• happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Comparing it to the Beer Hall Putsch is the best one I've heard. Hitler was LARPing as Mussolini's march on Rome. It was more heavily armed and better coordinated than the people storming the capitol, actually seizing buildings and getting politicians on board. But that wasn't the impact. They ran in the national election five years after the putsch and three years after the ban on their presence was lifted. They got 2.6% of the vote. As far as actual gains go it was a hopeless attempt that got 16 Nazis killed.

    Those dead became martyrs, the first and most central martyrs for the party. It seems like the air force spook who was shot is getting a mixed reception as they try to disown the event while it's being actively persecuted, but she's a white veteran who died wrapped in a Trump flag as she was the first to try to get into the same room as Trump's enemies. That's a martyr candidate when the media loses interest in the event. The anniversary of those martyrs' death, 9/11 because reality is a big stupid floppy circle, became one of the most important holidays and one of the focal points for mass rallies and spontaneous violence. It was supercharged spectacle which showed that devotion to the party meant blood sacrifice and eventually it resulted in Kristallnacht.

    Ayana Pressley just released a statement saying that the panic buttons inside her office were removed. Come next year this will be the date people gather outside and the level of infiltration inside is scarier than what the Putsch had. I'd expect the same kind of mass psychosis to happen at some point if the same kind of propagandisation and radical ownership of the coup attempt plays out. Maybe the FBI can/is willing to go after all the levels of power they're in but eh.