January 6th was an abhorrent violation of the basic principles espoused by our Founders in the Constitution. In the aftermath, many have sought to assign blame, but as with most things in life, the answers are complicated. So instead of looking outward, I as a Liberal am choosing to look inward at how we, not those directly responsible for January 6th, contribute to the politics which led to it.

     I grew up in a liberal community, I went to a performing arts high school and oftentimes my moderate tendencies were associated with the most conservative factions in our country. I resented my peers for that association, but I realized that their lack of exposure to conservatives in any positive light contributed to what I think is one of the most dangerous forms of polarization plaguing us today. The false sense of moral righteousness associated with our politics.

     Assuming support of a particular policy as a mean-test of someone's morals has led the community I grew up in to expel even the moderately liberal from their ranks and in doing this we create two simultaneous problems. The first is that we become blinded to any reasonable opposition, the second is we push many of them out of “common” political discourse. The accountability we seek to create among our peers is no accountability at all, it is expulsion. We have failed to consider that those we’ve expelled form their own in-group, bonded by common experience and beliefs. We failed to consider that by refusing to engage with them their beliefs intensified, leading to the narrative of the “liberal elite” and in doing this; we created the first step in extremist radicalization: an “in” an “out” group. 

     The consequences of these actions can be seen in the lack of forgiveness among liberals for people who fail to meet the high moral bar we’ve set (as the “in-group”). I know people who have made uninformed mistakes and been out-grouped who then turn to the afflicted side of the Republican Party. They find refuge in the rhetoric of Trump and others like him. They feel disaffected by liberal “elites” and have become primed to believe in an alternate reality fostered in Facebook groups and far-right media organizations. 

     The question we as liberals have been failing to ask ourselves is: “What are the long-term consequences of attempting to remove these people from polite society?” I think many of us have been naive in thinking that together we are only promoting a more inclusive world for actually disaffected populations. While we are accomplishing some of that, we’re missing the difference between the feeling of safety we get when we push these people out versus what happens to those we push out of our “moral utopia.” January 6th is the consequence of what we’ve failed to consider. A group of angry disaffected people living in an alternate reality who believed that their values, those ones supposedly in direct opposition to ours, are under attack. This belief in being attacked led them to the second qualification of extremism… an imperative to act. 

     This in no way assumes liberals bear the brunt of responsibility. Republican politicians and Conservative media either knows better or should have known better than to play with this fire. They are too close to the flames, they destroy political norms in the name of their cause, and cry wolf far too often to not have anticipated this kind of behavior. They harbor conspiracies, racism, and extremism in their ranks for political expediency and let it consume a significant block of their party. They let their ideology fall to the wayside for the sake of winning elections and have become beholden to the angry and disaffected. It may be Liberals who push more people into their ranks, but it is Republican politicians who give them safety and placate to their views. The argument that this extremism exists on the left is mostly invalid too. While hyper-liberal groups in the US do exist, few (if none) contain the types of extremist precursors seen on the Conservative side.

     But, we as Liberals feed into the fire. We suppress legitimate conservative thought simply because these factions exist within their party. They attempt to do the same, but calling someone a communist bears a lot less weight than calling them a racist, bigot, misogynist, or nazi. There are places where those terms are accurate. But, I believe that we on the Left, much like the Republicans have lost the claim to religious authority, have lost our claim to being the party open to all. We have built walls to insulate our ideology and worldview from those who disagree, and have weaponized social media and our history in the name of accountability. But I say again, what we offer is not accountability for the marginalized, what we offer is expulsion, and the assumption the expelled will not form their own community is naive at best. January 6th proves it dangerous at its worst. 

     If this extremism is allowed to fester further it will cross the line into terrorism. Terrorism is marked by the tactic, the ideology, and the action. All terrorists are extremists but not all extremists are terrorists. There is a path back from that edge. It starts with difficult conversations and true acceptance of those with whom we disagree. But any coalescence into an organized structure, alliances between disaffected Republicans, or even existing militia groups present an active terrorist threat. Given the felt imperative to act, these actions cannot be called anything but terrorism. To prevent the next January 6th, we must do our part and return to being the party open to all.