February 3, 2021 at 12:00 pm by Jarod Ramirez
Kelly Yan / Daily Nexus
In the wake of events of what happened in the Capitol on the 6th, Iâve seen a lot of people come out of the woodwork and say that the storming of Capital Hill was un-American â that this is an event that goes against our nature as a country and the values of its people. The truth is that this narrative is entirely false and, unless we confront the reality of American history, weâll see more events like this happen.
It may be hard to admit, but what we saw during that attack is very much American and something deeply embedded into the foundation of this country. Let’s not forget the Colfax Massacre of 1873, where white supremacists, angered at an election, proceeded to assault and execute 50 Black freedmen. There was also the Election Riot of 1874 where members of the White League attempted a coup on the government of Alabama.Â
On January 20, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Though the tradition of the transfer of power provided many with hope on Wednesday, the inauguration happened under the shadow of a violent insurrection.
Just two weeks before, thousands of Americans, in the shape of a largely white mob, stormed the very building where Biden took his presidential oath. The
mob, under the spell of fabrications about the presidential election being stolen especially in states with high Black populations sought to “take back the country” through violence. The scene, just one day after Democrats secured control of Congress through the election of a Black senator and a Jewish senator in Georgia, mirrored coup attempts from the Reconstruction era.
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Just four years ago, New Orleans was reckoning with its own history of insurrection.
After a city council vote, the city removed a conspicuous stone obelisk that had been erected to honor an 1874 armed rebellion against its own state. It was emblazoned with an egregious, racist message lamenting that the federal government had restored power to the elected Republican “usurpers” at the time but proudly claiming a later election “recognized white supremacy in the south and gave us our state.”
The monument to commemorate the so-called “Battle of Liberty Place” was completed in 1891, but the inscription to white supremacy wasn’t added until 40 years after that. In those years, New Orleanian ex-Confederates and white Democrats celebrated the insurrection annually with memorial ceremonies. The obelisk was a towering relic of the long-standing conviction that the insurrectionists had struggled nobly for the white race against a corrupt state government.
American Insurrections And Rebellions You ve Never Heard Of Shutterstock
By Thomas A Brown/Jan. 19, 2021 3:49 pm EDT
In the first week of 2021, a riot in Washington, D.C., violently erupted into the capitol building. The world recoiled as what many called an insurrection or coup d etat defiled one of the most hallowed buildings in the country, and the people s representatives fled and hid for safety. Of the many adjectives one could use to describe what happened that day (atrocious, treasonous, appalling, moronic, there are many more) however, unprecedented shouldn t really be one of them.
Not only are the streets of D.C. and halls of Congress not unused to violence, American history is replete with violent uprisings, bloody coups, and revolutionary attempts. In 1983, leftist revolutionaries exploded bombs at military bases as well as the United States Senate.