Denial, Lies, & Fear: Democracy in Jeopardy
In ignoring the evidence and facts that stared at them during the impeachment trial — the video footage of former President Donald Trump’s mob rally and ensuing insurrection on January 6, Trump’s legal team engaged in what many scholars who study crime and aftermath call denial. The desecration of the capitol building and the Senate chambers, and the deaths of five people (including a Washington DC policeman), are images seared into the minds of Americans, and will haunt American history forever. Trump’s actions appear to be the most violent domestic political assault on the nation since the secession of the Southern states in 1861 at the start of the Civil War.
Those of us who study violence and its aftermath know that the first response of criminals in the aftermath of crimes of mass violence is to deny wrongdoing. The psychiatrist Judith Herman notes in Trauma and Recovery that after criminal acts “one hears the same predictable responses: the victim lies, the victim exaggerates, the victim brought it upon herself, and in any case it is time to move on.” Scholars also note that denial is the final stage of the crime, and that, in the case of mass violence, criminal regimes that commit human rights crimes often quickly manufacture narratives to falsify their crimes, defend their actions, and blame their victims in an effort to absolve themselves. In doing so, the deniers attempt to create a counterfeit universe. Donald Trump’s crime, while not a human rights crime, was a violent act against his oath of office. Trump’s legal team and the Republicans who voted to acquit Trump engaged in an act of denial and in doing also endorsed a falsification of reality, or what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton has called “the counterfeit universe of denial.” Denial also sends the message that perpetrators bear no responsibility for their acts. Such impunity often creates an environment that emboldens those who would commit similar crimes in the future. The victims in this case are US legislators (some of whose lives were nearly lost), American democratic institutions, and the American people.
A democracy cannot be based on lies and its lethal companion, denial. The four years of Donald Trump’s presidency brought to the American political system a new era — one defined by dishonesty, corruption, and violence that was engineered by the President and his enablers. Trump’s mode of operating was based on telling lies, promoting untruths, and smearing his critics through social media, often with slanderous accusations. The fact checkers at The Washington Post and Politico tabulated that he told over 22,000 lies, untruths, and falsifications in four years.
The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which recently concluded, was one of the most important acts of moral witness conducted by American lawmakers in US history. The Democratic impeachment managers presented a vivid documentary of then President Trump’s incitement to insurrection that resulted in an unprecedented invasion of the Capitol by an armed right-wing mob, some of whom were hoping to kill US legislators including Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in an effort to stop the certification of the election victory of President Joseph R. Biden. Trump’s tweets were clear — they were full of lies and incendiary provocations. The thousands of people who came to Washington DC at Trump’s invitation to try and overturn the 2020 Presidential election were armed, angry, spouting the rhetoric of rage against the government, screaming Trump’s name and waving Trump flags.
Trump’s mob was shaped and motivated by the absurd lie that Trump had been aggressively promoting since the night of November 5 when he claimed that the election was stolen from him by fraud. In fact, as we know, it was the most scrupulously vetted election in American history; this was testified to by Trump’s own cyber security chief Christopher Krebs, whom Trump fired for his honest announcement of the facts, as well as by the Supreme Court, the electoral college in all 50 states, the more than 60 lawsuits that ruled against Trump’s complaints, and Trump’s Attorney General William Barr. The January 6 insurrection had been in the making for months because Trump had created a toxic atmosphere by issuing conspiracy theories claiming, in the belligerent and petulant way that came to define him, that if he lost the election it would be because it was rigged against him. For various reasons a segment of the American population has chosen to believe Trump’s lie or simply support him for political purposes.
In the face of those who deny the treasonous nature of Trump’s behavior, the facts remain: it is constitutional to impeach a federal official out of office; Trump did mobilize a violent crowd of Americans with the lie that the election was stolen from him, and he summoned his riled-up followers to DC; he filled them with anger as he urged them to go to the Capitol to stop the election from being certified by Congress, telling them to “take back our country.” The event would never have happened without President Trump. He was its producer and director. Once the violence began, he did nothing to stop it, nor did he deploy forces to the Capitol to quell the mob. He showed no concern for the safety of US legislators or for Vice President Pence, whose safety he had jeopardized with accusations against him. When Trump issued a statement hours later calling off the mob, he referred to them as “special people” and added, “we love you.” Given what the world had watched happen on our screens, those words were hard to swallow — even coming from Trump. Free speech is not an issue here. Trump is guilty of a violation of public trust (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 45), and a violation of his oath of office. He displayed what Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell called “a disgraceful dereliction of duty.” These facts are testified to by 57 Senators who voted to convict Trump, and seven of them were Republican Senators. This was the first bipartisan impeachment in American history. The trial was an impressive show of moral conscience and an act of allegiance to the Constitution and the principles of American democracy. The fact remains that 17 Republican legislators (10 in the House) put the nation before themselves and shamed their Republican colleagues and set an example for all Americans to acknowledge.
None of us can know the inner workings of the individual senators who voted to acquit Trump, but we can surmise that they have fallen into the psychological mode of denial and have refused to absorb the evidence placed before them in the footage of the January 6 insurrection, nor have they seemed to acknowledge the extent of the violence to which they were subjected as they sat in their chamber doing their jobs. Wrapped up in their denialism is also their fear — fear of Trump’s reprisals, fear of alienating some of their constituents and donors, fear for their political careers.
This is an instructive time to look back at the Watergate hearings of 1973-74. Richard Nixon’s abuse of office and power in wiretapping his political opponents was a breach of office and democratic process, but it seems like a small theft next to Trump’s violations. During the Watergate hearings, Democratic and Republican legislators stood up for democracy together, and Republican senators including Barry Goldwater, the father of modern conservatism, were instrumental in explaining to Nixon that his Presidency was over. The current Republican party — save for the brave 17 — failed to stand up for democracy. Those who voted to acquit Trump betrayed the Constitution which they swore an oath to protect. They failed to defend the nation, American democracy, and the historic halls of government in which they serve. Their cowardice jeopardizes us all. The integrity of the bipartisanship that forced Richard Nixon’s resignation now seems like a far-gone era. We need that kind of bipartisan leadership back. A democracy — its governing institutions and its civil society — cannot sustain itself on denial, lies, and fear.
Peter Balakian, is the author of many books including recent Ozone Journal (Pulitzer Prize '16); The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response; and Black Dog of Fate, a memoir (both New York Times Notable Books). He is the Rebar Professor of Humanities at Colgate University. He has written extensively on mass violence, cover-up and denial.