In a new book, Attorney Timothy Heaphy explores the threats our democracy faces in the 21st century.
Heaphy was the lead investigator for the Jan. 6 Committee and for the city of Charlottesville following the White Supremacist rally there in 2017.
He’s here in New Hampshire on Monday to discuss his book, “Harbingers: What January 6 and Charlottesville Reveal About Rising Threats to American Democracy,” at the UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law.
Heaphy spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa.
Transcript
So it's been a few years, but many of us probably still clearly remember the events of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the riot in Charlottesville. What are some similarities between these two events?
Well, Julia, I was immediately struck by the parallels between what we were seeing unfold in Washington and what we had experienced here in Charlottesville. The most obvious similarity was the fact that police officers seemed unprepared to meet the violence. And as I dug into both events, it became clear that law enforcement did not suffer from a lack of intelligence or a lack of resources, but rather failed to align the intelligence and the resources in a way sufficient to repel violence.
The other similarity was how these events came together. They were organized in plain view on social media platforms.
Then the last way in which these two events are similar is that they both started with a core impetus, but they then became broad forums for anger at institutions. They both represent what I think is the core divide in this country, which is really one of insiders versus outsiders, or those who believe in institutions versus those who don't — who think those institutions are broken: government, media, higher education, even science.
Tim, let's touch a little bit more on the role of social media here. How do we regulate this, this kind of organizing and promotion of these ideals without infringing on freedom of speech?
You're putting your finger on precisely the challenge, Julia. It's difficult. Social media platforms are not held to the legal standard of news networks or newspapers, right? They are not creating content. They are viewed legally as simply bulletin boards by which individual speakers can express perspectives. And I don't know that there's any realistic chance of that changing. So the solution here is not increased regulation. What I recommend in the book is essentially social media literacy, understanding how the algorithms work and how information reaches you.
Tim, in your book, you write, “a disengaged citizenry is a more insidious threat to democracy and ultimately more destructive than a large crowd of angry rioters.” How do we stay engaged with each other as we become increasingly politically siloed?
That's the crucial message of the book, Julia, is that apathy is a bigger threat to democracy than anger, right? Charlottesville and Jan. 6 were spasms of anger. People were mad at institutions. We can control that over time better than we did there. Apathy is harder.
I worry that because of that cynicism, that justifiable cynicism about institutions, that a lot of people just withdraw. They just don't vote, they don't educate themselves, they don't engage with their neighbors. That, to me, gives outsized power to perspectives across the board politically that are not quite there for the common good, but are more special interest or niche. And that's a problem, right? If everybody in America participates, I feel like democracy is in good hands.
If I have one message, it's [to] run toward the fire. If you see problems in our society and those institutions, go toward the problems. Be part of the solution. Resist the temptation to just throw up your hands and say, it just doesn't matter what I do.
