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On Wednesday, a mob of President Trump’s supporters acting at his behest some boasting Confederate flags, nooses and a shirt that read “Camp Auschwitz” launched a destructive assault on the Capitol that led to the police fatally shooting a woman in the halls of Congress. Even before the building was declared secure, the nation’s attention was turning to the question of consequences.
“Historian of coups and right-wing authoritarians here,” wrote Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, on Twitter. “If there are not severe consequences for every lawmaker & Trump govt official who backed this, every member of the Capitol Police who collaborated with them, this ‘strategy of disruption’ will escalate in 2021.”