Impeachment of Trump is a call for clarity
President Donald Trump wanted to make history, and he has, plunging to new depths of ignominy. He has become the first president to be impeached twice. Yet 75% of Republican voters still said, in a Morning Consult/Politico poll released on Wednesday, that they approved of his presidency. Mr Trump remains the overwhelming favourite of Republicans for the 2024 GOP nomination, with 42% support, followed by Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr and Ted Cruz.
As I was watching the impeachment debate, I had a call from a childhood friend, and at the end of the call he mentioned what he considered good news: Mr Trump was preparing to crack down on “that liberal media” and stop Joe Biden’s theft of the election.
“Trump’s not going to stand for it, and he’s going to get a second term,” he said. He was bewildered when I told him that this was all nonsense, that everything he believed was false and bigoted.
It was an echo of conversations I’d had after 9/11, from Pakistan to Gaza, Iraq to Yemen, in which local people told me that it was American Jews or the CIA that had organised the attacks on the twin towers. Amid mass delusion and a miasma of bigotry and conspiracy theories, they took up arms or bombs to defend Islam from infidels.
Those young Saudis, Afghans and others who backed violence in some cases aren’t so different from those who were manipulated by Mr Trump and his allies into attacking the Capitol. One thing we should have learned from that epoch is the need not only to confront terrorists individually but also to clear out the ecosystem that produces them. So here are five lessons from that war on terror:
Invoke “moral clarity”. We instinctively reach for the military toolbox when we’re attacked, but it’s also important to fight a war of ideas and delegitimise certain behaviours and speech. To me, that’s why it’s crucial that impeachment be a teachable moment.
Pursuit of moral clarity always leads to flurries of whataboutism and bothsidesism, and there are usually elements of truth to such objections. But we can accept that the world is nuanced and inconsistent without giving up a moral compass to navigate it.
In the 1960s, some on the left thought a violent revolution was necessary to fight an entrenched system, but such violence led to a healthy revulsion. There are still some on the left sympathetic to violence, but for now the biggest challenge is to mobilise public opinion to stigmatise violence by white nationalists.
Beware the educated leaders. People often believe that it’s poverty and illiteracy that drive terrorism, but that’s too simplistic. The 9/11 plot was orchestrated by universityeducated elites. Last week’s Capitol rampage was obviously entirely different and not comparable, but it was galvanised by a trio with Ivy League degrees — Donald Trump, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. They all know better.
Tackle the ecosystem. The United States realised after 9/11 that to succeed in the war on terror it had to reform extremist madrassas, religious schools that preached hatred. Today the equivalent of those madrassas are online platforms and right-wing bloviators — and again we face complicated free speech issues.
I believe deeply in listening to alternative voices, not drowning them out. That’s why I went to extremist mosques in Pakistan, and it’s why I had an account on Parler. But I also saw how fanatical mosques inculcated violence and how Alex Jones, Sean Hannity and Donald Trump used their platforms to spread bigotry and conspiracy theories in ways that made America a more frightening place.
They have First Amendment rights, but not a right to advertising. So I’d like to see pressure on advertisers to withdraw from Fox News so long as it functions as an extremist madrassa, and cable providers should be asked why they distribute channels that peddle lies.
Disarm terrorists. We owe Washington, DC, a debt of gratitude for limiting firearms. Imagine if thousands of the rioters at the Capitol had been carrying military-style rifles: We would have seen a bloodbath. Gun laws saved lives, and we should try to restrict firearms at other protests that can spark violence.
Don’t get distracted. Officials have a history of looking in the wrong direction for threats, always suspecting “the other”, and that may be why the white Republican establishment fortified the Capitol during Black Lives Matter protests but left it poorly protected from pro-Trump rioters. As the Capitol attack was unfolding, Sen Susan Collins’ “first thought”, she said, was that the Iranians were attacking.
It’s natural to downplay the familiar. I remember the denialism of leaders in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who minimised their domestic extremism. But threats from within are often the most dangerous, and that’s particularly so when the leader in charge of protecting a nation is inciting riots against it. Impeachment may help, but it’s a long road ahead. Nicholas D Kristof is a columnist with The New York Times.