What happened in Washington DC is happening around the world | Cas Mudde

Far-right attempts to storm parliaments and government offices have happened in Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands in recent years

Just one day after black women, once again, protected US democracy in Georgia, white men were attacking the very symbol of that democracy in Washington DC. The first attack was actually mounted from inside, by a group of Republican congressmembers, who challenged President-elect Joe Biden's election victory. The second attack started outside, as a pro-Trump and Stop the Steal" rally, and ended inside, with a mob of far-right protesters breaking through the remarkably weak police cordon and illegally entering the US Capitol, where they proceeded to take selfies with police officers while shouting Acab" (All Cops are Bastards").

I have been studying the international far right for almost 30 years now and have never seen them as emboldened as in the last years. To be clear, this is not just about Donald Trump or the US. Just last year mostly far-right anti-vaccine protesters tried to storm the Reichstag, the German parliament, also facing remarkably weak police resistance. And in the Netherlands, angry farmers, often led by the far-right Farmers Defence Force, have been destroying government offices and threatening politicians since 2019. Even further back, in 2006, far-right mobs stormed the Hungarian parliament and battled the police for weeks in the streets of Budapest - in many ways the start of the radicalization and return to power of current prime minister Viktor Orban.