At a “voter integrity event” held this past Sunday at the Macon County, North Carolina Republican Party headquarters, freshman congressman, Trump co-conspirator and admirer of Adolf Hitler Madison Cawthorn threatened “bloodshed” and another fascistic coup.

Promoting Donald Trump’s “stolen election” fraud, the 26-year-old North Carolina congressman said, “I’ll tell you, anybody who tells you that Joe Biden was dutifully elected is lying. The things that we are wanting to fight for, it doesn’t matter if our votes don’t count.”

Cawthorn threatened civil war, declaring: “If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s gonna lead to one place and that’s bloodshed.”

Before addressing the crowd, Cawthorn held up a Mossberg 12-gauge tactical shotgun, a raffle item he and Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson signed prior to the event. Joining Cawthorn at the event was “Major Dave” Goetze, a conspiracy theorist and former Army soldier who has been tapped by the Republican Party to speak at rallies promoting Trump’s “big lie.”

Cawthorn declared his support for the far-right militia groups that stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to capture and/or kill lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence on January 6. He was one of the Republican lawmakers who spoke at the “Save America” rally at the White House, where Trump told his supporters to march on Congress and block the certification of Biden’s election victory.

On Sunday, Cawthorn characterized the insurrectionists, many of whom are facing decades in prison for conspiracy and violent crimes, as “political hostages” and “political prisoners,” and mused about trying to “bust them out” of prison.

”The big problem is we don’t actually know where all the political prisoners are,” Cawthorn said. “And so if we were to actually be able to go and try and bust them out—and let me tell you, the reason why they’re taking these political prisoners is because they’re trying to make an example, because they don’t want to see the mass protests going on in Washington.”

Cawthorn’s characterization of the fascist militia members arrested for their role in the attempted coup mirrors that of fellow “America First” Trump acolytes such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (Florida), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) and Louie Gohmert (Texas).

In July, the three were refused entry to a D.C. jail when they arrived unannounced to visit the militia members prior to their trials. After being denied entry, the trio, along with “Stop the Steal” lead organizer Rep. Paul Gosar (Arizona), held a press conference and protest outside the jail demanding the prisoners’ release, which was cut short by a larger number of counter-protesters.

Cawthorn’s incitement of violence on Sunday elicited an immediate response from the small crowd gathered at the Republican headquarters. “When are you going to call us to Washington again?” asked a member of the audience.

“We are actively working on that one,” replied the Republican lawmaker. “We have a few plans in motion that I can’t make public right now. There are a lot of Republicans who don’t want to talk about this.”

In addition to a threat that must be taken with the utmost seriousness, Cawthorn’s words amounted to an acknowledgment that the January 6 coup was not a spur-of-the-moment riot by overzealous Trump supporters, but a pre-planned operation directed from the White House and supported by the Republican Party and high-level officials within the capitalist state. The plot, moreover, continues unabated.

Cawthorn continued: “As much as I am willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there’s nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American. And the way that we can have recourse against that is if we all passionately demand that we have election security in all 50 states.”

In other words, either a pseudo-legal counterrevolution based on voter suppression or violent insurrection led by fascistic shock troops loyal to the would-be Führer Trump.

Cawthorn’s speech is the latest confirmation of the analysis of January 6 and its aftermath by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International. On January 28, after 45 of 50 Republican senators had voted to block a Senate impeachment trial of Trump for his incitement of the January 6 coup attempt, the WSWS wrote:

The Republican Party has become the incubator of fascistic forces and their integration into the political establishment. It is a party that welcomes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites and promotes them to positions of power.

Newly elected North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn posted photos on his Instagram page showing his 2017 visit to Adolf Hitler’s vacation house in Germany known as the “Eagle’s Nest.” The caption refers to Hitler as the “Fuhrer” and says that a visit to the site had been on Cawthorn’s “bucket list for awhile” and “did not disappoint.”

This is the party with which Biden and the Democrats are desperate to unite in a spirit of bipartisan harmony.

The fact that Cawthorn and the rest of Trump’s Republican co-conspirators, as well as the coup plotter-in-chief himself, have not been arrested and have been allowed to openly prepare the next coup attempt is the result of the Democrats’ efforts to cover up the scale of the plot and the ongoing danger to democratic rights. The fecklessness of Biden and the Democrats stems from their fear of mass social and political opposition from below.

This was on display once again in their response to Cawthorn’s speech. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi screwed up her courage and called on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to “take action” against Cawthorn.

In so doing, she acknowledged that McCarthy has repeatedly refused to censor or punish far-right members of his party, including Marjorie Taylor Greene after she threatened violence against Democrats earlier this year and menaced New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the hallways of Congress.

While the Democrats call on McCarthy, Trump’s lap dog, to police his House caucus, they seek to downplay the pivotal role the US Capitol Police leadership played in sabotaging the defense of the Capitol on January 6.

US Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton recently released his fifth “flash report” on the de facto stand-down of the police tasked with defending Congress on the day of the certification of the Electoral College vote.

None of these reports have been made public. However, small portions of the most recent “flash report” were leaked to the Associated Press (AP) last week. The few details made public show that police radio communications the day of the attack were deliberately undermined.

The AP reported that “most of the emergency activations from officers’ radio were never simulcast on police radio, a standard protocol designed to spread the word to other officers about emergencies and crises.”

The AP also noted that the “on-duty watch commander appears not to have been made aware of at least some of the system activations.”

“Without the ability to connect with help or request reinforcements during emergencies, officers are at risk of facing dangerous or even deadly situations,” the report said.

“Without being aware of an officer’s emergency, the department does not dispatch additional units or resources for an officer in distress. And if the on-duty watch commander is not notified of emergency identifier activations, they cannot respond to a situation.”

The report noted documentation errors for which there is no innocent explanation. Of the 36 emergency system activations made by US Capitol Police during the attack, Inspector General Bolton found only 13 transcripts in the radio traffic.

The report also stated that typically, once an officer activates the emergency system, the cop’s name and personal identifying information are broadcast simultaneously across all talk groups to alert them that an emergency is in progress and to place units on standby. This did not happen on January 6.

The four previous flash reports were discussed at public hearings held by the Democratic-controlled House Administration Committee. They revealed that the Capitol Police leadership ignored internal and external intelligence warning of a violent attack and under-deployed and under-equipped the totally inadequate force put in place on the morning of January 6.

No such hearing has been called to discuss the latest report, and it appears that none is planned.

The burying of the latest flash report by the Democrats and the corporate press underscores the lack of any commitment to the defense of democratic rights by the Democratic Party or any section of the corporate and political establishment. It is the working class that must and will defend democratic rights through an independent industrial and political struggle against the entire political system and the capitalist oligarchy it serves.