“The Aftermath of Historic Chaos”: Trumpism as a Totalist Worldview in the Testimonies of Participants in the January 6 Attacks

This article explores how the January 6 attack on the Capitol building is represented in the discourse of the participants in the insurrection. We analyze a self-compiled corpus of depositions and interviews with individuals involved in the January 6, 2021, assault, which we have named TruJan. The T...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American, British, and Canadian studies British, and Canadian studies, 2024-12, Vol.42 (1), p.5-29
Main Authors: Murariu, Mihai, Bercuci, Loredana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
crisis
January 6
january 6th
Oath Keepers
Proud Boys
Rebellions
Stop the Steal
totalism
Trumpism
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Summary:This article explores how the January 6 attack on the Capitol building is represented in the discourse of the participants in the insurrection. We analyze a self-compiled corpus of depositions and interviews with individuals involved in the January 6, 2021, assault, which we have named TruJan. The TruJan corpus was compiled from the GovInfo website. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22) was used for the analysis to extract the most frequent topics discussed by the interviewees during the hearings, along with sentences that showcase the attitudes of the speakers regarding the most salient issues. The second part of the article offers a close reading of the depositions and interviews with movement leaders or founders: Ali Alexander (Stop the Steal), Henry “Enrique” Tarrio (Proud Boys), and Stewart Rhodes (Oath Keepers). We argue that Trumpism’s latent totalist potential was made manifest in the January 6 attacks due to the political setbacks Trump faced when losing the 2020 elections, which was perceived as a state of crisis.
ISSN:1841-964X
1841-1487
1841-964X
DOI:10.2478/abcsj-2024-0002