The storming of the US Congress left America’s image as a beacon of democracy severely tarnished Thursday, with allies unable to hide their shock and authoritarian regimes gleefully exploiting the unrest.
In normal times, a state-backed gang rampaging through a legislature to demand a lost election be nullified would have US diplomats marching to their laptops to draft a statement of condemnation.
But after the deadly violence in Washington on Wednesday, it was the turn of officials in capitals from Bogota to New Delhi to call for calm.
In a string of statements, leaders could barely contain their shock at seeing Donald Trump’s supporters briefly — but quite easily — overrun the crucible of US democracy and challenge the peaceful transfer of power.
“Where were the police and the Senate bodyguards…?” Czech foreign minister Tomas Petricek asked aloud, as the world watched Trump supporters cart off podiums, ransack offices or strut around Congress in a horned helmet unmolested.
Through slavery and segregation, Civil War and Cold War, US presidents have often hailed their democracy as exceptional, what Ronald Reagan called the “shining city on the hill.”
That image has been questioned many times before, but after four norm-shattering years of Trump, it took just a few hours of mob rule to make America look pretty ordinary, and as fragile as anywhere else.
Former president George W. Bush went as far as to compare the situation to a “banana republic,” while calling out fellow Republicans for fueling the “insurrection.”
Australia warned its citizens in the United States to take care given the “ongoing potential for violence.”
Brave new world
Some reached for historical comparisons to put the momentous events — and the scale of the threat to democracy — in context.
Germany’s foreign minister likened incitement at the US Capitol to the Reichstag in Nazi Germany, while Italian newspaper La Repubblica drew a parallel to dictator Benito Mussolini’s “March on Rome” and seizure of power.
But as the initial shock subsided, policymakers began to try to imagine the profound implications of the world’s preeminent superpower so visibly stumbling.
Former president Barack Obama’s top security aide Ben Rhodes told AFP that “Americans should not have any illusions: today’s images, like the Trump presidency, will permanently alter how the United States is viewed around the world.”
“Tragically, this debasement of democracy comes at a time when authoritarian nationalism is ascendant on every continent.”
The moment was not lost on such regimes, some of which immediately issued wry statements mimicking the criticism they normally received from Washington.
Venezuelan minister of foreign affairs Jorge Arreaza expressed his “concern” about the violence, while calling for an end to US political polarization and for the country to follow a new path of “stability and social justice.”
China’s state-backed tabloid the Global Times — just a day after a mass crackdown on Hong Kong’s besieged democracy movement — crowed that “bubbles of ‘democracy and freedom’ have burst.”
Mike Gallagher, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin lamented: “If we don’t think other countries around the world are watching this happen right now, if we don’t think the Chinese communist party is sitting back and laughing, then we’re deluding ourselves.”
American democracy is limping
Senior Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov, sought to fuel conspiracy theories of electoral fraud while offering Moscow’s old foe a kick in shins.
“The losing side has more than enough grounds to accuse the winner of falsifications — it is clear that American democracy is limping on both feet,” he said.
Like Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney, some allies tried to limit the damage by stressing this was a problem of Donald Trump’s making and not reflective of mainstream America.
“We must call this out for what it is: a deliberate assault on democracy by a sitting President and his supporters,” he said.
In the Philippines, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. expressed optimism that the United States can easily handle the violence that erupted after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, saying it is “not a nightmare of democracy, but a fever.”
In separate tweet, Locsin said: “US democracy is strong to the bone and American power can cope with a civil disturbance and fight wars on three fronts if it wants to—and come out the winner.” AFP with Rey E. Requejo
But with two weeks left in Trump’s four-year term, 74 million votes under his belt and the nuclear codes at his fingertips, no one can be sure what comes next.
Even those predicting the United States will pull through wondered whether the West’s already under-question support for the rule of law and democracy has now been fatally undermined.
“It is not just [that] it will be a long time before we can credibly advocate for the rule of law,” tweeted president of the Council of Foreign Relations Richard Haass.
“It will also be a long time for us to persuade allies to rely on us, or lecture others they are not stable enough to have nuclear weapons.”
In the end, one diplomat at the State Department did take to their typewriter to comment.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — an ardent Trump supporter who vowed to bring a “swagger” back to US diplomacy and crisscrossed the world issuing bombastic denunciations — was left to deliver his department’s missive.
“Violence, putting at risk the safety of others including those tasked with providing security for all of us, is intolerable both at home and abroad,” he said.
For the most part the international press laid the blame squarely at the outgoing president’s feet, accusing him of having encouraged the violence.
In Britain, “Trump supporters storm heart of American democracy” was the headline in The Times, describing how, “Democrats and Republicans alike pulled on gas masks and sheltered under desks and staff hid in offices.”
“Democracy under siege”, wrote The Daily Telegraph, reporting “unprecedented scenes of violence and chaos” in Washington as “hordes of Trump supporters” stormed the Capitol.
For The Guardian, it represented “the most dramatic challenge to the US democratic system since the civil war”.
Day of shame
“Chaos” and “shame” were words that came up again and again in the main European newspapers.
Die Welt led an editorial by its correspondent Clemens Wergin with “Day of shame for American democracy.”
“The US has experienced its first tentative violent coup d’etat”, he wrote, adding that “the president, his lies, and a spineless Republican party are politically responsible.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, under the headline “The coup of madness,” also talked of “Washington’s shame,” while in Spain, El Pais wrote that Trump had “encouraged the chaos.”
The Italian daily La Repubblica went even further, drawing a parallel with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s ascension to power in the 1920s.
“America — all of America — watched on in horror as the equivalent of The March on Rome unfolded in Washington on live television — the invasion of the Capitol, the attack on democracy’s sacredness itself”, began Mario Platero’s article.
La Corriere della Serra delved into the profile of the Trump-supporting Proud Boys — “right-wing extremists, but also women, and young people. Called upon directly by Trump. Who then tried to dial down the pressure on television: ‘We are the party of law and order.’ But too late.”
“Trump: a strategy of chaos” was the front page of French daily Liberation, reinforcing the point in its inside pages with the title “Trump sets fire to Washington.”
“Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy became concrete as well as symbolic on Wednesday, when supporters of his, worked up into a white-hot rage by his speech, managed to break into the Capitol,” the article read.
Narcissism
In Le Figaro, columnist Philippe Gelie reflected that “Donald Trump could have come out on top — as a strong “president of the people” with a contested, but not negligable, record. Instead of that, his narcissism got the better of his dignity; he has manhandled institutions, trampled on democracy, divided his camp and thrown his presidency in a ditch.”
“The United States has fallen to the level of Latin-American countries”, was the self-deprecating observation from the Brazilian O Globo.
“The target was the Capitol, not the Twin Towers, but this was also terrorism,” Eliane Cantanhêde wrote in O Estado de S. Paulo, another Brazilian paper. “Domestic terrorism, internal, against the Capitol, the flames fanned by President Donald Trump himself.”
Egyptian daily Al-Ahram wrote that the scenes showed “the sacrifice of American democracy, the death of its liberty, and the plummeting of the values it has ceaselessly tried to export around the world and used as a reason to interfere in other countries’ affairs”.
Suspended
Twitter and Facebook suspended Donald Trump on Wednesday over posts accused of inflaming violence in the US Capitol, as social media scrambled to respond to mayhem by supporters buying into his baseless attacks on the integrity of the election.
The unprecedented sanctions came after the president took to social media to repeat his numerous false claims about fraud and other impropriety in the election he lost to Joe Biden.
“This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump’s video,” said Facebook vice president of integrity Guy Rosen.
“We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.”
Facebook barred Trump from posting at the social network or its Instagram service for 24 hours, saying his messages were promoting violence.
Trump’s falsehoods, ranging from specific allegations to broad conspiracy theories, also prompted Facebook to change a label added to posts aiming to undermine the election results.
The new label reads: “Joe Biden has been elected president with results that were certified by all 50 states. The US has laws, procedures, and established institutions to ensure the peaceful transfer of power after an election.”
An activist group calling itself a mock Facebook oversight board said sanctions against Trump at the social network were long overdue.
“This is too little, too late,” the group said in a statement.
“Donald Trump has breached Facebook’s own terms and conditions multiple times. His account is not just a threat to democracy but to human life.”
The crackdown came after Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attack that led to one woman being shot and killed by police, interrupting congressional debate over Biden’s election victory.
The assault came after the president had urged supporters to march on the seat of government during a speech outside the White House in which he alleged baselessly that the election had been stolen from him.
He later released a video on social media in which he repeated the false claim — even telling the mob “I love you.”
YouTube removed the video in line with its policy barring claims challenging election results.
Twitter said Trump’s messages were violations of the platform’s rules on civic integrity and that any future violations “will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.”
The messaging platform said Trump’s account would be locked for 12 hours and that if the offending tweets were not removed, “the account will remain locked.”
Facebook said it would search for and remove content which praised the storming of the Capitol or encouraged the violence.
The platform said it would seek to take down additional calls for protests, including peaceful ones, if they violated a curfew imposed by the city of Washington, or any attempts to “re-stage” the storming of Congress.
“The violent protests in the Capitol today are a disgrace,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
“We prohibit incitement and calls for violence on our platform. We are actively reviewing and removing any content that breaks these rules.”
Facebook maintained that it was in contact with law enforcement officials and continued to enforce bans on QAnon conspiracy group, militarized social movements, and hate groups.
A #StormTheCapitol hashtag was blocked at Facebook and Instagram, according to the internet titan. With Rey E. Requejo
