Capitol assault: the real reason Trump and the crowd almost killed US democracy

By Stephen Reicher, Bishop Wardlaw Professor in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews
Alex Haslam, Professor of Psychology and ARC Laureate Fellow, The University of Queensland
Evangelos Ntontis, Lecturer in Psychology, The Open University
Klara Jurstakova, PhD Candidate, Canterbury Christ Church University

It was the moment that could have brought US democracy to its knees. One year ago, around noon on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump gave the concluding speech to a “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington DC. Within an hour, protesters attacked and then breached barricades around the Capitol Building, seat of the US Congress. By 1.30pm, they had invaded the building itself. And by the time they left, five people had died.

To what extent were the two events related? Did Trump’s…

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