The most severe threat to democratic sovereignty since the Civil War was orchestrated at the highest levels of government. The President of the United States not only incited an angry mob to attack a coequal branch of government, he ensured that any calls for help would be rebuffed by partisan loyalists hand-picked for the purpose.

There were warnings.

The dismissal of senior Pentagon officials this past December, and the publication of an extraordinary open letter signed by all 10 former U.S. secretaries of defense,­­­­ augured the attack.

Then came January 6.

As the mob descended on the Capitol, members of Congress were forced to barricade office doors and cower under their desks. In the House of Representatives, some clutched gas masks as others broke furniture to fashion makeshift weapons. Still, many more called loved ones to say their final goodbyes, fearful they would be murdered in their workplace.

On television, Americans watched in horror as images of marauding rioters were beamed across the world.

In one spine-chilling image, a bare-chested man wearing face paint and buffalo horns, stood on the Senate dais. In another, a Confederate battle flag is paraded through the Capitol rotunda. A humiliating desecration. Befitting of a humiliated and disgraced president.  

Undoubtedly, in the weeks ahead there will be investigations.

Yet we do not have to wait for Congressional hearings to interrogate some hard truths. Foremost, if the rioters were Black, the response would surely look different. It is a sad irony of history that on the day Georgia elects its first Black senator, white militiamen, some wearing uniforms emblazoned with swastikas, storm the US Capitol.

This is not the first time a racist mob tried to topple a democratically elected government in the United States. In 1898, a white mob ransacked the city of Wilmington North Carolina, to prevent a duly elected biracial government from taking office.

Hundreds died.

The storming of the US Capitol cannot be fully understood without first acknowledging the painful history of racial violence and white supremacy that tinges the American experience.

Anti-Black pogroms historically terrorized people of color and their allies in government, often resulting in large-scale death and destruction. The attack on the US Capitol echoes this legacy of racially motivated violence.

After all it was Black voters who helped elect Joe Biden in an electoral college landslide, and it was Black voters who Trump sought to disenfranchise last Wednesday. First, through procedural chicanery, and then through violent insurrection.

The fact that Senator Ted Cruz among others, drew on the Compromise of 1877 as precedent for their objections––a compromise that resulted in a system of American apartheid–– only further discredits their efforts. 

There must be no confusion.

After months of tacitly courting white supremacists, the assault on the US Capitol was all but inevitable.

It was the President who invited the Proud Boys to Washington, and it was the President who, surrounded by friends and family, reveled in the mayhem.

We should brace for more violence.

The United States is on the verge of a permanent homegrown insurgency. The Proud Boys and other right-wing paramilitaries, are direct descendants of the white mobs that for decades, murdered and maimed Black people with impunity.

Here, history serves as warning. There must be consequences for the rioters who stormed the Capitol. But more importantly, there must be consequences for the men (and they are mostly men) who inspired this horrible attack.

Refusing to act now will only embolden those who seek to destroy our multiracial democracy.

The Yale historian Timothy Snyder cautions against what he calls the “big lie”. The mantra that authoritarians use to indoctrinate their devotees. For Donald Trump and many in the Republican party, the big lie was election fraud. By refusing to call out blatant falsehoods, by entertaining wild conspiracy theories, they have done untold harm to the republic.

The people who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday were earnest believers. They believed the big lie because it came from the President. They believed the big lie because it was repeated by sycophants in Congress and the media. They believed the big lie because they were told it was the truth. 

In order to expose the big lie, we must first confront its racist origins. The myth of election fraud is nothing more than a tactic to disenfranchise Black voters.

This starts with expelling members of Congress who peddle in conspiracy theories. It also means immediately removing and permanently barring, Donald J. Trump from holding public office.

Above all else, it means establishing a common history. In order to succeed as a multiracial democracy, America must first come to terms with its past. Doing so is the only way to heal.

Robert Benson is a Doctoral Fellow at SCRIPTS Berlin and a stipend holder at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)