Five years ago, on January 6, 2021, a mob of disgruntled Americans took up arms and yielded to mob mentality with the U.S. Capitol and selected members of Congress as their targets.
Their rationale, which has since been debunked: the presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was “fixed” and that victory had been stolen from the Republican candidate, Trump. Violence, destruction, and death would follow as many Americans and the world looked on in utter disbelief.
Recently, just a few days before the fifth anniversary of the Capitol attack— also called riot or insurrection, depending on perspective— House Judiciary Democrats released two reports detailing the diverging paths of perpetrators and defenders of democracy. The materials were released to counter attempts to rewrite history, focusing on the actions of those involved and the consequences of the insurrection.
Investigations and political discourse surrounding the events of that day remain active. But if some Americans had their way, they would delete all videos, written reports, and blot out all of our memories related to that unprecedented day.
But consider the observation of the noted philosopher George Santayana, who stated in his 1905 book, ‘The Life of Reason,’ these immortal words: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Both the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke and Sir Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, espoused a similar view, which, stated alternatively, means it is essential that we recognize our past errors to avoid repeating them and that memory is key to progress.
What will we tell our children or grandchildren about January 6 in years to come? Whose “truth” will survive?
For illustrative purposes, read two reports released by the House Judiciary Committee. The first, “Where Are They Now: The Perpetrators of January 6th and the Defenders of Democracy Who Stopped Them,” examines the plans and actions of those who heeded the advice to “stop the steal,” as well as those Americans who blocked the attempted coup – some of whom paid for their efforts with their lives.
A second report, “One Year Later: Assessing the Public Safety Implications of President Trump’s Mass Pardons of 1,600 January 6 Rioters and Insurrectionists,” considers the public safety consequences of the president’s sweeping pardons of January 6 rioters, including the hundreds who attacked and beat police officers with baseball bats, Confederate and American flagpoles, metal pipes, and bear spray.
The fifth anniversary of the insurrection has come and gone. For the most part, the news was dominated by the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and the capture of its president.
Nonetheless, in the inspiration of the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa, it is important to remember and reflect on the past in order to prepare fo a better future.
Hopefully, even as a footnote, someone will be honest and brave enough to review what happened five years ago at the U.S. Capitol, because acting as if it never happened is tantamount to opening the curtain for a repeat performance.