On Wednesday, January 6, the United States was astonished at a spectacle that it had never seen in its history (its empire has been behind many similar moments in the past in many countries) but in its own home. Convened by President Trump, protesters who entered the Capitol, making it easier for policemen not to open the doors, forced the building to be evicted and suspended the meeting to certify the results of the November elections, plus those of Georgia, held on Tuesday.

A coup attempt? Probably something simpler and less dangerous (at the moment), but in any case baffling. In part, what happened in the Capitol has been the perfect and optimal closure of these four years, the closure of everything that Trump and his government have done and represented.

I believe that those famous passages of Marx’s Brumario, 18a, come to mind. The Trump administration began as a farce, with a walk down the escalators of Trump Tower. It continued as a tragedy with the repression and murder of the African-American population, the persecution of migrants, the amputation of children, the criminalization of demonstrators and the noise of alarm drums that were emitted daily. Trump puts an end to a third act, returning to the farce (hopefully there will not be a last tragic tour).

Trumpistak's images upon entering the Capitol show paranoia, silly, pure fear, no need for masks and fake beard, but with a confusing tattoo, military paraphernalia, Nazi t-shirt and Viking symbology. Even with wolf skins, he came up on the stage of the Senate, as he was, offering a photo that will keep the bufo of history. Confederate flags in the halls of the Capitol. On the street, skis and crosses to the purest Ku Klux Klan style. Costumes rented by the past (again Marx). Unconscious, the wild self of a country, emerging and from one side to the other, idiots and furious, running through the runners dismantled and screaming: "Where did they go?" ".

Perhaps these ridiculous or dramatic images have served us to point out what trumpism has left at the bottom of the wave of neoliberalism when, at the end of all the hegemony of decades, neoliberalism, tired of its monologue, has been trapped among the ghosts that he himself has created. On a symbolic level, this day has been the humiliation of the institutions of the United States. The kicks of the Trump era (the latest kicks? ), as Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor suggests on Twitter, expresses the end of American scepticism. In the 1940s, Sinclair Lewis, in his famous novel It can't happen here, warned by a dystopian narrative of the risk of a fascist leader coming to power in the United States. Last Wednesday, the believers who criticized Lewis's titles were quite right: that can happen here, that's happened here, that's taken long before Trump came here.

In fact, it is appropriate not only to look at the mouthpiece aspect of what has been seen. At the moment, four people have died [at the time of publishing this translation there are five deaths, Editorial Notice]. And even more bloody was the day when two explosive devices were found directed against the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican Party. On the other hand, it is also said that this attack has been nothing more than an essay, which could happen more in the coming days, until day 20, when Biden begins his term of office.

Political scientist Laleh Khalili said that despite its chaotic and unappealing aspect, the attack should not be understood as a spontaneous action, but as part of a coordinated effort: the attack has echoed in the capitolies of ten states, with smaller and varied consequences, and could – according to Khalili – have the objective of recruiting new people and internationalizing the issue, as shown by the attack.

To this must be added the attitude of the police, who have let the demonstrators pass, as shown by several videos. We could well believe that this is a consequence of the individual attitudes of the police. However, that generosity with the truthful protesters ... 1) it is not an isolated fact, as has been demonstrated many times; and 2) it joins a trend that is being strengthened in trumpism, which the writer Jeff Sharlet has called police nationalism, with a tendency that has been reinforced in the face of the Black Lives Matter protests: sympathy with the police forces keeps beneath his feet a deep adhesion to structural racism, which equates him to being American.

We have to be careful – and look from Poulantzas’ eyes – to see what attitude repressive devices adopt. As the political scientist Rafael Khachaturian, a disciple of Poulantzes, pointed out, the so-called deep state, which has generated so many conspiracy theories, is by no means a unitary being, but has shown divisions between its own apparatus: many police forces, border patrols and the ICE (Inmigration and Customs Trumpen Enfort once) service. On the contrary, national security agencies, the FBI and the cia, in general, have been against Trump.

At the end of the day, this false blow or proto strike may have had a ridiculous and weak dramaturgy. But, as Richard Seymour says, that stupidity does not take away what he has of the fascist, and we could think that Wednesday has been one more in the experiments, the dress up test and in the processes of reciprocal radicalization from the devices of the State as from the street, and that these steps can lead to the appearance of an organized, extra-pathetic, yet much more organized ultraderecha from the collision. As mentioned in a previous article, they could influence the progressive crystallization of individual tendencies, sensitivities and attitudes in a more coherent and dangerous organization.

(...) Until the bewilderment last Wednesday, I thought – like others – that the US political system would not be retaliated against Trump. But this last and bloody astute, which at the same time has been farce and tragedy, is a humiliation for the whole system, an inexcusable stain for the pure dream image it has of itself.

I don't believe in the goodness or justice of those institutions, but I think the reason for the state -- because of it -- forces the United States to topple Trump. There's not a single "serious state," as the CIA would say from an embassy in any other country, that can let something like that happen. In any event, the most important reason for putting an end to this tragic clown is the survival of democracy itself and of a society that will materialise, practice and transform it. Can it happen here too?

(*) Vicente Rubio-Pueyo is a professor at Fordham University in New York.