'Call it Terrorism': W. Kamau Bell on Extremist Riot at the U.S. Capitol

When an overwhelmingly white mob of extremist Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday in an act of outright insurrection, they faced relatively little resistance from police.

Waving Confederate flags and other symbols of white supremacy, the mob violently paraded through the halls of Congress with near total impunity.

Had it been a group of Black and brown people, many argue, the response from law enforcement might have been just a tad different. They point to the aggressive show of force by police during many of the largely peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations this summer — just one of many examples in a long history of police violence against people of color peacefully protesting for racial justice.

On Thursday morning, as the nation was still trying to come to grips with the riots, KQED's Brian Watt spoke with the Bay Area's own W. Kamau Bell — comedian and the host and executive producer of the award-winning series "United Shades of America" on CNN — about this attack on the nation's capital, white supremacy and terrorism, and where America goes from here.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you make of that difference in the law enforcement response?

W. Kamau Bell: I mean, it's everything that as a Black person you know is true in this country.

All year, since the pandemic started, we have seen white people armed to the teeth, showing up at capitals all over the country. And all of that was a rehearsal for this. If they hadn't gotten away with showing up in Michigan and Sacramento and all these other capitals around the country, they would have been less interested in going to D.C.

And then on top of that, you have the fact that the president has, since the George Floyd protests, been going after Black Lives Matter, going after Antifa — and yet with these people, he basically put out an Evite and invited them to the Capitol, and then he talked to them once they got there.

So I'm not surprised they weren't arrested, because they were where they were supposed to be. They were invited to a party and they went to the party.

You did make clear that the chaos in D.C. was caused by terrorists. Why did you use that term?

If a kid drives to a Black church in Charleston and shoots Black people during Bible study that he was invited into, that's not crime. That's terrorism. He's trying to terrorize those people. He's trying to terrorize the people of that church and the Black people of that town. If Timothy McVeigh destroys a federal building, that's not a crime. That's terrorism. We have to be clear about this.

I've heard people say, call it what you will: terrorism, extremism. No, no, no. Call it terrorism. That's what the word was invented for. But we have a problem doing that when the people look like what we are told are patriots.

It doesn't sound like you didn't see this coming, but did you know it would look like it did yesterday?

I mean, I would like to say I saw it coming. I feel like everybody I know saw it coming. Everybody I work with saw it coming. And we've been talking about it for years. So I don't want to say like I was some sort of Nostradamus.

But I do think that Trump has been very clear about who he was, I mean, since way before he ran for president. And the things that should have disqualified him did not disqualify him, which prove that America is run on white supremacy. The minute you call America's first Black president an illegitimate president, that should preclude you from running for president. But it did not.

So for me and the people I know — people in Berkeley, people in Oakland who I work with, people I've worked with nationally on these issues — we have all been saying 'he's telling us what he's going to do, right?'

So it's not good to be right. And it also is shocking to see it, because you think they're not going to let these people just walk into the Capitol. I didn't think they would be able to just walk in, and I didn't think they'd get just escorted out. But I'm not surprised this happened.

Does what happened yesterday sum up for you the legacy that Donald Trump leaves behind: a nation even more divided?

I mean, yes, I think in many ways, if America is a book, this is the end of the book — and now there's a chance to write a new book.

But the legend of America as the greatest country in the world, land of the free, home of the brave — all over the world they know that's not right. All over the world, they know that's a lie. And if we keep telling ourselves that and we keep teaching it in the schools, were lying to ourselves. That's over.

One of the reasons this country was great, anyway, is because people from all over the world wanted to come here, because they bought into that idea of America being the land of the free and the way you could make your dreams happen. Those people aren't coming anymore — in large part they can't, because our borders are closed because of COVID.

So the book on America is over. Now we have to write a new book, and where that goes is up to us. But we have to make a choice. And a lot of that choice for me resolves around, do we prosecute Trump for the terrorism that he encouraged yesterday and has encouraged throughout his presidency?

Do you have some hope about the state of our democracy, despite the heartbreak of yesterday?

I mean, you know, with "United Shades of America," I travel around the country talking to people who are working hard to save and/or reinvent this democracy. The season we're filming now, I've been in Portland talking to Black Lives Matter activists about how they're trying to transform Portland. While at the same time, in many ways, white terrorists are coming in from outside of Portland, around Oregon, to confront them.