JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
With President-elect Trump about to return to the White House, the fight continues over what the legacy of January 6 will be. NPR's domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef reports.
ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Ruth Ben-Ghiat says in recent years, other countries have also had their January 6 moments. She calls them self-coups - attempts by someone in power to stay in power, often by using illegal means and force.
RUTH BEN-GHIAT: In Brazil in 2023, Bolsonaro attempted one. In Peru, 2022. In South Korea, very recently.
YOUSEF: Ben-Ghiat is a historian at New York University and author of the book "Strongmen: Mussolini To The Present."
BEN-GHIAT: And in all of those cases, the perpetrator of the self-coup was either imprisoned or banned from politics.
YOUSEF: Not so in the U.S. - here, the legal questions of whether January 6 was an insurrection and whether Trump bears responsibility were never fully adjudicated by a federal court. Two state courts, both in Colorado, determined yes for both questions, but the narrative coming from Trump, Fox News and a proportion of the GOP that has grown in the last four years is that it was actually a day of patriotic heroism.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")
DONALD TRUMP: I want to look at everything. We're going to look at individual...
KRISTEN WELKER: Everyone?
TRUMP: ...Cases. Yeah.
YOUSEF: On NBC's "Meet The Press" last month, Trump repeated a promise to pardon some or all of those convicted of crimes related to January 6.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")
WELKER: Within your first 100 days? First day?
TRUMP: First day.
YOUSEF: Trump has also spoken of going after members of the House Select Committee which investigated January 6, and he has called that day, quote, "a beautiful day."
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "HOMEGROWN")
CHRISTOPHER QUAGLIN: (Shouting) You do not want this [expletive] fight. You're on the wrong side, buddy.
YOUSEF: It's perhaps one of the most documented events in recent history. Michael Premo is a journalist and filmmaker. In August, his documentary "Homegrown" premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It follows two Proud Boys, starting in 2018. One of them, Christopher Quaglin, ended up being sentenced to 12 years for his violent participation in January 6. Premo filmed it all. He says many Americans still don't understand how the country got to that point.
MICHAEL PREMO: The election made the film even more relevant because the headlines trying to diagnose the 2024 election outcomes, talking about the increasing multicultural participation of the far right, the crisis of masculinity are all ideas that the - that our film squarely deals with.
YOUSEF: Premo says U.S. broadcasters have praised the film, but none have agreed to distribute it. He says they're nervous about the content. But he thinks an American audience will want to see it and talk about it.
PREMO: Something that has been an indication of how hungry people are for this film is the fact that at all our screenings - many of them are sold out - virtually all of the audience stays to talk afterwards 'cause people are so hungry to sort of better understand what's happening in America.
YOUSEF: Pete Simi says the rewriting of the narrative of January 6 is itself another hallmark of America. This has happened before.
PETE SIMI: It reminds me a lot of what happened after the Reconstruction era.
YOUSEF: Simi is a sociology professor at Chapman University. He says after the Civil War there was rapid progress toward democratic ideals. Rights of citizenship and voting were finally extended to people who'd been slaves. And then came the backlash.
SIMI: The level of violence during the Reconstruction era meant to dismantle those efforts and then afterwards really kind of create an alternate history in terms of what - of the events that happened.
YOUSEF: And it ushered in a five-decade period of what many characterize as authoritarianism over Black Americans - the Jim Crow era. Simi and Ruth Ben-Ghiat see similar perils with January 6 revisionism.
BEN-GHIAT: I wouldn't be surprised if it became a day of commemoration in America - almost a holiday.
YOUSEF: Odette Yousef, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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