WATCH: How did the Jan. 6 attack affect the rest of the world?

Two years ago, insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol. Echoing the lies of former President Donald Trump of a stolen 2020 presidential election, rioters ransacked the Capitol hoping to stop the counting of electoral votes by the House and the Senate.

While the insurrectionists failed to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory, it was a defining moment not only in the United States, but internationally. Images of a mob attacking the symbol of American democracy, seemingly emboldened by words by the then-president, resonated with autocrats and the global far-right and shocked the U.S.’ closest allies.

“January 6th was a shock to the system,” said Derek Mitchell, President of the National Democratic Institute, a Democratic nonprofit that works to promote democracy abroad, in an interview with the PBS NewsHour’s Nick Schifrin. Despite our allies and adversaries watching the “degradation of democracy over time in the United States…no one would have expected anything like this.”

For U.S. adversaries, Jan. 6, 2021 “was, for sure, a propaganda gift,” said Daniel Twining, President of the International Republican Institute, a Republican-driven nonprofit that works to promote Democracy abroad. “The Chinese, or the Russians, or any other adversary is never going to beat America head to head. But what those countries can aspire to do is to weaken us internally,” Twining said.

Watch the conversation in the player above.

Images of Americans committing political violence over baseless claims of a stolen election fit into a narrative that democracy is not a worthwhile endeavor for many of America’s adversaries. “The narrative of the Chinese is that democracy has deficits. Their system is more efficient. They’re fighting chaos,” said Mitchell. “And they were able to point at January 6th and things that have happened in the United States over the past few years and been able to pound their chests and say, see, our system is better.”

READ MORE: Exploring the threats to democracy that remain 2 years after Jan. 6

The insurrection also gave America’s allies pause. In a Pew Research Center poll taken after Jan. 6, 57% of respondents — people from different democracies around the world — said the United States “used to be a good model for democracies abroad, but has not been in recent years.”

“It helps,” said Twining, “if our debates stop at the water’s edge so that we can conduct an effective foreign policy.” But Twining does not think that our allies doubt the strength of American democracy. “We continue to have effective political competition and political change.”

Twining points out that those who pose the greatest foreign threat to American democracy have had notable recent failures. For example: Jair Bolsonaro losing his re-election bid in Brazil, global condemnation and isolation of Putin in Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, protests over President Xi Jinping’s restrictive COVID-19 policies and a major protest movement in Iran over the treatment of women.

Yet questions over the durability of American influence continue at home and abroad. “I think there are questions [even] among Americans about the durability,” said Mitchell. “Jan. 6 wasn’t even the start of it. It’s not the end of it. We’re going to have to continue to fight this as Americans and frankly, every citizen in a democracy has to fight for that democracy in every generation.”