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White Grievance Prevailed During the Siege of America’s Capitol

Kitanya Harrison
3 min readJan 7, 2021

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Photo by Dalton Caraway on Unsplash

Yesterday, a white supremacist mob stormed the Capitol Building of the United States. A female veteran was killed. Bomb techs had to defuse pipe bombs. I’m surprised by none of this. I saw it coming (as did many) and honestly thought it would be worse. That’s not to downplay the seriousness of what has happened or what it means about the fate of the collapsing American empire. It is an attempt to push back against the appalled, tearful pearl clutching that’s been on display. What happened in America’s capital yesterday was not only foreseeable, it was predicted loudly. People shouted themselves hoarse trying to warn of the threat, and they were derided as hysterical, alarmist Chicken Littles.

American Exceptionalism has plucked the eyes out of the heads of people whose duty it is to understand how and why these events unfold. American legacy media doesn’t lack the vocabulary to discuss these matters. They lack the perspective to apply them to the situation inside their own country. Racist extremists storming the capital at the behest of the recently defeated president in an attempt to keep him in power isn’t the action of anarchists but of fascists. That distinction and the media’s choice of the “anarchist” language matter a great deal. Even with the horror of right-wing extremism playing out live as the heart of American governments…

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Kitanya Harrison
Kitanya Harrison

Written by Kitanya Harrison

Upcoming essay collection: WELCOME TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE: NOTES ON COLLAPSE FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC | Rep: Deirdre Mullane

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