January 6: Not Who We Are?

The Trumpian mob attack on the Capitol shocked America. We thought “this is not who we are.” But maybe it actually is, more than we’d thought. If we dare to look at our history, it was not such an exception. On this show Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson, author of Genealogies of Terrorism: Revolution, State Violence, Empire says the spectacle may not be who we want to be, but there’s a lot of it in our history. The Cheney/Bush “war on terrorism” used an intentionally amorphous definition of terrorism, creating opportunities for violent government action. What is the role of violence and political legitimacy? And what can we do about it?