4 hours at the Capitol
TV: The January 6th riot looked like a closing scene of the Trump freak show. It was much worse
www.irishtimes.com
There was a temptation, from this side of the Atlantic, to dismiss the January 6th invasion of the United States Capitol building, in Washington, DC, as merely a closing scene of the Donald Trump freak show.
Four Hours at the Capitol (BBC Two, Wednesday, 9pm), Jamie Roberts’s extraordinary new documentary about the storming of the bastion of American democracy, forces us to reconsider that opinion.
His incredibly tense film uses social-media footage, CCTV and police bodycam videos to lay bare the degree to which US democracy was jeopardised as Trump, claiming victory in last November’s presidential election to have been stolen from him, whipped his supporters to a violent frenzy. And to show that, had things played out a little differently, the assault could have destabilised the United States and caused huge loss of life. (As it was, five people died either shortly before, during or after the event.)
Four Hours at the Capitol is shocking, gut-punch film-making. It begins on the morning of January 6th, as the United States Congress gathered to certify the election of Joe Biden. Trump holds a rally at the Washington Monument at which he tells supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country any more.”He then urges them to march on the Capitol Building, which they do.
With Trump’s words ringing in their ears, a violent mob descended on the US Capitol on 6 January. This powerful film details what happened – and their horrifying lack of remorse
www.theguardian.com
It is perhaps the greatest of Four Hours at the Capitol’s many strengths that it gives space to those who were most eager for battle. They call themselves insurrectionists, while others in the BBC Two documentary that details the unfolding of the 6 January assault on the meeting place of the US Congress refer to them as domestic terrorists.
Jamie Roberts’ film lays out the timeline of that extraordinary day in exhaustive but never exhausting detail. Phone footage shot by Eddie Block, a member of the far-right group Proud Boys, shows them beginning to gather at 10.35am. By 12.06pm they have heard enough of Trump’s Stop the Steal speech to have started marching towards Capitol Hill. Viewers are reminded of the barely veiled exhortations to action that were ringing in their ears: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness … If you don’t fight like hell you won’t have a country any more.”
