Behold impaled Trump horse

Behold a Pale Horse is a lodestar for lumpen elements who invaded the US Capitol last week.

The 1991 book by antigovernment conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper, who was killed in a shoot-out with officers in 2001, planted the seeds of QAnon, according to Arizona Republic.

Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was a Cooper fan.

QAnon featured in last week’s insurrection.

The group alleges a cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic paedophiles is running a child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against Donald Trump.

Adherents include Jacob Chansley (aka Jake Angeli), the tattooed man photographed last week carrying an American flag while wearing buffalo horns and fur hat. Media dubbed him “QAnon shaman”.

Not everyone involved in the invasion was a dangerous lunatic. Nor were they all peaceniks. Despite the lethal edge, the upheaval does not signal the end of American democracy.

Certainly not to the extent that President Cyril Ramaphosa should offer lessons to Washington. Makes you wonder who’s unhinged.

We have witnessed what CNN calls one of the darkest weeks in US history.

“But there is good news hidden within it – or at least the chance for a renewal of America’s promise.”

It says it was the most serious threat to US democracy in 150 years. But the insurrection failed.

“Order was restored and within hours the results of the election were certified.”

Former California governor and Terminator actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, made a similar point: “President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election. But it did not work.

“Our democracy held firm. Within hours the Senate and House of Representatives were doing the people’s business and certified the election of president-elect Biden. What a great display of democracy.”

Schwarzenegger likened American democracy to a steel sword. The more it is tempered, the stronger it becomes.

US democracy was tested. And prevailed.

Predictably, Ramaphosa said he was “shocked” by US events. If Americans “would like to learn something from us, we are on the ready to provide them with our experience”.

We already know how the ANC reacts to electoral defeat. It fomented violence in several councils in 2016/17.

Johannesburg councillors experienced this at close quarters. Frightening. Please, no lectures from the ANC.

There is no moral equivalence between Capitol insurrectionist thuggery and the social media censorship imposed on US conservatives, but both are antidemocratic.

Elon Musk, the SA-born richest person in the world, put it elegantly: “A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, no friend of Trump, labelled his banishment from Twitter “problematic”.

Whether a threat to free speech emanates from government or private sector, it violates a principle misattributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Trump is on the way out. The horse is impaled.

But stifling the voice he represents – 74 million voted for him – will intensify feelings of injustice. Building toward another eruption.

Martin Williams, DA councillor and former editor of The Citizen.

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