From 11 September to 6 January: A Vexingly Dotted Line

Abstract

Two books examine the connection between the 11 September 2001 attacks and the 6 January 2021 insurrection in the United States. In Reign of Terror, Spencer Ackerman overreaches in arguing that 9/11 led directly to 6 January by impelling the Bush administration’s expansion and empowerment of the ‘Security State’, which encouraged government officials and the American public to embrace right-wing extremism and Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Factors other than the ‘war on terror’ amply explain America’s sharp turn to the right and Trump’s ascendancy. In Subtle Tools, Karen Greenberg offers the more nuanced and credible argument that Trump and his inner circle simply used the degradation of language, ‘bureaucratic porousness’, reflexive secrecy and the rejection of precedent arising from the policy and statutory responses to 9/11 to stoke right-wing extremism and manipulate government security policy and institutions.