Correct terminology

Regarding the events of Jan. 6, instead of the proper moniker “putsch,” I read instead the misnomers “coup” and “anarchy.” So: A coup is a violent overthrow of an established government, but one that has been organized by military or police agencies. School of the Americas graduates, being military officers from their home countries, have organized and executed a generous number of coups throughout Latin America. The storming of Congress was not organized by actors from the U.S. armed forces, but sprouted instead from an online ecosystem of right-wing forums and chatrooms, whose violent eruption was consciously stoked by the president and his aides.

Now, “anarchy” is a global political ideology which seeks the eradication of exploitative state power relations (be they capitalist or “communist”), to be supplanted by the totally free association of human beings in a plurality of cooperatively owned and operated democratic councils and communes. It seems our native white supremacist son who dropped his boots on Pelosi’s desk sought not the demise of racist institutions in the USA; rather, he and his compatriots seek the perpetuation of a racist state-dictatorship headed by an openly racist president.

A putsch—a violent attempt to overthrow an established government—is exactly what the president and his mob are undertaking. This is a known move in the fascist playbook— take some time to read about the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, which ended with the arrest of Hitler and the Nazi Party’s transition to legal, legislative means of power-grabbing. Please read Umberto Eco’s essay “Ur-Fascism” so that you can more readily recognize the existential threat posed by QAnon and Trumpism. Please believe your local anarchists when they tell you that political gradualism, liberalism, and conservatism will not save us. We need local democratic peoples’ councils, not rule by Little Rock and Washington.

LIAM McMAHON

Prairie Grove