I need you to understand this underreported aspect of this infamous day: January 6th was a failed lynching. On this day, which perpetually haunts this nation and we fail to discuss, then President Donald J. Trump transformed his most fervent supporters into a bloodthirsty lynch mob.
This was the largest assembled lynch mob that failed to lynch its intended victims. While this roving army of goons accomplished its intended goal of terrorizing this nation and sowing the seeds of distrust and enmity, it failed to lynch anyone that day. Yet, one homicide did occur when a black law enforcement officer shot and killed a white woman who was trying to enter a secure and barricaded area of the Capitol. This was the moment that all of these traitors became murderers, but our DOJ failed to see them as such. This is the power of whiteness: being able to escape accountability for murder.
In December 2020, President Trump and his cronies invited Americans of all stripes to come to Washington, D.C., and participate in his big lie. He and his fellow liars had orchestrated a massive Stop the Steal Rally. Throngs of white people answered his plea for support and showed up for the rally. This crowd was comprised of the most ardent supporters of President Donald J. Trump. It was those who were physically able and possessed the means to answer his clarion call. They traveled across this great nation to attend a rally where this stain on this nation stood before them and lied to their faces. Some traveled in motorcades to hear their white Jesus give his demented version of the Sermon on the Mount. Others arrived by airliner, with some even taking private planes. This was not a collection of uneducated, poor white trash, but this was a broad assortment of the coalition that he had built to win the White House in 2016. This failed lynch mob included a retired high-ranking military officer, a former police officer, an Olympic gold medalist, an Ivy League-educated lawyer, and active military members.
These white men all had taken an oath to defend the Constitution of America from all known threats, foreign and domestic. Some had worn our nation’s uniform and represented us before the world. These were not ignorant men but white men who had found the allure of this demonic Pied Piper’s tale of white racial grievance too fetching to ignore.
As President Trump stood on the dais, cloaked in the innate authority that is bestowed on our Presidents, he recited demonstrable lie after lie to incite his people to storm the Capitol. He lied to these people because he did not respect them. He does not respect any of his fellow Americans. We, and especially those assembled before him, were all pawns in his deranged game of corrupting the system to remain in power. His only complaint on January 6th was that some people he primed to overrun the Capitol looked low class. He preferred the aesthetic of those who had, almost two decades earlier, participated in the Brooks Brothers Riot over his motley crew of insurrectionists and traitors.
The miscreants who had conducted the Brooks Brothers Riot did not have the lust for violence on their breath like Trump’s traitors. Donald Trump’s craven bunch of cowards had fantasies of lynching the people they had deemed enemies of the State.
I say this in no uncertain words: AOC and Pelosi would have been harmed by these depraved animals. Furthermore, the same fate awaited every female member of The Squad. Vice President Mike Pence would have been tortured and lynched.
January 6th was a failed lynching. The only other failed lynching I know of happened in the book To Kill A Mockingbird. Unlike in that work of fiction, a tepid form of justice found these would be conspirators to commit murder.
I kept thinking as I watched this brazen act of treason unfold before me in real time: “Why don’t they light their asses up!?!?” I remember exclaiming to my wife with exasperation and disbelief dripping from my words. I was watching something that I did not think was possible: our Capitol being overrun and the traitors and enemies of our nation not being repelled with a symphony of gunfire.
However, the Capitol’s steps were not covered in entrails. The Capitol Rotunda was not a sea of blood. The failed lynch mob was free to leave and return to their lives just like every other lynch mob in American history. Some of these traitors stopped and gave television interviews using their full government names (that is reason 1,435,478 why I could never be a Trump supporter; y’all can’t even criminal well!).
This was the unfathomable part for me and many black folk.
Many of us have been gripped by the foolhardy dream of being a martyr. We believe that our actions would inspire America to stand up and live up to its promise that all Americans were created equal. All people are bestowed with inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We might be armed with assault rifles and handguns or strapped with bombs when we stormed the seats of power.
No matter the particular details of this morbid scenario, one thing remained steadfast: we die at the end. We are either killed by law enforcement, we take our own lives, or we blow ourselves up. There is not one scenario we have thought of where we do not die storming the Capitol or any other place where power can be found.
When I watched the Capitol being invaded by Trump supporters and the Capitol police not letting the choppers sing, I was beside myself. These mostly white male traitors were not getting slaughtered by the police, which was something that I could not comprehend. I was watching whiteness play out in front of an international audience.
You can ask anyone: if people of color did the very same thing that these January 6th insurrectionists did, would there not be more bloodshed? Every honest person would reply with a resounding yes!
Ironically, there was one member of the lynch mob who was put down like a dog as a result of a justifiable homicide. A black law enforcement officer warned her and other members of this advancing mob to retreat. When this white woman kept coming, thinking her gender and whiteness would protect her from this black officer fulfilling his charge and duty, she did not have long to contemplate the error of her ways. He shot her, and she later succumbed to her injuries.
A black law enforcement officer defended the Capitol by discharging his firearm and (justifiably) killing an unarmed white woman.
It was through this act of police brutality every single participant of January 6th became a murderer. They were all engaged in one or more of the enumerated acts contained in 18 U.S.C. § 1111(a).
Those murderers were engaged in treason, burglary, robbery, or perpetrated from a premeditated design unlawfully and maliciously to effect the death of any human being other than him who is killed.
If you engage in any of these things, this is first-degree murder under the Federal Criminal Code.
Yet, in this crowd of mostly white men, not one of them was charged with murder even though their actions directly caused someone to be shot and killed.
The felony murder doctrine is toxic and maliciously and callously overapplied to women. This destructive form of murder is mostly used against women. Women who have suffered beatings, sexual assaults, threats of intimidation, and abuse in all forms from their intimate partner are coerced to participate in their partner’s crime. They are usually the getaway driver or lookout or serve another role in this criminal scheme.
They are seldom the perpetrator of the violence. California survey found that 72% of women serving life sentences for felony murder were not the perpetrators of the homicide, compared to 55% of men. These women are the ones whom our various state and federal governments decided to unleash their full fury on and hold them to account despite the reams of evidence that expose them as victims of coercion.
LaKeith Smith was 15 years old when he and four of his friends decided to burglarize a house to steal an Xbox and other gaming items. The police interrupted their stupid plan. LaKeith ran into the woods empty-handed, but the police shot and killed his 16-year-old friend, A’Donte Washington. Since these black children had been engaged in the enumerated act of burglary, LaKeith was charged and convicted of felony murder for A’Donte’s homicide. He is currently serving 65 years in prison.
LaKeith did not kill his friend; however, at the time his friend was the victim of police brutality, he had been in the process of engaging in one of the many enumerated underlying crimes that can trigger felony murder.
Now compare that to the January 6th insurrectionists. These cowards were riled up by Donald Trump and his hooligans and co-conspirators to invalidate the votes of millions of Americans for him to remain in power. If that is not treason, I don’t know what is.
I was gobsmacked when I watched Adam Johnson, with his bright smile and Trump stocking hat, sauntering through the Capitol rotunda carrying Speaker Pelosi’s Podium. That was burglary, one of the specific crimes to allow everyone to be charged with murder.
We heard and read stories of these insurrectionists who took trophies from the Capitol to remember their perverted 1776 moment. They took stationary, stamps, pens, bubbles, and whatever else their lecherous claws could grasp. This was burglary.
I was stunned as I watched the violent battles unfold on the Capitol steps. A mob of angry white people clashed with the Capitol police. I saw this failed lynch mob attack the police with bear spray and other chemical irritants. They swung flag poles and turned whatever object they could find into an instrument to bludgeon the police. Patrick McCaughery, III, robbed an officer of his shield and used it to crush another officer. Thomas Sibick robbed a beaten officer of his badge.
Every single person who was on the Capitol grounds should be facing felony murder charges…but they are not because that is how whiteness works: it was designed to shield white men from the consequences of their actions. It is accountability repellant. This is the value of whiteness, which is why it is worth fighting for.
The police killed a woman as a direct result of the insurrection, and these criminals engaged in treason. Many of them robbed law enforcement officials, and others burglarized the People’s House. For the love of God, a fully functioning gallows had been constructed on the Capitol grounds, complete with a noose. If that does not betray the intent of this lynch mob, then nothing else will. This was not a protest but a failed lynching.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the crimes committed and the justifiable homicide of one of the traitors, we have not held the worst element of society fully accountable for their actions.
I write this detached from the horror that unfolded live on television. The blatant disparity in the treatment of these traitors will never cease to amaze me. I will forever equate the value of whiteness to shielding the participants in a violent rebellion against our government from lethal means being deployed to stop their insurrection. I will go to my grave with the belief that if any other group of people did the same thing, Washington, D.C., would be soaked in blood.
Can you imagine if Muslims were the perpetrators of January 6th? What about Latinos? Even Asians would have been slaughtered by a hail of gunfire.
We all know what they would have done to black folk coming out of Black Lives Matter Summer if we stormed the Capitol.
However, for this disgraceful act of treason, which resulted in the homicide of one of the traitors, the whole group escaped real accountability because of whiteness.
That is the lesson of January 6th I will teach my daughter and any grandkids I might have. The power of whiteness.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Garrick McFadden's work on Medium.