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Yes, This Was a Coup Attempt — Against Blackness
You can argue the word choice all you want, but you can’t avoid the truth
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Days after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, people are starting to wonder how the events will be fixed in history, but I’m still trying to come down on the name of it all.
Many people are opting to settle for the least debatable definitions. “Insurrection” is starting to stick, but when even that seems too dialectical, “anti-democratic action” is a popular Band-Aid. No one can argue that what happened Wednesday wasn’t anti-democratic: The mob that kicked in doors and ran rampant through the halls of the Capitol were literally attempting to stop a political process in action.
Terms like “insurrection” and “anti-democratic” aren’t inaccurate, but they both telegraph the user’s punch. How people define what happened is in part determined by their relationship to American power dynamics. If you’re a politician, it’s an insurrection (“an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government”*). If you’re a Trump supporter, it’s a revolution (“the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of…
