When we look back at the first and hopefully final term of Donald Trump as President of the United States we see a string of unthinkable events. The first of course was his election with the help of an antagonistic foreign government. This was closely followed by his naked flouting of the First Amendment’s freedom of religion clause by issuing a ban on entry by followers of Islam.

And we saw the branding of all press that did not agree with and parrot Trump’s statements as “enemies.”

Another major indicator of things to come was his validation of the Nazis at Charlottesville, calling them “very fine people” along with his more recent call to the Proud Boys to “stand by.” Add to these items the pardons of criminals Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, who are connected to these Nazi elements. Indeed, Bannon is responsible for the rebranding of the various right-wing radical groups under the banner of “alt-right.” There is a starkly obvious parallel between the white supremacist base supporting Trump and Nazis. Nazi is just a shorter spelling of white supremacist.

And let’s not forget the death of more Americans than all past wars from the global pandemic he called a Democratic hoax, while knowing full well that he was lying.

But these billboard signs advertising the intentions of a wannabe dictator were capped off by the attempted coup against this country one year ago today. And the trail of evidence of coordination of this event is leading right to his lap.

The Lessons of the Beer Hall Putsch

The Beer Hall Putsch (a putsch is a violent attempt to overthrow a government) was the Nazis’ first coup attempt against the democratically-elected Weimar government in Germany, which resulted in the deaths of 16 Nazi Party members and 4 police officers. While the Putsch failed in terms of being an immediately successful coup, it paved the way for the Nazis’ legal takeover in the years that followed. It is known as the “beer hall” putsch because it began in one of Munich’s largest beer halls, the Bürgerbräukeller.

Hitler was jailed after his attempted coup in 1923 but was released and pardoned a year into his five-year sentence. He then became Chancellor in 1933. The rest as they say is history. There are a lot of facets to this history along with the millions of lost lives. And to this day people of a particular mindset have been trying to rewrite it. To what end? To enable that history to be repeated. Again. Now.

January 6th was a coup attempt and it failed. Now we are in the “legal” phase of the investigation of the planners and participants. We are also in the legal phase of the continuation of the coup attempt.

We are blessed by the fact of Trump’s inherent incompetence. That’s why we still have a government. But his enablers and backers, those sorry souls that somehow think that only they have the right to rule this country, are enacting a legal strategy to set the stage of democracy’s demise.

Nineteen states have passed laws restricting voting and have appointed partisan hacks to do what they failed to do on January 6th—block certification of an election they clearly lost.

Various Trumpublican mouthpieces in government and right wing newsertainment operations are trying to whitewash the insurrection, rebranding those jailed because of their violence as “political prisoners,” calling the rioters tourists checking out the statues and even trying to paint Ashley Babitt as a victim when she was actually a violent nutcase attempting to access the House Chamber and attack members of Congress.

Between the legal front and the PR front, our democracy is under attack by Trump and his backers. The danger of this is made crystal clear in his recent endorsement of Viktor Orban, who is ruling Hungary with an authoritarian iron fist, anti-immigrant rhetoric, an enslaved press, rigged elections and rising antisemitism. Ironically, Orban’s election was engineered by two American Jewish political operators, George Birnbaum and Arthur Finkelstein.

Solutions

So how do we prevent another January 6th or other insurrection? There are a number of steps:

1. The highest priority of our Congress right this minute is to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. This will nullify the state level anti-voting laws and election corruption laws enacted by the nineteen Republican-led state legislatures.
2. The DOJ needs to increase the speed of its investigations into the January 6th insurrection and start prosecuting the planners and conspirators as well.
3. Congress needs to expel any and all members that participated and facilitated January 6th from Congress under the 14th Amendment.
4. The United States needs to finally sign on to the International Criminal Court and refer Trump and his henchmen to The Hauge for prosecution for crimes against humanity. We are awash in evidence of this.
5. Congress must enact legislation to overturn the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court and close any and all channels for dark money in our political system.
6. Support organizations that encourage and education people about history. A good example is a new group in D.C. called The Beer Hall Project dedicated to preventing the repetition of histories insanities.

And, most of all we need to vote and constantly remind our elected officers who they really work for.