Historian here, with a message for folks arguing against holding people accountable for the siege of the Capitol because "history will be the judge." We are in this mess, BECAUSE people in the past didn't hold their contemporaries accountable. Please don't repeat that mistake.

Nixon was forced out of office, but he was never held responsible for his egregious actions as President. You'll never guess what sort of precedent and example that set for the future President who most shared Nixon's moral turpitude. https://t.co/U5cNtBUvc7
In the 1970s, many "mainstream" media outlets buckled to right wing pressure & lent their platforms to gut bucket racists like James Kilpatrick & Pat Buchanan, rebranding them as "conservatives." We continue to reap the consequences of normalizing racism. https://t.co/029qQ9fXEp
Here's a thread on Pat Buchanan. In the early 90s Charles Krauthammer and Bill Buckley, staunch conservatives both, called Pat a "fascist" and an "antisemite." And yet he still got major media gigs for DECADES. https://t.co/Vmj8wuOwf6
Trump's career (and that of his family) is overstuffed with acts of white collar crime for which no one ever received more than a tiny fine as a slap on the wrist. Everyone one in NYC knew Trump was a morally bankrupt and corrupt crook. But somehow NBC still made him a star.
We had almost a century of Jim Crow from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964-5 because the nation did not hold white supremacists sufficiently accountable to the 14th Amendment.
AIDS activists who tried to hold the Reagan Administration accountable for its deadly, homophobic, inaction were called "divisive." MLK, Jr was called "divisive." Abolitionists were called "divisive." "Divisiveness" is what reactionaries call "accountability." Don't fall for it.
There's an important distinction between retribution or vengeance on one hand, and accountability on the other. Authoritarian regimes reap vengeance on their "enemies." Democracies hold citizens legally accountable for illegal actions.
Now Trump, and his authoritarian enablers, will try to tell you that there's no distinction between legal accountability and political vengeance. They will say any attempt to try Trump for crimes post January 20 "is just political retribution." Don't fall for it.
The way that a community shows that it truly believes in some important ideal is by holding accountable people who try to smash that ideal. If we believe that trying to violently steal an election by seeking to harm elected officials is wrong, then there must be consequences.
Otherwise, we can't say that as a nation we genuinely believe such things are wrong. In which case, they will just continue to happen. Because authoritarianism is an effective route to power, especially for groups that can't win over their fellow citizens with reasoned arguments.
One last detail to illustrate this point. The P**ud Buoys who were key in instigating the violence on Wednesday start every meeting with a reading from a 2001, fascist book by Pat Buchanan. Oftentimes, the past is prologue. https://t.co/sao6dCuONO
Pat Buchanan had such a big platform because we gave it to him, even though the overwhelming majority of us (even conservatives) thought his ideas were a threat to our democracy. There was no reason to put him in jail. But we didn't have to put him on PBS and MSNBC!

More from Seth Cotlar

Rush Limbaugh will be remembered as one of the most consequential figures in the history of American conservatism, because he reflected and shaped the world view of the post-Reagan GOP base more than any other single person.


Limbaugh is also a good example of how the distinction between “respectable” conservatism and “the more radical fringe” can easily be overstated.


In 1992 George HW Bush had Rush Limbaugh open his final campaign event before Election Day.


Rush descended from a well-off and well-connected family in Missouri, but he played the role of “pissed off Joe Six Pack” really well. He’s a perfect example of “plutocratic populism.”

Limbaugh’s cruel bigotry and aura of aggrieved entitlement was a feature, not a bug. In an era of shifting social mores, Limbaugh gave his listeners permission to be a-holes and be proud about it. He perfected the schtick that would get Trump elected.
It's important to note how deeply rooted & completely canonical these kooky ideas are in the US far right, & how dangerous it is that a sitting president is giving legitimacy to them. It's like Father Coughlin, the John Birch Society, and Geo Lincoln Rockwell had an orange baby.


Thanks (I think) to @z3dster for bringing this batshit tweet to my attention.

There's a long history of the American center-right and center-left laughing at this kind of stuff. It is indeed laughably ludicrous. But it's important to know that to millions of people, this is their truth. This is how they see the world. And now the President is condoning it.

One hallmark of fascism is that it defines "communism" as its enemy. One can be opposed to communism without being a fascist. But it's impossible to be fascist without being obsessed with the existential (and often hysterically overblown) threat of communism.

Every significant, US variant of fascism has depicted itself as a movement of Christian patriots defending the US from anti-American enemies of Christ. One can be a Christian and/or a patriot without being a fascist, but fascists almost always call themselves Christian patriots.

More from Legal

These people weren't murdered. They were legally executed after convictions for horrendous crimes, being sentenced to the death penalty, and going through countless appeals.


You can oppose the death penalty as a punishment without pretending that the people executed were victims or that carrying out those executions is comparable to murder.

As an example: Daniel Lee was a white supremacist who murdered a family (including an 8-year-old girl) by suffocating them with bags and then dumping their bodies in a swamp.

That's whose name @CoriBush wants you to remember.

Wesley Purkey admitted to kidnapping, raping, and then murdering a 16-year-old girl named Jennifer Long. He then dismembered her body. He also beat an 80-year-old woman to death.

Maybe we should learn the names of his victims instead, @CoriBush?

Dustin Honken was a meth dealer that murdered 5 people, including 2 girls under the age of 11, because their dad was set to testify against him on drug charges. He was specifically sentenced to death for killing the 2 kids.

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