On January 6, 2021, among extremist Trump supporters, conspirators were on the front lines. The eruption into reality of an ancient phenomenon deeply rooted in the United States, the conspiracy, which punctuates the history of the country, from the assassination of Kennedy to QAnon today.
What does the Capitol Assault say about the importance of conspiracy theories in a country where free speech is protected by the Constitution’s First Amendment? The history professor, specialist in American policy Corentin Sellin looks back on the genesis of this violence, the rise of conspiracy at the heart of Donald Trump’s power and the legitimacy that the former President himself gave him during his mandate, affirming from 2020 that if he lost the election, it would necessarily be a fraud. Today, the post-Capitol assault Biden administration has embraced conspiracy as a potential threat of domestic terrorism.
When the assault on the Capitol becomes a source of conspiracy
Far from having calmed this dynamic or frightened Americans about conspiracy, the assault on Capitol Hill and the parliamentary inquiry that followed, on the contrary, fueled suspicion and mistrust of power. Today, these events are even the subject of conspiracy theories, the riots of January 6, for example, according to some were orchestrated to harm Donald Trump. Media, conspiratorial influencers, and of course QAnon continue to fuel the idea of an election theft, in the wake of the “Stop the steal” movement born after the result of the vote.
The Capitol is therefore part of a series of key moments recovered by the conspiratorial imagination, a series that began with the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, as Vincent Quivy, author of Incredible But False: JFK’s Covid-19 Conspiracy Stories, published by Le Seuil.
“What does the Capitol assault on conspiracy say in the United States”, this is the 20th episode of Complorama, with Rudy Reichstadt, director of Conspiracy Watch, and Tristan Mendès France, lecturer and member of the observatory of conspiracy , specialist in digital cultures. A podcast to be found on the franceinfo website, the Radio France application and several other platforms like Apple podcasts, Podcast Addict, Spotify, Where Deezer.