In the three years since the breach of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Congress has issued nearly 1,000 pages of official reports about it. Police attacked by rioters have published memoirs. Media outlets have devoted millions of words to the subject.
More than 1,200 cases have been chugging through federal courts, producing reams of additional evidence.
But while America may be swimming in facts about January 6, Americans don’t agree on the meaning of that day. Polls show that Democrats and Republicans have always viewed January 6 differently – and those differences have only grown wider with time. A new survey out this week finds that while a narrow majority of Americans think January 6 was “an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten,” only 24% of Republicans hold that view, compared with 86% of Democrats. The percentage of Republicans saying that then-President Donald Trump bears responsibility for the riot has dropped by nearly half since 2021, and fewer agree today that January 6 protesters were “mostly violent,” according to the poll, jointly conducted by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland.
Why We Wrote This
Perceptions of January 6, 2021, aren’t just about the past. Diverging views of the U.S. Capitol riots may influence the political path ahead and trust in government.
With a possible Biden-Trump rematch on the horizon, this widening schism could have direct repercussions on this year’s presidential election and beyond. How Americans think about January 6 – in particular, how serious a threat they think it represented, whom they believe was at fault, and whether they see narratives as having been skewed for political purposes – seems likely to shape not just lessons drawn from a historic day but also America’s path forward.
“What’s going on in the present always influences interpretations of the past. But it’s the interpretations of the past that shape how you see the present,” says Alexander Keyssar, a professor of history and social policy at Harvard University. “Societies and nations historically have run into very deep trouble when a majority of the people accept lies about themselves and accept false versions of the history that has brought them to the place they are in.”
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/File
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) carries the committee’s final report as he departs after the final public meeting of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 19, 2022.
What happened that day?
On January 6, 2021, as Congress was preparing to make Joe Biden’s victory official, tens of thousands of Americans came to Washington in a show of support for then-President Trump.
Amid the pandemic, changes to state election rules had paved the way for unprecedented levels of mail-in voting, which Mr. Trump had relentlessly criticized. Many of his supporters believed his unfounded claims of massive election fraud,