By Paz Manzano, Y12
What is the deadly mob attack on the U.S. Capitol defined as?
On the 6th of January 2021, the United States Capitol was stormed by extremist supporters of President Trump. This was mostly incited by the alleged voting false fraud that was brought up by Trump and other members of the Republican Party. There has currently been discourse concerning what this event should be classified as, some are calling it a coup attempt, an insurrection, and others a putsch.
In order to adequately define this event we must first differentiate a coup, an insurrection, and a putsch.
A coup is defined as an illegal, sudden, and violent seizure of power. It is quite obvious that at the end of the day this was not a coup, albeit not a successful one. But the fact of the matter is that I did specify that this could be considered a coup attempt. Even with that clarification the people who stormed the Capitol did not have the goal to overthrow the current government. At the time President Trump was still in office and President Biden would be taking over soon. The goal was to prevent President Biden from assuming his rightful presidency. They were under the impression that elect President Biden had not been elected. So this enticed the rioting that occurred in the Capitol.
A more appropriate name for these events might be an insurrection, meaning “violent uprising against an authority or government,” in other words, a rebellion. An insurrection is usually done against authoritarianism, but they were promoting authoritarianism and impeding the democratic course of action, so once again insurrection is not the right term. So the question is still left unanswered, what can we label this?
The reason why this event must be labeled is due to the fact that in order for a democracy to take its course, and for it to fight back against authoritarianism and fascism, whether or not this was the case is up for interpretation, we still need a term for this.
The term most apt to describe this event appears to be “autogolpe” or self-coup in english. Autogolpe is a term in spanish meaning “coup initiated or abetted by a country’s elected leader, especially in order to establish absolute control of the state.” Although this we can’t be certain to what extent President Trump wanted to uphold his power he was trying to maintain it for longer than legally permitted.
Autogolpe, auto meaning self, and golpe coming from the term “golpe de estado” which means coup d’etat. The term was popularized in south america after the aforementioned autogolpe occurred multiple times.
The reason why the term self-coup is more suitable for the mob attack on the United States Capitol than a regular coup is because of who wanted the coup to occur. It is very important to distinguish between the two who the perpetrator is in each circumstance, in a regular coup, such as The French Revolution, the town uprose against an unjust government through their own will initiated by their lack of rights. In the case of a self-coup, such as the rioting of the Capitol, supporters of President Trump, enticed by President Trump became violent in order to keep President Trump in Power. As we can see, one is perpetrated by the people and thought out by them while the other is thought out by the government, and in this case carried out by the people. It is clear that this was a miserable attempt at an autogolpe and that they greatly failed at keeping him in power.
