In the midst of a pandemic, on January 6th, 2021, President Donald Trump gave a speech that incited mass violence at the Capitol Building. He encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol building, as a response to the results of the election. At the same time, Vice President Mike Pence and Congress were inside counting the electoral votes, confirming Joe Biden’s victory. Even as Trump called for Pence to not count the votes, Pence denied.   

As the riots progressed and news spread, people were soon comparing the coup attempt to the BLM protests from last summer, identifying one eye-opening difference: how the police handled each situation.  

George Floyd’s death last May set off hundreds of protests throughout the nation. During these BLM protests in the summer, citizens were tear-gassed, beaten, and shot at with rubber bullets by law enforcement officers.

However, as Trump’s supporters stormed into the building, police officers seemed to offer little resistance and arrested only 14 people. One video shows how the Capitol Police Officers actually moved the barriers aside and retreated as the mob flooded through. These citizens charging into the Capitol and assaulting police inside the building are the same people who cried, “Blue Lives Matter” in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, which goes to prove that “blue lives” only mattered when taking black lives. White privilege is so explicit within these recent events, as many people know that if the protesters were people of color, the consequences would be considerably different.

Hypocrisy can be further identified through the president’s actions, words, and through his Twitter account, which is currently banned due to the recent events. In the summer, Trump expressed his thoughts through multiple tweets, referring to the peaceful protesters as “thugs”, “terrorists”, and “anarchists”. He then proceeded to declare that anyone who vandalized or damaged Federal buildings would be prosecuted.

On the other hand, Trump dismissed his supporters by telling them, “Go home in peace” and concluded his message by saying, “You’re very special”, which stands in stark contrast to the language and tone used when addressing the Black Lives Matter protesters. This enrages BLM supporters, especially since they were fighting for basic human rights, while Trump supporters were throwing a temper tantrum over a lost election. Trump needs to recognize that his words matter and that he cannot just throw them around like nothing.   

The coup attempt has set off many hate crimes towards minorities, which shows that supporting President Trump was never about the economy, but instead race.  

Two days later in downtown Los Angeles, Berlinda Nibo was walking home from work, when she was approached by a group of Trump supporters, who were gathered as a smaller version of the rioting in D.C. As Nibo passed the supporters, she told the media that they verbally harassed her. She says, “They’re yelling at me because of my color, calling me the n-word, calling me the b-word, saying, ‘All lives matter. Black lives doesn’t matter’”. Nibo shouted back causing the crowd to approach her. When the crowd approached her, they pushed her around, smacked her, snatched her wig, and sprayed her face with pepper spray. It wasn’t until a man stepped in to protect her that the violence stopped. No one has been arrested for this hate crime. 

In these last four years with Trump’s presidency, democracy has been under attack. The breach of the capitol (and many resulting hate crimes) was committed at the hands of thousands of far-right extremists and anarchists who fail to see their entitlement, and who lack empathy, human decency, and common sense, all of who are led by the authoritarian-like leader, Mr. Donald J. Trump.