PART 6: January 6th neither began nor ended on that date. The legal and moral implications of January 6th continue to this day; and also, the roots of the insurrection stretch back centuries, to the founding divides of this nation over race and religion. In the final episode, we pull from our own show archives – best selling authors, counterterrorism experts, investigative reporters and academics – to lay out why January 6th is far from over.
By now, the story of what happened on January 6 2021 is seared into the public psyche. But there is still an untold story.
Many of the investigators and team leads on the January 6th Committee were people of color. In this podcast, we bring you the story of their leadership, and why their mix of lived experience as descendents of enslaved people; children of immigrants; or immigrants themselves deeply shaped the committee’s quest to protect and uphold a multiracial pluralistic democracy.
The story they tell about the inner workings of the committee also reveal deep rifts over the role of race and Christian Nationalism in the insurrection, and how much of that inquiry should be told while proving former President Trump’s role in the insurrection.
As America winds up with endless court cases over the former President and his alleged co-conspirators, it is also, arguably winding up for an increase in domestic violent extremism. In “January 6th: An American Story,” we show – through the investigators of color and lawmakers helping lead the committee – that January 6th is not over, and the ways we continue to make sense of its reverberations could save – or imperil – us all.
The story of January 6 is an American Story.
It just might be different from the one you thought you knew.
So, it made perfect sense that I, and my team, would tackle the insurrection at the capitol on January 6th, 2021. It's what we’ve always done at Our Body Politic.
Our work is also “An American Story.”
Last year, on the second anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, we spoke with Dr. Barbara F. Walter. She’s the author of “How Civil Wars Start.” When Walter uses the term “civil war,” she’s not talking about two armies facing off, but about insurgency.
I don't believe we’ll have a civil war in the traditional sense, but I do believe our democracy stands on a dangerous precipice. During the interview, Dr. Walter shed light on what helps fuel the domestic violent extremist movement.
Barbara F. Walter: The groups that tend to start these types of wars are the groups that had been politically dominant but are in decline. So it was this sense of loss of status, of political power, of cultural dominance.
Farai: In the U.S., it’s white people – particularly straight white men – who feel a loss of political dominance most acutely. In our era, as in the past, the pursuit of white power in the face of backsliding cultural dominance has led to violence.
Barbara F. Walter: If you think back to January 6th, one of the striking visuals for me as I was watching it happen, was to watch all of these white people – and they were predominantly men – all of these white men marching down the Mall towards the Capitol. They were taking videos of themselves. They were doing this with impunity. It didn't occur to them that they might actually be committing treason, because in their minds, they were patriots.
Farai: Race, white supremacy, anti-Semitism and misogyny are at the center of the domestic violent extremist movement and the January 6th insurrection.
Former FBI Special Agent Dr. Erroll Southers is a counterterrorism expert based at USC’s Price School of Public Policy. He points out how white supremacy can be found at the center of organizations tasked with protecting the nation and its people. These are many of the same organizations that failed to prevent the assault on the Capitol.
It’s also what our investigators discovered when diving into law enforcement’s lack of preparedness.
Dr. Erroll Southers: It has infiltrated local law enforcement. It has infiltrated our military. It has infiltrated Congress. You've got law enforcement people who, of course, are engaged in accepting the extremist belief. Let's just say they're not operationalizing it, but they certainly agree with it. A lot of that came to light when January 6th happened and people who were off-duty showed up.
Farai: Today, Dr. Southers can’t help but feel alarmed by parallels and our tenuous hold on democracy and freedom.
Dr. Erroll Southers: I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but we're at a very dangerous time. And I would have to say it's certainly unprecedented as we speak about domestic threats, probably in our nation's history. We have been in denial about the homegrown threat we have here, and now it's on our doorstep.
Farai: But in some ways, the threat’s always been here. It’s even become embedded within Christianity in the form of white Christian nationalism, which is an ideology, not a religion. Domestic security experts name Christian nationalism as one of the ideologies which fueled the violence on January 6th.
University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Anthea Butler, author of “White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America,” points out the historical violence inherent in Christianity’s ascendency in America.
Dr. Anthea Butler: Violence is a part of Christianity. And I think that people need to realize when you start to think about the history of Christianity, whether you're thinking about the Crusades or, the wars of religion and the Reformation, the drowning of Anabaptists, all of this – Christianity and violence kind of go together. In American context right now, the rights that they're fighting for are the rights of white people to dominate everybody else.
Farai: Christian nationalists believe that America belongs to Christians. Unlike this nation, which believes in a separation of church and state, Christian nationalists believe religion should be intertwined with government.
Ironically perhaps – in a spy vs. spy twist – violent white Christian nationalist organizations and the far-right MAGA movement aren’t immune from infiltration. This also has historical precedent. Just as the Klan infiltrated law enforcement, journalists and law enforcement turned and infiltrated the Klan.
They, like our investigators, are determined to tell the truth about these organizations.
One such journalist is Marine Corps veteran Chris Jones, who, at the time we spoke, was working with the award-winning outlet “100 Days in Appalachia.” Unlike me, he’s someone who can do undercover work in white-supremacist organizations.
Chris Jones: I’m a six-foot-tall white guy with a beard, coming from West Virginia wearing a Norfolk Southern hat, right? So, you know, for me I think a lot of it as being as low as innocuous as low-profile as possible. I don’t want you to be thinking. I don’t want you to be looking at me and getting a bunch of clues about where you think I fit into this, right? I - I want to be ideally nothing, but, at best, a question mark.
Farai: Jones now works with veteran Kristopher Goldsmith – a former U.S. Army sergeant and founder of Task Force Butler. TFB is a non-profit that “trains veterans in research and operations to counter extremism.” He believes his organization is uniquely suited to tackling rising extremism amongst military veterans.
Kristopher Goldsmith: Part of the reason that the veterans at Task Force Butler are so good at what we do is because we have shared a lot of similar life experiences, and we can understand kind of why they act the way that they do. We can anticipate the way that they're going to act in the future. We don't really ever ask ourselves the question, well, what kind of person signs up to do a job that is essentially kill people?
Farai: Some of the veterans Goldsmith likely hoped to reach with his organization showed up and stormed the Capitol on January 6th. The nation grappled with the shock of the assault on our capitol.
But I wasn’t shocked.
I publicly predicted January 6th and went to cover it. The Ellipse, where outgoing president and ultimate sore loser Donald Trump was speaking, was too “hot” for me, and I pulled back to speak to peaceful protestors near the White House. I knew there would be violence. And there was.
It's my hope that “An American Story” helps explain why.
Like the work we’ve accomplished at Our Body Politic – and with our January 6th series, “An American Story” – my work continues to illuminate the dark corners of American society. It's integral to who I am and who we are.
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Now as we reach the end of this series, we’re going to hear from some of the team that helped create this body of work. We begin with the executive producer and one of our writers for the project, Emmy award-winning producer and media executive Joanne Levine.
Hey, Joanne.
Joanne: Hey Farai.
Farai: It has been amazing to work with you.
Joanne: Right back at you.
Farai: So tell us a little bit more about you and your work.
Joanne: Journalism is my religion in many ways. It's about truth. It's about accountability. It's about, to use what's become a cliche, a voice for the voiceless. And I've lived true to that my entire career.
I would say the first two-thirds of my career was largely overseas in a lot of war zones. It was an era when there weren't a whole lot of women out in the field. And I tended to gravitate towards stories that were different from what a lot of people were covering. And those stories made a splash.
One of my first big stories was about how rape was used as a weapon of war in Rwanda. I never shied away from the tough stuff, because it was important and someone needed to tell the story. And the women trusted me. It's those types of stories – the hard stories, the meaningful stories, the stories that impact individuals – that I’ve always been drawn to, whether as the reporter, the producer, executive producer, that is the strain that has run through.
Farai: I do want to ask a little bit more about you as a person.
Joanne: I married a Jordanian who's now American. We met when I was on a fellowship working there. I'm a New York Jew. My kids are multicultural. In fact, they both see themselves as brown people and people of color. My husband is physically brown. We are a multicultural family. We joke because my husband is Druze and I'm Jewish, and the kids are raised Jewish, but I always said we're Druzish.
Farai: You know, as you think about the world that your kids are inheriting, that we older adults created for them, you know, us and people older have helped create the world as it is, and also fought back against some of the problems of the world as it is. What do you want for them?
Joanne: Oh, that's such a big question. I'm sitting here shaking my head because, you know, I think every generation says, “Oh, the world's a mess.” But it was a lot neater during the Cold War, and I lived through that as a young adult, right? And I chronicled the fall of the Soviet Union and Moscow and through the Soviet Republic, so it wasn't just something in the history books for me. But something about that world order, at least for the U. S., kept things at bay in a certain way, and now there is so much stuff flying around, I mean, from climate change to the acknowledgement, and I think, Black people have known this, obviously, for centuries, but I think a lot more white people have come to the conclusion that white supremacy is with us.It's not something that is past, but it is still present. So I think we have not done a very good job of leaving this world in a place where I want my children to be. And so by telling some of these stories and – it's my way of fighting back. It's my way of trying to create space for conversation, truth, and, you know, hopefully some impact.
Farai: So Joanne, we worked on this with a multiracial, multicultural staff. Tight deadlines. Lots of breaking news happening. What was it like to do that work under these conditions? Because I know it wasn't always easy. We were kind of running, running, running.
Joanne: It was never easy, but it was usually fun, especially when my colleague Morgan would come to the house and we found a way to laugh, and that humor through some of the darkest subject matter, because it really was, and still is, kept us sane.
And it was really, it was great from the beginning, because I, I would look at Morgan and say, "Okay, I'm going to ask you a really dumb white person question, but I got to know what you're thinking." And that sort of ability to just be honest and lay it out there and say like, "Do you really believe this?" And he would be like, "yeah, and this is why.”
So I learned from him, I learned from you, I learned from the content, and to me that is, that makes a perfect project, because I can't say that about everything I touch.
Farai: And I also feel like the frisson of having people from different perspectives is what makes journalism that you do in a group tight sometimes. Like you can have people with similar backgrounds working on a project and that has some great synergy but when you have people coming from different backgrounds, whether it's like “I've read this and you haven't read this” and it can be as simple as the intellectual context, but also the kind of sociocultural context you bring.I think you get stronger journalism from it, because you essentially are forced to confront your own assumptions as you do the work. And I think that's healthy for journalism.
Joanne: I have a question for you.
Farai: Yes.
Joanne: We've been in the trenches together, we've even been in Pittsburgh together, in New York, and, you know, the computer, and Slack, and all of it, but what do you want people to walk away with once they've listened to the series, or the hour, or whatever form they're going to partake in “An American Story”?
Farai: I think there's two things. I think there's the short-term and the long-term. I think in the short term, I want people to understand that we are in a potential extinction event for American democracy. The former president, Donald Trump, has said that he will move to change democratic norms in ways that he did not in his first term.
And what's been interesting to me is seeing an increasing number of journalists from very mainstream organizations saying that he is espousing fascism at this point. That's language that that these news organizations didn't use in 2016 or 2020 or on January 6th, but now as the former president keeps talking about the ways that he's going to install autocratic processes and put the kids back in cages and basically purge his enemies, I think some people are beginning to take seriously that that would be an extinction event for democracy as we know it.
I say this as someone who was very respectful to the Trump voters I interviewed in 2016, because I understand people come from different perspectives, but I think Trump 2024 is not the same as Trump 2016. I am very clear that I'm a journalist who does my very best to deal with facts, and I have been prescient about the future. And I see, in our near future, this potential extinction event for democracy as we know it. I'm not sure that that will happen.
Whether President Biden wins or former President Trump wins, there's a heightened possibility of domestic violent extremism, so I want people to know about that. And in the longer run, I want to put on the record what we know about this moment in history for the drafting of actual history books.
I want our work, Joanne, to be part of the public record, and for us to say that we did work to inform people to the best of our ability and whatever happens with the future of American society to leave a record of what we did.
Joanne: Well, it was really a privilege and an honor.
Farai: Likewise, likewise, Joanne, thank you.
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Farai: I also want to take a moment to hear from Morgan Givens who worked as the senior producer and writer on “January 6th: An American Story.” He's a creative polymath with a wide range of lived experiences.
And we also had the talented Morgan Givens as the series producer. He also does a lot of other creative things. Morgan, how are you?
Morgan: I'm good, Farai. How are you?
Farai: Good. We are both fans of audio fiction. So tell me, before we get into the serious stuff like insurrection, tell me a little bit about why audio fiction lights your fire and what you've done in it?
Morgan: Audio fiction is an escape for me. It is the way I keep myself in a place where I can do non-fiction work, because when I listen to it, but really when I, when I create it, it reminds me of the worlds that could exist, the worlds I believe we can make exist, and it helps keep me grounded, so when I come out into the world that does not exist as I believe it should be, I have something I can look back to, because it allows me to bring the imagination I use in fiction into how I view the world, in reality.
Farai: Yeah, we share the love of it and Flyest Fables is definitely worth checking out. But you worked with us in a capacity of writing very serious, in-depth explorations of the context and what happened around January 6th. And I was astounded by how quickly you were able to write some very complex material and pull the audio for it. So, what was it that attracted you to working on this project, which is definitely non-fiction?
Morgan: I got into media in 2017, and when I entered the journalism world, I was kind of astounded by how little lived experience some of my peers had. Specifically, some of my white peers had, and I was surprised by the questions they did not ask themselves when reporting, when producing. And I found myself in a position where I would point things out. I'd be like, “Hey, you know, there's a lot of racism just like in the open now, like in, in a way that, that we have not seen, in decades, and you know, it didn't go away.” I'm like, “The subtext is no longer subtext, and y'all are not even reading it as subtext, like this is the main text, this is being said, not only are racist things being said by someone the nation elected to be president. Their actions are following the words.” And it was like, “Y'all cannot continue to exist in this state of denial of what you want the world to be right now, because this is where we are.”
And so it was frustrating, especially as a Black person, as a Black trans person, to see these, these waves coming in, these waves of hate, and my peers not really recognizing it. And looking at me as though I were being a problem by pointing it out only for them to come back later and be like, “Oh man, you was right.”
If our job is to inform people with the truth, then that starts with you being able to recognize the truth, too. And so I felt like a lot of my white journalist friends did not want to acknowledge that truth because it would mean acknowledging the truth about a lot of things in the nation.
We need to hear from the Black and brown investigators. We need to hear what they did, how they served this nation that so often picks and chooses when it wants to be the best version of itself.
Farai: So what was it like to cover the law-enforcement angle of this story as a former law-enforcement officer?
Morgan: Oh, I mean, it was like, yeah, I'm not surprised. I worked on that police department – the Washington D.C. police department. Law enforcement had everything they needed to be prepared for this. What they did not have was the ability to recognize that white people can be violent, that white people can cause harm, because there is a protection that whiteness affords white people.
You know, policing is an inherently, sadly, incredibly conservative profession. I heard how they talked about Black and brown folks. I heard how they responded to uprisings against police brutality. And I was like, “Well, quit brutalizing people. If you're not doing it, why are you mad?” Like, what, what is this hit dog hollering about? Because you are like, that could be me. Well, it shouldn't be you. Don't do those things.
Farai: Well, I mean, it's such incredible lived experience you have, and I'm really glad you brought it to the table. But, As we wrap up and as we wrap up this whole project, what do you want this to do in the world, especially as I think about the next generation? Like I have no kids of my own, but I have god kids of various ages. And I worry about the world that we older people have essentially created for them. What do you want this documentary to do in the world?
Morgan: What I'm hoping for is that it serves to show people were trying. And it, it reminds me of this idea of Hope Punk that I try to infuse in all of my work. It's it's a term coined by Alexandra Roland. They’re a fantasy author. And it's basically the idea of recognizing the good you can do, the light you can create in the face of insurmountable odds. And the importance of still staking your place in the face of insurmountable odds. It doesn't mean you'll win. It doesn't mean you'll succeed, but it means you tried, and the trying sometimes is just as important as the success, because if you fail, people see you tried and that trying gives them strength, that trying and gives them hope.
I hope that people will see people were trying, people were fighting for a better future, people were fighting to show the truth, because my mom always told me when I was growing up, “I discipline you, because I love you. When you do something wrong, I tell you, because I love you.” And something that's gotten twisted in the American psyche where pointing out the flaws of America is not viewed as an act of patriotic love when that's what it is. And that is important, because future historians, future sociologists, they'll find this work. They'll find this work. No matter where we are, when we're gone, this work still exists.
Farai: Well, Morgan, thanks so much.
Morgan: Thanks Farai. Yeah, it was great talking to you.
Farai: It was great to hear from Joanne and Morgan about their lives and what this work means to them. But I think it’s important that we leave the last word with one of our investigators – Candyce Phoenix who led the Purple Team and delivered The Book of Purple. We wanted to know what she thinks about the future of America.
Candyce: I'm going to try to go against my nature and adopt an optimistic view of things. And say, I'll go back to that striving for a more perfect union. American democracy is an effort to continue moving forward to fulfill a promise that we have never kept and an ideal that we have never met that was in our Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution. And it is a persistent battle that every generation, unfortunately, takes on anew. That is both as old as a nation's founding and as new as today. It's the same battle that we keep fighting over again, but one that we can't afford to not fight.
And I think about that quote of the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice? It doesn't bend by itself. You have to bend it. You have to be part of that. And I think when I was studying the Civil Rights Movement, it's easy in hindsight for history to think about the outcome as inevitable. And I have to remind myself that it only looks inevitable in the history books. And I'm sure it didn't feel inevitable at the time.
And it feels ... the opposite feels inevitable now, like the end of democracy almost feels inevitable, but it doesn't have to be, if we keep fighting at it.
Farai: Yeah.
Candyce: And it takes a lot of effort, of time, of emotion, of blood, sweat and tears, but what's the alternative?
Farai: Yeah.
Candyce: So, I think, American democracy is, what's that phrase, it's, it's the worst of all, uh, options?
Farai: Something like, yeah, the worst system of government except all of the others. Except all the others.
Candyce: Except all the others Right, right.
Farai: I’m paraphrasing, but yeah.
Candyce: And, and so, I think, yeah, I think, I, that's probably how I, how I would describe it. It is an unending inheritance that we have to keep fighting for with every generation. It's a game of inches, but we can't give up any ground.
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All of us at Our Body Politic have been honored to bring you “January 6th: An American Story.” We are hoping for the best as we enter this critical phase in America’s development, and we thank you for being part of the solution by plugging into these important issues that all of us have to be a part of the solution for.
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Thanks for listening to "January 6th: An American Story,” a special series from Our Body Politic.
I’m host and executive producer, Farai Chideya. For this series, Joanne Levine is our executive producer. Morgan Givens is our senior producer.
The series was written by Joanne Levine, Morgan Givens and Farai Chideya.
Mary Mathis, Nicole Bode and Amelia Schonbeck are our fact checkers. The series was sound designed by Rococo Punch. Jordan Greene is our researcher.
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms and Rococo Punch. Nina Spensley and Shanta Covington are also executive producers. Emily J. Daly is our senior producer. Our technical director is Mike Garth.
Special thanks to Telecam Films and the folks at Clean Cuts, including Carter Martin, Emma Shannon, Harry Evans, Archie Moore, Mike Goehler, Adam Rooner, Molly Mountain and [uh-LEE-za] Aliza Jafri.
This series is produced with the support of Ruth Ann Harnisch.
This program is produced with support from the Surdna Foundation, Ford Foundation, Katie McGrath and JJ Abrams Family Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Meadow Fund, Democracy Fund, Heising-Simons Foundation, Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Open Society Foundations, The Henry L. Luce Foundation, Compton Foundation, Harnisch Foundation, Pop Culture Collaborative, the BMe Community, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.