E51: Rhetoric and Violence at the Capitol

Since our last re:verb episode, the US House and Senate certified Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, paving the way for Biden’s inauguration -- but not before a large crowd of disgruntled Trump supporters descended on the US Capitol building, in a violent conflict that left five people dead and many wounded. Days later, President Trump’s Twitter account had been banned and he was impeached by the House, making him history’s first multiply-deplatformed, multiply-impeached president.

On today’s show, Calvin, Alex, and Sophie react to the events of January 6th and their aftermath. We debate to what extent it is accurate and politically useful to call the 1/6 violence a “coup” or an act of “terrorism,” as well as whether our choices of modifiers to describe the event (such as “right-wing”, “GOP”, and/or “fascist”) are even more important. We also consider the apparent hamfistedness of the attackers’ planning and goofiness of their presentation, and how these elements relate to the long legacy of white supremacist rhetoric in the US.  

Lastly, we discuss Twitter’s decision to apply its term of service prohibiting “Glorification of Violence” to President Trump’s account, ostensibly banning him from the platform for life. Is this an issue of free speech, propaganda, tech-sector labor organizing, hypermediated capitalism, or some combination of all of these? What exactly was the role of social media in the violence that occurred on Jan 6? And if, as seems to be the case, the Internet is undeniably bad now, what broad policy approaches might make it even marginally less bad?

Works and Concepts Cited in this Episode:

Brown, J. (2015). Ethical programs: Hospitality and the rhetorics of software (p. 231). University of Michigan Press.

Conger, K., & Isaac, M. (2021, 12 January). Twitter Permanently Bans Trump, Capping Online Revolt. The New York Times. 

Fretwell, E. (2021, 13 January). From lynchings to the Capitol: Racism and the violence of revelry. Al Jazeera.

Levy, A. (2020, 2 July). The most liberal and conservative tech companies, ranked by employees’ political donations. CNBC. 

McGee, M. C. (1980). The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology. Quarterly journal of speech, 66(1), 1-16.

Ridolfo, J., & DeVoss, D. N. (2009). Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 13(2), n2.

Silverman, C., & Mac, R. (2020, 3 November). Facebook Cut Traffic To Leading Liberal Pages Just Before The Election. Buzzfeed News.

Twitter. (2021, 8 January). Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump. 

Warner, M. (2002). Publics and counterpublics. Public culture, 14(1), 49-90.

Wong, J.C. (2017, 10 February). Meet the rightwing power players lurking beneath Silicon Valley's liberal facade. The Guardian.