Capitol invasion: it wasn’t Trump supporters who first chanted ‘Not my President’
by Martin Sewell, Archbishop Cranmer:
The scenes at the US Capitol should distress any supporter of democracy, and have rightly attracted condemnation across the globe. That people have died in the chaos adds to the distress felt, and it is good that there has been bipartisan condemnation of such actions, that much is plain.
There will be a debate as to what this means and how that conversation should be conducted, and in the world of digital communication the battle for the dominating narrative has already begun. In this piece, I begin with the plain statement in unambiguous terms that the preservation of free and fair elections, the respectful transition of power, loser’s consent, a free press and an impartial Judiciary are pivotal in the struggle for a civilised society.
There is considerable irony in some of the commentary that has already begun. Many of the countries which proudly assert democratic values root their claim to respectability in similar events to those seen at the US Capitol. One Irish politician condemning the actions of Trump supporters had to be reminded that she was the Vice President of Sinn Féin, which has never shied away from violence to achieve its aims. But even respectable supporters of our nations’ political settlements do need to remind ourselves of our own histories: American independence was forged in civil unrest and ruler overthrow; both England and France have their executed kings and glorious revolutions, and even as we heard President Macron condemning what happened in Washington, the friends of France – of which I am one – should gently remind him that the Parisian mob, of left and right, their farmers and fishermen, and the Gilets Jaunes regularly resort to civil disorder and yet are considered a quasi-respectable part of French society.
In the United Kingdom we have seen protest groups pushing the boundaries of acceptable behaviour without police challenge, and in Parliament a Speaker abandoning impartiality and actively siding with those intent on withholding loser’s consent and using every trick in the book to deny the expressed will of the people.
It was not Trump supporters who began the destructive meme ‘Not my President’ and dubbed themselves ‘The Resistance’. Equally there has been a flight from objectivity in the media on both sides of the Atlantic, all of which adds to the ‘them and us’ narrative. You cannot support rioting in US cities and then be shocked when it arrives at places you find uncomfortable. All this needs to be reversed.
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