Matthew T. Mangino
Creators
January 6, 2025
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) recently released his "Interim Report on the Failures and Politicization of the January 6th Select Committee." As the title suggests, the report seeks to rewrite what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, when insurrectionists, encouraged by then-President and current President-elect Donald Trump, attacked the U.S. Capitol.
It seems fitting that Loudermilk should be from the state of
Georgia. He wants to do to Jan. 6 what his Southern forefathers did in the
decades following the Civil War. He wants to rewrite history.
The South was vanquished after the Civil War. The
Confederates could not deal with massive and total defeat. As Ty Seidule wrote
in "Robert E. Lee and Me," a new narrative had to be created to
explain their failure. Seidule explained, "Today, historians call the
series of lies, half-truths, and exaggerations the 'Lost Cause of the
Confederacy' myth."
Loudermilk's report includes lies, half-truths,
exaggerations and omissions. As historian and writer Heather Cox Richardson
recently wrote, quoting former Rep. Liz Cheney, Loudermilk's report
"intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee's tremendous
weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in
an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did." Cheney continued,
"Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are
a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth."
The Lost Cause was not just a passing effort to rewrite
history. Seventy-one years after the war, Loudermilk's fellow Georgian Margaret
Mitchell wrote "Gone with the Wind," a playbook for the Lost Cause.
Made into an Academy Award-winning movie, "Gone with the Wind"
sanitized the reasons for the war, shaping perceptions of the Civil War for generations.
The FBI classified the Jan. 6 attack as an act of domestic
terrorism that injured approximately 140 police officers and endangered the
country's peaceful transfer of power. According to NPR, in the immediate
aftermath, a bipartisan group of political leaders condemned the violence.
"American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to
try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like, "said
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate at the time.
Trump has rejected those arguments and is complicit in
attempting to rewrite the history of the insurrection. He refers to Jan. 6 as a
"day of love" and calls the rioters "patriots." He
announced his intention to pardon those charged and convicted in connection
with the attack — that will be a lot of pardons.
Nearly 1,000 Jan. 6 offenders pleaded guilty; more than 250
were convicted in court. The historical record established by the vast,
nationwide legal effort cannot just be erased by a wholesale pardon. The
endless video clips — logged and verified — and the volumes of court records
have helped prosecutors turn Jan. 6 into the best-documented riot in history.
Seidule wrote, "[T]he Lost Cause became a movement, an
ideology, a myth, even a civil religion." He went on to write, "This
lie came at a horrible, deadly, impossible cost to the nation, a cost we are
still paying today. The Lost Cause created a flawed memory of the Civil War, a
lie that formed the ideological foundation for white supremacy and Jim Crow
laws."
Loudermilk seeks to do the same with Jan. 6. As America
marks the fourth anniversary of Jan. 6, we would do well to remember that
Loudermilk's flawed and misleading report and demand that Liz Cheney be
prosecuted for her work on the investigating committee is ripped from the
playbook of the postbellum South.
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