2/1/2023
New Graphic Fiction Asks: What if January 6 Had Succeeded?
Breaking Newstags: Speculative fiction, January 6, Alternative History
A statue of the “QAnon Shaman” and others entering the Capitol adorns the Mall. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers patrol DC. Confederate flags flutter all over town, including behind the statue in the Lincoln Memorial. This is the world of 1/6, a four-part comic-book series that imagines a world in which the assault on the US Capitol succeeded in overturning the 2020 election. Harvard Law professor Alan Jenkins (pictured below) created 1/6 with activist Gan Golan and artist Will Rosado. We talked to Jenkins about the project, which kicks off this month.
Can you describe the universe of this comic? What’s going on?
We find our main characters about nine months after the successful insurrection, so fall of 2021. We see a raid on news operations that have been dubbed enemies of the people. We see armed militias and white-supremacist organizations roaming the streets. One of the things that we learned in the trial of the Oath Keepers is that they were hoping and apparently asking President Trump to deputize them under the Insurrection Act, so they would have become federal troops or federal officers.
How does their coup succeed when the real-life insurrection failed?
You know the point at which officer Eugene Goodman led the mob away from the Senate chamber? In our universe, the mob turns right instead of left and they enter the Senate chamber. The point is, only a few things had to happen differently in order for their efforts to be successful. In the best tradition of speculative fiction, we just tweak a few things.
How different is life in this book from what Washingtonians experienced during the Trump administration?
[His supporters] were significantly in control at that point, but they were not fully in control. The protections and guardrails of our democracy stayed in place, but they were almost broken. The more research I’ve done in cowriting this graphic novel, the more chilling it’s become.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Chair of Florida Charter School Board on Firing of Principal: About Policy, Not David Statue
- Graduate Student Strikes Fight Back Against Decades of Austerity, Seek to Revive Opportunity
- When Right Wingers Struggle with Defining "Woke" it Shows they Oppose Pursuing Equality
- Strangelove on the Square: Secret USAF Films Showed Airmen What to Expect if Nuclear War Broke Out
- The Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- New Books Force Consideration of Reconstruction's End from Black Perspective
- Excerpt: How Apartheid South Africa Tried to Create a Libertarian Utopia
- Historian's Book on 1970s NBA Shows Racial Politics around Basketball Have Always Been Ugly
- Kendi: "Anti-woke" Part of Backlash Against Antiracist Protest Movements
- Monica Muñoz Martinez Honored for Truth-Telling in Texas History