Sociologist Randall Collins writes Jan. 28, 2021:
* The iconic image of January 6 is a protestor sitting with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, and another in the Senate Chair. These are reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1928 film, October, a documentary of the Russian revolution of November 1917. Attacking the seat of government in Petersburg, the Winter Palace, revolutionary soldiers break into the Czarina’s bedroom: amused by uncovering the jeweled top of her chamber pot, then ripping through her feather-bedding with their bayonets. The same in the French Revolution in its many repetitions between 1789 and 1792, and its replay in 1848, where the crowd took turns sitting on the vacant throne after the guards had collapsed and the royal family had fled.
There are differences, of course. The 1917 and 1792 revolutions were successful in overthrowing the government. The 2021 Capitol assault may have had few such ambitions in the minds of most protestors; and in any case, they occupied the outer steps of the Capitol for five hours and penetrated the corridors and chambers inside for three-and-a-half, with momentum on their side for less than an hour.
The similarities are more in short-term processes: The building guards putting up resistance at first, then losing cohesion, retreating, fading away; some fraternizing with the assaulting crowd, their sympathies wavering. They had weapons but most failed to use them.
Higher up the chain of command, widespread hesitation, confusion, conversations and messages all over the place without immediate results. Reinforcements are called for; reinforcements are promised; reinforcements are coming but they don’t arrive. Recriminations in the aftermath of January 6 have concentrated on this official hesitation and lack of cooperation, and on weakness and collusion among the police.
In fact it is a generic problem. Revolutions and their contemporary analogues all start in an atmosphere of polarization, masses mobilizing themselves, authorities trying to keep them calm and sustain everyday routine. Crowd-control forces, whether soldiers or police, are caught in the middle. At the outset of surging crowds, there is always someplace where the guards are locally outnumbered, pressed not just physically but by the noise and emotional force of the crowd. They usually know that using their superior firepower can provoke the crowds even further. Sometimes they try it; sometimes they try a soft defense; in either case they have a morale problem. If there is a tipping point where they retreat, the crowd surges to its target, and is temporarily in control.
From this point of view, the lesson of January 6 is how protective forces regain control relatively quickly. Comparing the Winter Palace on the night of October 26, 1917* or the Tuileries Palace on August 10, 1792, tells us what makes for tipping points that wobble for a bit but then recover; or not.
* Looting and ritual destruction
By ritual destruction I mean behavior that is seemingly purposeless, to outsiders and opponents. But it is meaningful, or at least deeply impulsive, for those who do it: a collective, social emotion for those involved.
Looting is generally of this sort. It rarely takes anything of value. In riots, including those that take place in electrical black-outs, the early looters tend to be professional thieves, but the crowds that come out to look and see broken-in store fronts are often caught with goods that they have no use for; they just join in the collective mood, a holiday from moral restraints when everything seems available for free. (This is also visible in photos taken during the looting phase of riots.)
In political protests and uprisings, looting does something else. Usually in the first phase of riot, especially a neighbourhood riot, after the first confrontation with the police, there is a lull while the police withdraw from the outnumbering crowd to regroup and bring reinforcements. In this lull, the emotional mood will drain away unless there is something for the crowd to do. Looting is a way to keep the riot going– sometimes along with arson, even if it means burning your own neighbourhood; the smoke and flames in the sky carry a visual message of how serious the situation is. And looting is made possible, and easy, because police are visibly absent. Without opposition, the atmosphere is like a holiday; and at least temporarily it is a victory over the absent enemy. Looting is emotionally easy; there is no face-to-face confrontation. It provides a kind of pseudo-victory over the symbols of the enemy.
This was the situation in the Capitol after about 3 p.m. The attackers had been driven back from their political targets. Heavily equipped and menacing-looking tactical police squads are now pushing back the crowd, chiefly in the dense areas of the Capitol around the Rotunda. But it is a building with several wings and multiple floors, numerous stairs, a labyrinth of offices. This is the period when rioters spread out, penetrating far-flung corners where the last would not be dislodged until after 5 p.m. This is when the looting and ritual destruction mostly took place.
A prime target was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Looters flipped over tables, ripped photos off the walls, damaged her name plate on the door. One of her laptops was stolen, as were those in other offices. The office of the Senate Parliamentarian was ransacked, as were other offices. Some places had graffiti: “Murder the media” was one of them, at Press rooms with damaged recording and broadcast equipment. These we can interpret as specific political targets.
Broken doors and cracked or smashed windows were throughout the building, leaving the floors littered with glass and debris. Some of this happened in the process of breaking into locked areas. But it continued in remote office spaces; presumably this was ritualistic destruction, just prolonging the attack– precisely in places where guards were not present, while their main force was concentrated elsewhere.
Photos taken in the aftermath do not show a great deal of trash or destruction in the main corridors. Some of the furniture piled up was from improvised barricades by the defenders. Art works in the main galleries and display areas were not attacked– presumably these had little meaning as enemy targets for the intruders. Some statues and portraits were covered with “corrosive gas agent residue”– this would include tear gas and smoke bombs set off by the defenders, and (perhaps a small amount of) bear spray used by the attackers. In other words, this damage was an unintended by-product of the fighting that took place. Note too that these were “non-violent” weapons, designed to drive away opponents and avoiding lethal force.
If the looting and ritual destruction was intended to be a symbolic attack upon the Capitol, it succeeded in frightening and angering its officials. It was a ritualistic exercise on both sides– which is to say, a war of emotions.
* What was unusual about the Capitol assault of January 6, 2021 was how quickly and easily it was defeated. Yes, it had factional splits and dispersed centers of command, wavering and dissenting about sending reinforcements; it had police retreating before an aggressive crowd; reluctance to shoot; some fraternization between attackers and guards; some ritualistic looting at the end. It had a background of long-standing and accumulating tension between two sides, counter-escalating social movements, politicians jumping on and off of bandwagons. But in historical comparison, it had no overwhelming consensus that the regime was toppling, much less that it ought to topple. The assault was defeated, in a momentum swing of about an hour, and with an historical minimum of serious casualties. That it could be put down so easily is a testament to American institutions. [In a] federal democracy, with powers shared and divided at many levels among executives, legislatures, and courts, there is no place to turn the switch that controls everything. Decentralized democracies like the USA can have civil wars– if geographical splits are severe enough and include the armed forces; but it cannot have coups at the top or revolutions in the Capitol.