In 2013, the American cinema scene was dominated by the release of two films both having as subject what in the jargon is called "attack on power".
In the film "Olympus Has Fallen" (in Italy: "Attack on Power - Olympus Has Fallen") which premiered in Hollywood on March 18 of that year, director Antoine Fuqua brought a military attack to the big screens for the first time full blown at the White House, sponsored by none other than North Korea.
In the film "White House Down" (in Italy: "Sotto Sedio - White House Down"), also previewed in Hollywood on June 28, director Roland Emmerich decided instead to explore the theme of "internal sedition" by the omnipresent "military-industrial complex" aimed at eliminating a progressive African American president.
Turning our gaze now from 8 years ago to today's situation, we can only bitterly note that, once again, cinema has somehow been a forerunner for today's reality.
January 6, 2021, was a day that will remain in the history of humanity. Anticipating the session of the United States Congress on the formalization of the election of Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden Junior as forty-sixth president of the United States of America, a colorful crowd of American citizens of heterogeneous political affiliation, including flags and the banners of the "Boogaloo Movement", the "Three Percenters", the "Proud Boys", the "Oath Keepers", the "Groyper Army", the "Neo-Confederates" and, above all, "QAnon", in addition to those of various other groups of neo-Nazi and national-anarchist inspiration, had appeared in the grassy area called "The Ellipse", located in front of the White House, to attend a rally organized by the incumbent president, Donald John Trump, and by a small handful of his advisers among which must be counted: the sons Donald John Tump Junior and Eric Frederick Trump, the lawyer and personal advisor to the president, Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani, and the congressis you Morris Jackson “Mo” Brooks Junior and David Madison Cawthorn.
Although several days have passed since the event, it is absolutely not clear how many people attended in total given that, for reasons of national security, it is forbidden to carry out any type of aerial photography in the Washington DC area, so much so that even today the authorities both citizens and feds speak of a fork between 2.000 and 80.000 people, thus a ridiculously large margin of error.
Although, in retrospect, the demonstrators boasted that they brought over 100.000 people to the streets, that number is simply unsustainable. However, by examining with a sense of perspective the films shot by the demonstrators themselves with mobile phones and then widely circulated on the net, it is possible to assume that at least 30-40.000 people were present.
After a long series of incendiary interventions by Trump himself and his family and collaborators, which ended with a direct appeal to "take back the country", the crowd walked along Pennsylvania Avenue towards Capitol Hill, where the Congress of the United States of America.
Although the march was not properly organized, its "informal leader" was Alexander Emerick "Alex" Jones, founder of the "propaganda" network (my use of the term "propaganda" is not accidental because that of Alex Jones is not it can be defined as "information", if not in the pornographic sense of the term) radio, television and computer technology called "Infowars", active for over twenty years and traditional megaphone of the colorful galaxy of the American far right. Jones himself later admitted that he had donated over half a million dollars to the organization of what the protagonists dubbed the "March to Save America".
Once at the foot of the Capitol, the demonstrators quickly entered into conflict, around 1:00 local time, with the small number of members of the police, mainly belonging to the "United States Capitol Police" (USCP), exceeding I pushed the resistance, in reality very little spirit.
The rioters then besieged Congress for about an hour when, at 2:00 pm, the ground floor windows were smashed and the front doors were forced open, thus allowing the demonstrators to dwindle inside. of the building spreading like wildfire everywhere.
The attitude of the men of the "Capitol Police" and the "Secret Service" present both inside and outside the building was not absolutely uniform. Although some have shown attachment to the mission they have received and have tried to stem the offensive of the rioters with a commendable sense of duty, even when totally overwhelmed and brutally beaten, others have put up an absolutely symbolic resistance, when they have not even "fraternized".
Members of Congress, at the time engaged in joint session to discuss the election of Joe Biden as new president, had to be rushed out of the building through a side passage, as the underground fallout bunker located beyond below the building had been overrun by demonstrators.
During these convulsive moments, a protester, former veteran of the American air forces and belonging to the "QAnon" movement, Ashli Elizabeth Babbitt (already renamed by the aforementioned extremists with the title of "Lady Liberty"), was shot, practically live worldwide, by an agent of the "Secret Service" who fired a shot at her while she was trying to overcome one of the makeshift internal barriers erected to protect the main room which, however, was actually occupied for a short time by the demonstrators, one of the which (the so-called "Viking-horned shaman", Jake Angeli) was also photographed in the act of "taking possession", sitting on it, of the seat of Nancy Patricia Pelosi, current president of the House of Representatives.
However, starting at 2:31 am the police, supported by the National Guard soldiers began to pour in forces and counterattack the demonstrators using batons and tear gas, but only at 5:40 in the afternoon the authorities were able to declare the final clearing of the building. Congress was then able to resume the session and complete the previously suspended voting process, effectively electing Joe Biden to the office of president of the United States of America.
The final toll of the day recorded the deaths of 4 people (all demonstrators), at least 56 members of the police hospitalized together with an unknown number of troublemakers and hundreds of arrests in the crowd. In the following days, an officer who was seriously injured during the clashes died in hospital while another committed suicide due to the stress accumulated during the terrible day, thus bringing the final toll of the “Sacco del Campidoglio” to 6.
Although at a first superficial analysis it might be tempting to ignore the extent of the event, it is the opinion of the author of this analysis that the events of Capitol Hill of January 6, 2021 represent an epochal event and a real turning point in the history of United States of America and Humanity in general, a prelude to much greater upheavals that will occur in the coming months and years both in the USA and abroad.
Although in recent days parallels have been literally wasted with events such as "the Assault on the Winter Palace", which started the "Bolshevik Revolution" and the "Russian Civil War", the "March on Rome", which inaugurated the "Ventennio Fascista", and the failed "Putsch of Munich", which marked the rise of Adolf Hitler, I personally want to go further and instead propose a parallelism with the "Sack of Rome" by Alaric's Visigoths which took place on the 24th of August 410 AD and which definitively marked the unstoppable decline of the "Pars Occidentalis" of the Roman Empire. If this parallelism may seem drastic and exaggerated at first sight, it is nevertheless necessary to dwell on a number of important points.
First, the conduct by the incumbent president, Donald Trump, who literally "set the stage" for what was, to all intents and purposes, a full blown coup attempt. Not only that, after having incited the crowd against the institutions, de-legitimizing them, Trump has used social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to send deliberately ambiguous messages which, although apparently seeming peacemakers, on closer analysis they turned out to be everything. other. In particular, the almost obsessive reference to "electoral fraud" and "stolen victory".
Here it is necessary to open an important parenthesis because, although there has been a lot of talk about the presidential elections in November 2020 as "rigged", to date nothing has emerged to date, and all 60 legal appeals presented by the team Trump both at the federal level and at the level of the states cited as the seat of fraud (Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia) were rejected all but one (which is however inherent in matters of a procedural nature and, to specify the judicial authorities, it absolutely does not affect the result of the vote). Basically, the elections were free and fair, there was no fraud and the vote in favor of Biden was overwhelming both on the popular vote and on that of the so-called "Electoral College"; point.
Even those of us who have a passion for conspiracy theories should stick to the facts and not indulge in wild speculation of an emotional or partisan nature. From this point of view, the comparison with the 2000 elections that saw George W. Bush and Al Gore collide simply makes no sense. In the case of the 2000 elections, Al Gore won in the popular vote with a difference of just over half a million votes but, the decisive battle for control of the state of Florida which guaranteed victory for the Republicans thanks to the "Electoral College" method , George W. Bush prevailed by only 537 votes and the recount was blocked by a majority ruling (5 to 4) of the Supreme Court in favor of Bush which still today has experts on Anglo-Saxon law discussed. With such a tiny margin, less than 0,009%, then talking about potential (even small) fraud actually makes sense.
In the case of the Trump vs Biden elections, the margin in favor of Biden was over 7 million votes in the popular vote, and in all 5 of the so-called "states of discord" mentioned above the difference in votes was robust in favor of the democratic candidate who thus triumphed also in the "Electoral College".
A scenario of fraud in favor of Biden and against Trump would presuppose an operation of enormous scale, worthy of autocratic regimes and a connivance at all levels that frankly is unthinkable in a democratic and open society. In the age of TV, the Internet and social media, where everything instantly becomes "viral", the evidence supporting the conspiracy thesis would have multiplied immediately to become a river in flood.
In light of what has been said so far, continuing to defend Trump's stubbornness in not wanting to concede victory is simply foolish, and condoning the act of inciting protesters against the institutions is downright criminal.
Another element on which it is necessary to reflect is the poor performance shown by the intelligence agencies and the police and security forces. While there have been warnings to this effect since December, the intelligence and security agencies of the United States, in particular the FBI, which would have jurisdiction in these national security cases, have proved absolutely unable even to speculate that a mob of right-wing extremists could have posed a risk to the country's national security and constitutional order, even when, on January 5, the National Park Service sounded the alarm that there had already been gathered about 30.000 people eager to participate in the "March to Save America", and that many of them were even armed.
The deployment by the "Capitol Police" and the "Secret Service" was not adequate to guarantee the safety of government buildings and congressmen, especially when compared to the mammoth deployment recorded during the demonstrations of the protest movement called "Black Lives Matter ". However, this disparity of treatment should not surprise too much given that, in the eyes and in the imagination of the "armed wing" of the American "deep state", which has always been in tacit connivance with the more or less extreme right, movements such as "Minority civil rights organizations" or "ANTIFA" pose a much greater risk to national security than the dark forces of nascent "American Fascism" (because that's what it is now and we should quickly get to grips with this term!). It would not be explained otherwise why columns of white supremacists also armed with assault rifles are allowed to parade through the streets of American cities while as many as 85 policemen surrounded and arrested actress Jane Fonda in a relatively minor protest for the climate.
It is right at this juncture to ask: can an 83-year-old (albeit sprightly and biting) old woman like Jane Fonda pose a threat to the national security of the world's greatest military power than the "legions" of fully armed thugs and trigger-happy? To each the answer according to their own sensitivity.
A further element of concern is the so-called "political infiltration". According to the words of right-wing activist Ali Alexander (born Ali Akbar), and subsequently confirmed by both the Washington Post and the FBI, it was since early December that Ali Alexander himself was planning together with the more "Trumpian" Republican congressmen Paul Gosar , Andy Biggs and Mo Brooks to organize something sensational for the day of January 6th. These are very serious words because they would lead us into the scenario of planned internal sedition (regardless of whether Trump was informed or not).
Not only; According to what emerged from subsequent investigations, as many as 16 elected or outgoing Republican members of one of the various state legislatures participated in the assault on Capitol Hill, in some cases even shooting themselves in the crowd using personal cell phones.
On balance, the events of January 6 represent a real watershed not only for the USA but also for the whole world. Having all grown up in a world dominated by the United States of America, we ended up truly believing that the "Nation of Stars and Stripes" was, using a phrase used several times in the past by Massimo D'Alema: "The irreplaceable nation" , forgetting that instead history goes on and that all countries and empires, both large and small, are subject to the same processes of aggregation and disintegration that constantly test the strength of state structures and civil societies.
What happened in Washington DC on January 6 this year is a "unicum" in American history because it has never happened that a crowd moved by destabilizing intentions based on concrete ideological-political reasons had dared to challenge so openly "the State ", moreover occupying and devastating the" Sanctuary "par excellence, that Capitol built specifically to represent" the great tent "(using an allegory of the Far West), or" Olympus "(instead going to connect with the Classical Antiquity of European origin so dear to the American globalist elites), where the spiritual and ideological symbols of the "American system" dwell and are kept.
In a move that was both bold and reckless, the Americans became "their own barbarians" in one fell swoop and people awoke on January 7 with the certainty that America's worst enemies are not located in the distant steppes. Russo-Chinese or in the ravines of some caverns in Central Asia or in the deserts of the Middle East but in their midst, just like the masses of slaves and peasants who in 410 AD revolted against imperial rule and opened the gates of the city to the hordes of Alaric's Visigoths hailed at the time as a "liberator" from the excesses of the imperial court.
Like it or not, the "myth of America" has been shattered and even if (exactly as in 410 AD) the Empire will not end tomorrow, Pandora's box has been definitively uncovered, the US has come out of it as a country divided and in which a large slice of diehards have lost faith in the "historical mission", in representative democracy and in the "Destiny Manifesto" and now it is up to us to monitor and filter events to try to understand what kind of "instability factory" they will become the United States in the coming years.
Photo: Tyler Merbler / Kerstie Bush / PBS / Tyler Merbler / web / The National Guard
