Trump’s January 6 Strategy and the Steve Bannon Indictment

Does anyone still remember the Chicago Seven?

They were a disparate group of radicals—some who knew each other, some who didn’t—who went to the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 to spark trouble. Trouble did indeed erupt, although maybe not the exact trouble they had wanted. They were indicted and prosecuted. And then things went terribly wrong for the government.

The prosecution thought it was running a trial, a legal proceeding governed by rules. The defendants decided that they would instead mount a new kind of media spectacle intended to show total contempt for the rules, and to propagandize the viewing public into sharing their contempt. The prosecution was doing law; the defense countered with politics.

The indictment of Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress is the opening bell of a similar kind of fight over law, justice, and authority. The attack of January 6, 2021, to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power struck nearer the heart of American democracy than the disorder in the streets of Chicago had. In 1968, the worst of the violence was mostly initiated by police; in 2021, it was initiated by the pro–Donald Trump mob forcing a police officer to shoot to defend the officeholders it was his duty to protect. But though the details of the riots were different, there is a striking parallel between the gleeful contempt for legal authority of the far-left defendants of long ago and the pro-Trump authoritarian nationalists of today. Congress wants to hear from pro-Trump partisans about their advance knowledge, if any, of the January 6 attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election. At former President Trump’s direction, those partisans have adopted a no-cooperation strategy, pleading that the defeated ex-president should permanently enjoy the legal privileges of his former office.

That’s not a very smart legal strategy. But it’s not meant as a legal strategy. It’s a political strategy, intended, like the Chicago Seven’s strategy in Judge Julius Hoffman’s courtroom all those years ago, to discredit a legal and constitutional system that the pro-Trump partisans despise.

The Trump partisans start with huge advantages that the Chicago Seven lacked: They have a large and growing segment of the voting public in their corner, and they are backed by this country’s most powerful media institutions, including the para-media of Facebook and other social platforms.

Thanks to that advantage, the Trump partisans don’t need to convince much of anybody of much of anything. It won’t bother the Trump partisans that their excuses are a mess of contradictions. They say that nothing happened, and that it was totally justified; that Trump did nothing, and that Trump was totally entitled to do it. Their argument doesn’t have to make sense, because their constituency doesn’t care about it making sense. Their constituency cares about being given permission to disregard and despise the legal rules that once…