WASHINGTON — One year after the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812, disagreements rage. Who was responsible? How harshly should those involved be punished?

And, fundamentally, was it an insurrection?

Few Republicans are willing to characterize the events of Jan. 6 that way. The preferred term among defenders of Donald Trump is “riot.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz calls it a “violent terrorist attack.”

On the left, it’s an article of faith that the mob that swarmed the Capitol, encouraged by Trump that day to “fight like hell” to block certification of his defeat, wanted to overturn a fair election. Whether they had guns or not, they used plenty of makeshift weapons — hockey sticks, bear spray, helmets and shields wrested away from outnumbered police.

That, by definition, is an insurrection — a violent attempt to take control of the government.

“The biggest threat to our Capitol, to our Capitol Police and to our democracy is the Big Lie, perpetrated by Donald Trump,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday at a hearing on Capitol security. “Without addressing the root causes of the events of January 6th, the insurrection will not be an aberration.”

One week after the attack, the House impeached Trump for “incitement of insurrection” on a 232-197 vote. All Democrats and 10 Republicans supported the resolution.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Cruz — who promoted Trump’s never-proven assertions of fraud and led the effort, before and after the mob interrupted certification, to nullify millions of votes in states won by Joe Biden — called Jan. 6 “a solemn anniversary … of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol.”

The Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans died, he said during a podcast last month — “that was an insurrection. Really bad one. This was a riot.”

(Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other conservatives later chastised Cruz for describing Jan. 6 as a “terrorist attack.”)

Two conspiracy-minded Republicans and riot apologists, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida, scheduled a news conference Thursday “to expose the truth about the January 6, 2021 protests.”

History will eventually judge whether Jan. 6 was a turning point for American democracy or more of an especially unpleasant aberration.

But in the short term, the fight over labels is anything but trivial.

If Republicans retake the House, they’ll disband the committee probing Trump’s culpability and the causes of the attack. The winner of the semantic tussle now will have the upper hand in the November midterm elections.

The linguistic tug-of-war also hangs over the 2024 race, with Cruz and other GOP presidential contenders already jockeying for position. National polls show that as few as one in four Republican voters say Biden won the election. So candidates who frame Jan. 6 as an effort to rectify an injustice are in sync with the base.

“I never thought I’d see a day like that. A violent mob, driven by the rhetoric and the lies of a disgraceful former president,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said during Wednesday’s hearing with the Capitol Police chief. “They attacked our seat of government.”

First elected in 1974, Leahy has served longer than any other senator. He noted the trauma and injuries endured by officers who protected the Capitol and lawmakers that day.

“Their sacrifices shouldn’t be papered over by those who would like to pretend nothing happened,” he said.

If Jan. 6 was an attempt to overthrow democracy, Trump is discredited. His defenders are covering up. Those who led the mob are seditionists and those who joined the mayhem, even if they showed up that day never dreaming they’d commit violence or maraud through the halls of Congress, are co-conspirators.

Hundreds of Jan. 6 participants have been charged with trespassing or assault, and the FBI is hunting for thousands more. None has been charged with insurrection against the government, or abetting insurrection, far more serious crimes that carry up to 10 years in prison.

‘Violent affront’

That’s how President Joe Biden views the attack, though.

He referred to “the violent and deadly insurrection” during a commencement address last month. At a Virginia campaign event in October, he asserted that Trump “drove a mob of insurrectionists to breach the Capitol on the 6th of January. And to this day, he incites people all around the country.”

The Dallas Morning News asked every Texas Republican in Congress whether they view Jan. 6 as an insurrection. None responded directly. Through an aide, Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin called the events of that day “a devastating reminder of the division within our country,” adding that law enforcement and intelligence agencies could have prevented “the violence and destruction” but for missteps and lack of planning.

For progressives and others, “insurrection” is the primary description.

“The insurrection was a violent affront to free and fair elections and the orderly transition of power,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, a nonpartisan government accountability group.

“January 6th interrupted two centuries of the peaceful transfer of power. It was staged by a domestic enemy fueled by the lies fed by the former president, some Republican politicians, and their allies who tried to subvert a bedrock democratic principle: that voters decide elections,” she said.

The Republican Accountability Project, an anti-Trump group, hit Cruz and others for backing away from their own comments early on, pinning blame for Jan. 6 squarely on Trump. A 30-second ad that will air Thursday on Fox News, CNN and other cable networks shows Cruz saying the day after the attack that “the president’s language and rhetoric crossed a line and it was reckless.”

There’s a clip of House Republican leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy saying: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” And another of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell weeks later, after the impeachment effort fell 10 votes short in the Senate, saying that “President Trump is responsible for provoking events of the day.”

“Trump’s election lies lit the fuse for that attack on our democracy. And yet, many Republicans are still trying to memory hole the attack for political gain,” said Republican Accountability Project director Olivia Troye, a former aide to Vice President Mike Pence, the object of Trump’s venom for refusing to use his ceremonial role on Jan. 6 to overturn the election. “It’s not enough just to reject lies and conspiracy theories about January 6. We must demand accountability for those who caused it and those who have tried to apologize for or excuse the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.”

Republicans have ostracized the two GOP House members who agreed to serve on the panel investigating the attack, Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

Most downplay the events, often equating the violence to Black Lives Matter or Antifa protests during 2020.

For Democrats and others, that amounts to egregious “whataboutism,” given that BLM and Antifa protests never imperiled the constitutional order.

“You do not overthrow the greatest republic history’s ever known with flagpoles, mace and a stolen podium,” freshman Texas Rep. Pat Fallon of Sherman told the rightwing One American News this week, adding that while Democrats “obsess over ... one riot that took four hours” but “whitewash” protests that swept through U.S. cities after a Minneapolis police officer killed an unarmed black man, George Floyd.

Cruz made much the same point at Wednesday’s hearing.

“Regardless of the politics of the violent criminal whether they are rightwing, leftwing or they got no wings at all — if you assault a cop, you ought to go to jail for a long, long time,” he said. “That should be true regardless of the political context that ostensibly and purportedly justifies that violence.”