Capitol rioters pardoned by Trump are now being celebrated as heroes – some of them are even seeking political office.

All ethics have been lost – when violence becomes honor. It begins with a memory, blurry yet tangible: the furious mob, the shattered windows of the Capitol, police officers being thrown to the ground, screams, tear gas, flags that no longer stand for unity but for division. It was January 6, 2021 – and one might have thought that history itself had spit itself out that day, ashamed of what had been made of it. But the real monstrosity only reveals itself in the aftermath: what was once shame is now glory. What was once a crime is now political capital. And so they are back on the stages today, those who once symbolized violence, greeted with applause, with praise, with tears of emotion. Ryan Kelley, convicted of trespassing and incitement, is now embraced in Jackson, Michigan like a long-lost son – "your favorite J6er," as he calls himself. The shame hasn’t disappeared, it has merely been masked as heroism. In Donald Trump's America – his second America – the moral compass isn’t damaged. It has been abolished.

Trump wasted no time in his new term. Barely back in the White House, he issued collective pardons for around 1,500 participants in the January 6 insurrection. Men who beat police officers with metal rods, women who smashed windows and rifled through binders looking for names of lawmakers – they are all now rehabilitated. Or rather: sanctified. What kind of country celebrates its attackers? What kind of movement presents the destruction of democracy as an act of patriotic love? It is a country that no longer remembers – or one whose memory has been manipulated by power. It is a country that has stopped distinguishing between ethics and opportunism. A 43-year-old real estate developer from Michigan, Kelley, once failed because his participation in the storming of the Capitol became public. Now, it serves as his credential – proof of his loyalty to Trump, his ticket into the hearts of those who want to believe that January 6 was an act of resistance and not an attempted coup. In this new cult of martyrs, tears are political capital. Kelley’s story about his son, who thought his father was dead, is no longer seen as a tragedy – but as proof of sacrifice. And James Grant or Ronald Colton McAbee – the latter struck a police officer while pretending to rescue another – now tell their stories not in court but at Republican fundraising galas. They are handed the microphone. Not to be silenced, but to win. What matters is not what they did – but what they did it for. The lie of election fraud is their Bible, Trump their prophet. And anyone who opposes him, they suggest, has forfeited their right to political participation.

A historian, Matt Dallek, says: “The pardoned can speak about the destructive power of the state like no one else.” But that is wrong. It wasn’t the state that destroyed their lives. It was the decision to take part in a violent performance that served a man – not the Constitution. These offenders were convicted not because they “wanted too much democracy,” but because they tried to destroy it. And yet they are now everywhere: on posters, in interviews on Newsmax, as hopefuls in gubernatorial races and at party gatherings where their names are chanted like a sect once praised its saints. Even Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the Proud Boys, now openly talks about a possible run for office – as if his conviction for sedition were a badge of honor. David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney, put it plainly: “If we lose the meaning of elections and the rule of law, if we attack our institutions, then we are on a path that ends in something far worse.” And yet we have entered this path. Not only through actors like Kelley or Tarrio, but through those who listen to them, vote for them, defend them – and thereby create a new reality: one in which violence has become the language of politics. In Trump’s second presidency, ethics have not merely been lost. They have been replaced – by cynicism, by a cult of personality, by the religious fervor of political fanaticism. What remains is emptiness – and applause, not for courage, but for the myth of a lie. “Everything is meaningless – except the feeling that burns us.” Today, many no longer burn themselves on truth. But on the lie that keeps them warm.