How they see us: A riot that revealed U.S. hypocrisy
“The city on the hill has lost its shine,” said Konstantin Kosachev in Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia). The political system that is supposedly the envy of the world was stripped of “its sacredness” last week when a mob of Trump supporters assaulted the U.S. Capitol, killing a police officer and endangering lawmakers as they certified Joe Biden’s election win. American politicians and pundits decried the violent protest as a horror, even though they routinely praise such displays in other countries as valid outpourings of anger against undemocratic regimes. Now U.S. voters are crying fraud and injustice and besieging government buildings. Americans have “tasted the fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and their virginity cannot be restored.” U.S. democracy is forever tainted, said Yevgeny Shestakov, also in the Gazeta. The November election that ostensibly went for Biden was “opaque,” because numerous states changed voting rules on a whim. No wonder President Donald Trump’s supporters feel cheated. From now on, any party that loses an election will be able to plausibly claim that the “results were rigged.”
The U.S. has lost its right to criticize other countries that quash riots, said Ai Jun in the Global Times (China). Remember when Hong Kong protesters broke into the city’s legislative building in 2019? At the time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the scene “a beautiful sight,” while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. stood with the activists and supported their “freedom of expression.” Yet when the very same thing occurs in the U.S., they “define it as lawlessness” and call it “unacceptable.” China was also smeared and criticized for arresting rioters, even though, unlike their American counterparts, Hong Kong police never fatally shot a protester. What’s particularly shocking, said Jafar Blori in Kayhan (Iran), is that the U.S. is now muzzling both the protesters and the president. Facebook and Twitter, under pressure from Congress, erased Trump from their sites and purged many of his followers. “Yes, you heard right, the biggest pretender to democracy and freedom of expression in the world,” the one that censures others for supposedly attacking the free press, “overnight became the biggest censor in the world!”
Democracy is “America’s most important brand,” said Oray Egin in Haberturk.com (Turkey), and Trump has damaged it, perhaps fatally. Lebanese diplomat Mohamad Safa tweeted that the events of Jan. 6 in any other country would invite a U.S. invasion. Others joked that the reason the coup did not succeed was that there was no U.S. Embassy in Washington to back it. America is now an object of pity and disdain, and nobody is more delighted than Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long insisted that the U.S. political system is just as flawed and corrupt as Russia’s. I am no conspiracy theorist, but now I wonder, “Could Trump really be Russia’s man?” By mutilating American democracy, Trump has given Putin all he ever wanted.