L
IBERALS HAVE become lazy when thinking about the mob. They have celebrated “people power” when it threatens regimes they disapprove of, in the Middle East, say, while turning a blind eye to the excesses of protesters who they deem to be on the right side of history in Portland, Oregon, for example. In August 2020 a mainstream publisher, Public Affairs, produced “In Defence of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action” by Vicky Osterweil.
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The invasion of America’s Capitol by mobs of President Donald Trump’s supporters on January 6th was a reminder of the danger of playing with fire. It is naive to assume that mobs will be confined to the “nice” side of the political spectrum; the left-wing kind by their nature generate the right-wing sort. It is doubly naive to expect that mobs will set limits; it is in their nature to run out of control.
The Wages of Our Recklessness
On January 6, 2021, the president of the United States fomented a violent insurrection against the federal government.
On this point, the semantics matter. This was not a coup d’etat, the definition of which is an organized effort to remove the existing government, in which all the levers of governmental power are seized by force. Nor was this a mere protest. No sane observer could equate what happened yesterday with a public demonstration of dissent which, though not necessarily law-abiding, is nevertheless a peaceful display. This was an organized, terroristic assault on the seat of elected government.
January 7, 2021
Democrats and their allies in the media are ready to condemn riots now that the turmoil has shifted to fit their narrative.
On Wednesday, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building. It was an astonishing display of anarchic protest that delayed congressional certification of the Electoral College vote formally handing former Vice President Joe Biden the keys to the White House.
The scenes from the dark day of disaster demonstrations illustrated a deteriorating country, repulsed millions, and traumatized a nation still recovering from the death, despair, and disruption that came to define the dystopian months of 2020. Above all, what happened Wednesday served as a grim reminder that the institutional stress test of 2020 has followed us into 2021.
Jewish Currents 2020 Year in Review
2020 HAS BEEN A YEAR of protest and political upheaval, set against the backdrop of illness, isolation, and death. Throughout this tumultuous year, we have sought to articulate a new vision for Jewish political engagement, and to provide our readers with the intellectual resources to better understand and reimagine their place in the world. As 2020 draws to a close, we’re looking back on the work we published this year. Here’s a selection of some of the pieces that made the biggest impact.
In March, as Covid-19 upended our world, we struggled to reassess our relationship to work. In her essay “No One Is Well,” Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel reflected on that question and concluded that to pry open political possibility in a catastrophic moment, “we will need to begin to replace the logics of capitalism with the logics of care.” And in a subsequent staff roundtable, we discussed and debated the nature of our responsibility in the moment