation. Support can also go to local news outlets and for training journalists to avoid inadvertently amplifying risks for violence through their reporting.
• It’s also critical to reset norms to reject the dangerous rhetoric and violence, particularly through bolstering conservative leaders rejecting violence. Philanthropy can also use its social capital and resources to change the incentive structures that currently reward leaders who question the legitimacy of the 2020 election or minimize the capitol insurrection. Other efforts might include bolstering cross-cutting identities that subsume political and other fault lines and connect people across divisions, including civic associations, professional associations, or geographic identities (e.g., “Boston strong”).
• Accountability for political violence is critical to stemming cycles of violence and serves a restorative function for aggrieved communities. Philanthropy should support efforts to investigate and create a more complete account of what happened on January 6. It should also support local, civil society efforts to ensure accountability for other instances of political and group-targeted violence.

Critically, this funding cannot be confined to boom and bust cycles around flashpoint events, such as elections or insurrections. Instead, it should provide longer-term support to organizations, communities, and individuals already deeply engaged in this work to build on existing momentum, rigorously test and scale promising approaches, and facilitate coordination and collaboration. It’s also critical that this support go to groups most likely to be affected by violence who have real-time knowledge of risks, are often already deeply engaged in stemming violence targeting their communities, and have existing relationships and social capital not found elsewhere.

Philanthropy must also recognize that addressing risks of violence transcends financially supporting programming and extends to leveraging foundations’ unique social capital and influence. More specifically, this includes foundations’:

• Connections — through staff, boards, and principals — to leaders within key sectors, such as media, politics, and business. Each of these sectors has leverage in setting norms, incentive structures, and our surrounding narrative environment.
• Standing to set and model norms rejecting and disincentivizing support for violence.
• Convening power to bring others to the table to take coordinated, multi-stakeholder action to build resilience to violence.

Conclusion

So, where are we, one year after the January 6th Capitol insurrection? The answer to that question implicates a complex web of cultural and political factors. But the answer is also strikingly simple: We are in a moment of risk that will not evaporate on its own. Our path forward hinges on our willingness to invest across key priorities and at a scale that reflects current risk levels. Our hope is that this and our related writing offer philanthropy not only a sense of urgency for action, but a blueprint for learning, engaging, and ultimately investing in the ecosystem of efforts that will be required to meet this moment and get us on a stronger path to democracy.

Laura Livingston is the Regional Director, Europe at Over Zero, an organization committed to creating long-term societal resilience to identity-based violence and division. Her background is in the intersection of transitional justice, governance, and peacebuilding. Laura received her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Rachel Brown is the Founder and Executive Director of Over Zero, an organization that works to build resilience to identity-based violence and other forms of group-targeted harm. She is a recognized expert on confronting hateful and dangerous rhetoric and her work for the past decade has focused on using communication to prevent violent conflict around the world. Rachel authored Defusing Hate while a Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.