What happened yesterday? In one sense, it’s easy to say. Trump supporters, many of them armed, stormed the Capitol Building and forced Congress to recess, delaying the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president for several hours. It was a startling spectacle, but there was never any real likelihood that they would enable Trump to remain president. It’s not clear they even had a plan for keeping Trump in office. C-SPAN footage of the Trump supporters who made their way into the Capitol’s Statuary Hall showed them wandering around like tourists, seemingly as surprised to be there as anyone else was to see them there.

The thought seemed to be that their presence would be enough to bring about “the Storm,” QAnon’s version of the millennium, triggering a secret plan by Trump that would miraculously make things right. By the time the Senate reconvened at 8 PM, many leaders of both parties seemed to want to get back to normal as soon as possible, delivering the same speeches that they’d expected to deliver that afternoon.

But even as the Biden inaugural will go on as scheduled, this day won’t go away. The mob of Trump supporters storming the US Capitol building will likely be a radicalizing event for the far right. However symbolic, they were literally able to occupy the halls of power. Now they can imagine doing it again. The photos of extravagantly dressed rioters behind the dais of the Senate or climbing the walls of the Capitol will become iconic, fueling far-right recruiting and mobilizing for years.