Don’t expect a dramatic fascist storming of the Capitol building or a military takeover when our crisis comes to a head.

Americans are not exactly known for nuance. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise us then that the rightwing protests that turned into a riot at the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021 were immediately described as a coup attempt.

For most Democrats, the participants were at the very least insurrectionists guilty of sedition, or perhaps even domestic terrorists. Wall-to-wall coverage at the time on broadcast television and magazine thinkpieces waxing eloquent about the attack on “the people’s house” confirmed the assessment.

For establishment Republicans, the protesters were the worst slur they could think of: they were “foreign”. George W Bush compared them to people in a “banana republic” and the Republican congressman Mike Gallagher agreed that “we are witnessing absolute banana republic crap in the United States Capitol right now.” The Florida senator Marco Rubio described the events in a tweet as “3rd world style anti-American anarchy”.

But despite all the fears, the pro-Trump rioters on 6 January didn’t exactly look like hardened fascists. Most wandered disorganized to the Capitol, looked on from a distance, took selfies and then trotted back to their hotel rooms after they got bored. These weren’t the street fighters we’ve come to associate with the rise of the far right internationally.

Perhaps the strongest sign that the United States wasn’t actually in danger of falling to fascism that day was the response to 6 January from American elites. It is well established that big business interests have historically aligned both with fascism, as was the case in the 1930s, and rightwing authoritarianism, and authoritarianism more generally, during moments of crisis. As the Columbia law professor Tim Wu wrote in his recent book on monopolies: “The monopolist and the dictator tend to have overlapping interests.”

Trump, of course, has something in common with fascists. He uses mass communications to stoke already widespread disaffection, directing anger not at economic power brokers but at minorities and perceived cultural elites. He has encouraged violence and threats of violence against his enemies, culminating in the mobilization one year ago today.

But what he didn’t have was elite buy-in. Trump gave business what it wanted while he was in power, deregulating and cutting taxes while keeping the power of labor in check. But unlike in 1920s Italy or 1930s Germany, major commercial interests didn’t feel nearly threatened enough by workers’ organizations and the left to allow the president to overturn democratic norms. Indeed, by 6 January, they seemed to see an unstable White House as a bigger threat to their profits.

In the aftermath of the Capitol riot, the pro-Trump National Association of Manufacturers called for the president to be impeached. The highly influential Business Roundtable, which represents the country’s largest corporations, issued a condemnation of the actions almost as strong. Finance capital, that great historic ally of fascism in its initial variant, wasn’t too far behind.

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