The Right Side of History is in Play

Remembering when the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack was an insurrection

You might hear the phrase “wrong side of history” tossed about a lot as we observe the four-year anniversary – and first for certifying another presidential election – since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that grew out of a Donald Trump D.C. pep rally. The one in which the next president of the United States urged his followers to go to the U.S. Capitol because “you don't concede when there's theft involved.”

Wrong side of history for apologists of thugs who busted into the Capitol and tried to keep Congress from certifying Electoral College votes that gave Joe Biden the win. Wrong side of history for Republicans who voted against impeaching Trump a month later for inciting the crowd. Wrong side of history for supporting Trump altogether, regardless of when.

“If we don’t set this right and call it what it was, the highest of constitutional crimes by the president of the United States, the past will not be past. The past will become our future for my children and for their children,” U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pennsylvania, told the U.S. Senate at Trump’s February 2021 impeachment trial for his role in the Capitol attack. “Senators, we are in a dialogue with history. A conversation with our past, with the hope for our future.”

A lot of us can find comfort in knowing we are on the right side of history if we think the concept of wrong is defined by a mob rush that results in Capitol police dying, the Confederate flag paraded through the halls of Congress, threats on the lives of congressional leaders and the U.S. vice president, excrement smeared on walls, invasions of congressional offices and other general violence that interrupted a constitutionally mandated transition of power.

It is why Liz Cheyney, the conservative firebrand drummed out of her Republican Party and threatened with prosecution for the crime of telling the truth about Donald Trump, famously said in June 2022 as the House Select January 6^th Committee met: “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Thus, a U.S. president would be on the wrong side of history when, before the mob he riled up went on its attack, he gave them a free pass by saying, “we don't have a free and fair press. Our media is not free, it's not fair. It suppresses thought, it suppresses speech and it's become the enemy of the people. It's become the enemy of the people. It's the biggest problem we have in this country.”

In other words, the news media would lie about what its reports anyway, so do what you will. Reports about it will be a lie. Don’t believe it? See how people describe in 2024 what they saw on live television in 2021. It will be something like a First Amendment-protected activity that made rioters political prisoners held hostage.

To be fair, Donald Trump said on Jan. 6, 2021, that he would join the crowd in a peaceful and patriotic march to the Capitol to make their voices heard. But, right before that, he said, “you have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”

And, you might just consider the power behind this call to action at the same speech. “We're gathered together in the heart of our nation's capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy.”

And, this: “We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved. Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal.”

All of that history, and people wanting to be on the right side. Well, here’s some perspective. Before Iowa became a state, it was inhabited by the Arikara, Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Ioway, Kickapoo, Mascouten, Missouri, Omaha, Osage, Otoe, Potawatomi, Sauk, Sioux, and eventually the Meskwaki people.

When white settlers took over in the 1840s, the U.S. government forced remaining native people to relocation camps at Fort Des Moines in 1843. A Johnson County, Iowa, history published in the 1880s tells of white settlers going to the Iowa City railway station to say goodbye to their departing friends, as though the natives had decided they were heading home after some happy visit.

We know this because the winners wrote the history. A visit to the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama and Toledo might yield a different spin, even though Iowa allowed the Sauk and Meskwakis to buy land for their settlement.

This illustrates a hard fact for those feeling confident about how shocked future generations will be about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the decision to acquit Trump after impeachment and his once unthinkable return to the White House. You know, the “right side of history.”

You lost.

We are not talking, here, about the 2024 election. We are talking about the moment the battle for what seems to be known as normal, moral behavior. We are talking about an opportunity to write history.

Signs were out there that this was coming. As early as one year after the attack the Wall Street Journal ran a piece called “Stop Calling Jan. 6 an ‘Insurrection,’ arguing that violence was committed that day but that it did not meet the legal definition of insurrection. Republicans want the FBI to investigate Cheyney and hint that they’d like to see her prosecuted. Corporate bigwigs who abandoned Trump after Jan. 6, 2021, are back with hats in hand, wads of cash, and begging to get back into the room where it happens.

In Iowa, Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, who for inexplicable reasons other than questioning a Trump cabinet appointee took political heat from her own party before pulling back on the questions, now distances herself from calling Jan. 6, 2021, an insurrection. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wants to know if undercover U.S. Department of Justice operatives were at the Jan. 6 events. Suggest, deflect.

In early 2019, before the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, whatever you call it, Jacob Levy, professor of political theory and head of the Yan P. Lin Center for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders at McGill University in Canada, wrote for Vox.com that predicting the right side of history was a senseless quest to justify with moral “a variety of historical horrors” tinged by modern notions and mastery of technology.

“The problem isn’t the belief in moral right and wrong but the belief that history manifests and reveals them in some natural way,” he wrote.

We might be dreaming if we think history automatically will condemn Donald Trump, Jan. 6, 2021, based on our notions of right and wrong. Those people presumed to be condemned by history get to write it now. And most certainly, they will make sure those opposing them are the ones who are on the wrong side.

Versions of this column appeared in the Des Moines Register and The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA).

Lyle Muller is a board member of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and Iowa High School Press Association, a trustee of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, former executive director/editor of the Iowa Center for Public Journalism that became part of the Midwest Center, former editor of The Gazette (Cedar Rapids), and a recipient of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Distinguished Service Award. In retirement, he is the professional adviser for Grinnell College’s Scarlet & Black newspaper.