In D.C., a primal scream of patriotism
What the U.S. Capitol rioters chose to wear may seem irrelevant, but it played a role
They came dressed for chaos. They came in red, white and blue face paint and star-spangled superhero outfits, in flag capes (American, yes, but also Confederate and Trumpian) and flag jackets and Trump bobble hats. One man came as a patriotic duck; another as a bald eagle; another as a cross between a knight-errant and Captain America; another as Abraham Lincoln. They came in all sorts of camouflage, in animal pelts and flak jackets, in tactical gear and even a sphagnum-covered gillie suit.
They came Wednesday morning first for the pro-Trump rally outside the White House, to show their fanatic belief in the spurious “Stop the Steal” movement on the day Congress had convened to certify the Electoral College results and recognize Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, and they turned into a mob.
What rioters wore when they stormed the U.S. Capitol, pushing past the Capitol Police and rampaging into the building, may seem the least of the matter. It may seem entirely irrelevant to the unprecedented nature of the moment. Yet these choices also helped feed the frenzy of the event, as the pageantry of aggression turned actual.
Protests have always had a distinguishing uniform — it is how often disparate individuals signal their shared purpose and state of mind — but this time the cohesion splintered into war paint and a primal scream of patriotism. It was a riotous expression before the riot began.
Forget the white trouser suits
and pink hats of dissents past; they were positively quotidian in comparison. Instead there was clothing that transgressed the conventions of the social style contract just as the president’s accusations transgressed political convention. Clothing that didn’t really qualify as clothing, but made the leap into costume of the most big screen blockbuster, shoot-’em-up video game kind. Or the VR kind. Only this wasn’t virtual reality; it was reality.
When you leave the totems of your usual identity behind you free yourself from the laws that govern that identity and as
sume those of another character — a frontiersman, a hunter, a warrior, even a superhero — that can then be twisted through a dark mirror into the outfits of the insurrection. There was no clearer image of what that meant than a shirtless man in what looked like a cross between a coonskin cap and a horned spirit hood, with face and body paint, standing gloating behind a desk in the Senate chamber as if he belonged there, after the actual elected lawmakers had been rushed away for their safety.
As writer Ben Sixsmith tweeted: “It’s like the Storming of the
Bastille as recreated by the cast of National Lampoon’s Animal House. These photos will outlive us all.”
Earlier in the day, before Trump struck the oratorical match that turned the rally into a riot, attendees in what appeared to be ecclesiastical robes
seemed to be bestowing a blessing on the whole event.
As far as an observer could tell, however, no one was garbed as the better angels of our nature. Licence to dress up can easily become licence to act out in the worst of all ways. Last week, it did.