Perspectives on January 6th — one year later
Audio version
Many of us are stumped as to how someone else could see the day’s events so differently, so we at the Narratives Project put together a thought experiment to help bridge this gap. The point of this thought experiment isn’t to change your mind about the validity of the 2020 election or the events of January 6th. Instead, it is to show how rational people can understand the same event so differently.
The Bottom Line: The events of January 6th amounted to an attempted coup, a protest gone wrong, or an unsuccessful attempt to restore democracy depending on whether or not you believe the 2020 election was legitimate.
Choose the tab below that feels closest to your opinion on January 6th and the 2020 election.
Note: Your views might not fit neatly into one side or the other — pick the side you’re more sympathetic to.
It looks like you tend to side with the left on this issue. To many on the left, January 6th was a scary event that’s confusing to process. At best it was a frail attempt to stop the certification of an election. At worst, it was an attempt to overthrow democracy to ensure Trump stayed in power.
You may be asking yourself how people can continue to support lawmakers who were either involved in planning this event or refuse to denounce the idea that the election was stolen.
Consider this story, and how you would react as a member of the Orange Party.
It’s November 6, 2074 — the day of the presidential election. This is the first presidential election where everyone votes online.
The Purple party, who have been pushing for online voting to increase access to voting, celebrates the change. Your Orange Party, who opposed online voting because of the potential security issues, is skeptical, but Orange supporters still vote.
After the election, the Purple candidate is declared the winner by the media, and the results are later confirmed by each state. You supported Orange, so you’re disappointed, and feel insecure about the future of the country.
Then, fellow Orange supporters begin voicing concerns about the vote-counting process and foreign interference, pointing to specific instances where it appears that fraud occurred. The Purple candidate and their supporters call you crazy, and immediately dismiss these claims as baseless.
Then, definitive evidence of foreign interference and voter fraud among Purple voters comes out. The election results are invalid. However, Purple party members refuse to discuss this definitive evidence, pointing to prior court rulings and the certification of results in the states. They say we should move forward to preserve the peace.
A couple months later, when it comes time for the invalid and fraudulent election results to be certified, some of your fellow Orange supporters decide enough is enough. They show up in numbers, with weaponry, ready to fight to defend democracy. They say they don’t want violence, but feel it’s their only choice to keep democracy functioning.
Although you are a member of the Orange party and know there was fraud, you decide not to participate, but are glad that others are taking steps to restore this injustice.
There was definitive evidence a presidential election was fraudulent, and people used force to contest the certification.
If there was definitive evidence that a presidential election was fraudulent, but the evidence is being suppressed, is it reasonable and rational to use force to contest it?
It looks like you tend to side with the right on this issue. To the right, January 6th can be viewed a few different ways:
- An unfortunate, violent result of problematic rhetoric from Trump and his allies.
- A protest gone wrong, with the valid original intention of ensuring voter fraud claims are taken seriously before the election is certified.
- A valid and necessary attempt to ensure that a presidential election wasn’t stolen from Trump.
Regardless of the specifics, people who chose this side probably feel that the congressional investigations into January 6th are partisan, and will do more harm than good in moving the country forward.
Consider this story, and how you would react as a member of the Purple party.
It’s November 6, 2074 — the day of the presidential election. This is the first presidential election where everyone votes online.
Your Purple party, who have been pushing for online voting to increase access to voting, celebrates the change. The Orange Party, who opposed online voting because they worry about potential security issues, is skeptical, but Orange supporters still vote.
After the election, the Purple candidate is declared the winner by the media, and the results are later confirmed by each state. You supported Purple, so you’re thrilled, and feel optimistic about the future of the country.
Then, Orange supporters begin voicing concerns about the vote-counting process and foreign interference, pointing to isolated instances where it appears that fraud might have occurred. This feels pretty far-fetched to you since the results have been confirmed, so you, the Purple candidate, and the rest of their supporters dismiss these claims as baseless.
Then, definitive evidence comes out finding that voting systems were indeed secure. The election results are valid. However, Orange party members refuse to discuss this definitive evidence, or even pay attention to it.
A couple months later, when it’s time for the valid election results to be certified, Orange supporters show up in numbers, with weaponry, ready to fight despite the definitive evidence the election was legitimate and secure. They claim this is their only option to keep democracy functioning.
As a member of the Purple party who knows the results of the election are valid, you’re shocked and frightened that so many people would try to overturn a valid election.
There was definitive evidence that the election was fair and secure, but people tried to violently overturn it anyway.
If there was definitive evidence that the presidential election was fair, but people tried to overturn it anyway, is it a reasonable and rational response to want to hold those people accountable?
After reading this, most people are probably thinking something along the lines of, “Sure, if there was definitive proof the other side was right, they’d be acting rationally, and I’d be willing to accept conclusive evidence.”
The current division around January 6th stems from each side believing that there is conclusive evidence supporting their view.
So how do people come to such different conclusions about the validity of the 2020 election?
National elections are extraordinarily complex. While there is a correct answer about whether the 2020 election was free and fair, our minds are not truth detectors. We often lead ourselves astray either by giving too much weight to small details or by dismissing key evidence as arbitrary.
For example:
To many on the left, court after court ruled that any inconsistencies were negligible or false, and that the 2020 election results are reliable.
To many on the right, rapid changes to voting systems due to COVID-19 led to chaos in vote-counting, and many small irregularities can add up in close elections. We must take all reports about irregularities seriously and investigate them thoroughly.
Part of the issue here is that a set of evidence can feel definitive to one side, but not the other, based on how we weigh different pieces of evidence.
Few people know the exact details of the irregularities flagged by the right, and few know the exact details of why the courts struck down their complaints. If we’re honest with ourselves, essentially no one knows everything about the integrity of the 2020 election. It’s not that we’re all willingly ignorant — it’s that very few of us have the time or energy to comb through all election details in a meaningful way, so we must rely on the people we trust in the media or in power to help us understand such a complicated event.
When we lack a shared understanding of the specifics around the election, we naturally construct narratives around what we think we know to fill in the gaps. Here are a few examples of common narratives around January 6th and the 2020 election:
- Maybe you think Republican party leaders planted seeds about election fraud in their supporters’ heads before the election, and took advantage of their nerves and fears about a Biden presidency to try to steal the election.
- Maybe you think there wasn’t fraud, and are confident in this due to the multiple court rulings confirming the election results. Given this evidence, it’s time to hold those responsible for the violence accountable, and move on.
- Maybe you think there probably wasn’t fraud, but it’s sketchy that the left refused to even talk about potential fraud. Regardless, this election was a once in a century anomaly, so pushing a revolution isn’t the best way to ensure our long term stability.
- Maybe you are convinced there was fraud, and that all the court rulings and certification processes were either conducted by people who refused to see the truth, or were a concerted effort to steal the election from Trump.
We chose more absolute stances than these for the thought experiment because understanding the logic behind the position that’s furthest away from your own tends to be the most challenging. But if you take the time to understand that most foreign view, it’s then a simpler task to see the logic of positions closer to you.
And when it comes to preserving peace in the fallout of a contested election, understanding the intentions and motivations of our contra-partisans is critical.
Takeaways
What might not be intuitive is that the desire to save our democracy rests at the core of both sides’ view, as illustrated both in the thought experiment and below:
- If you wholeheartedly believe that the 2020 election was legitimate and happened without significant interference, any attempt to overturn the results is going to feel like a threat to the long-term stability of our democracy.
- If you wholeheartedly believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate and there was widespread fraud which changed the outcome, protesting the certification of the election is a reasonable, logical next step in ensuring the long-term stability of our democracy.
A new poll from Axios and Momentive found that a mere 55% of those polled accept Joe Biden as having legitimately won the 2020 election, while 26% do not (another 19% are either not sure or did not respond).