Since Donald Trump came down his escalator in 2015, a debate has raged on the left about whether Trump is a “fascist” who threatened the existence of political democracy in the United States. Since Joe Biden decisively won the 2020 presidential election, a closely related debate has broken out about whether Trump’s many efforts to hold on to the presidency could reasonably be considered a “coup.”

Last week’s storming of the US Capitol, which appears to have been undertaken by a loose mob of ragtag QAnon conspiracy theorists, has sparked another round in this great, endless debate. Those who argued that Trumpism is a form of fascism saw in this “insurrection” a genuine threat to the United States’ democratic institutions.

But for those who, like us, considered Trumpism a manifestation of extant American trends, and Trump himself to be an ineffectual leader, the events of January 6 — while a disturbing escalation in the violent and erratic tendencies of Trump and his most hard-core supporters — were ultimately important because they demonstrated the weakness of Trump’s position.