I'm sure you didn't mean to start a political flamewar but it was predictable from this that we'd get one, and we did.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27066262.
Yes, the actual riot at the end fizzled; that's evidence that the attempt had already failed by that time, not that it never occurred. If you'd like to call it by a different name than "coup", that's fine; but OP's point (that if the people behind it didn't face repercussions, the people behind this astroturfing probably won't either) stands unaltered.
Their attempt to assemble guns from parts to bring them into the capitol building was thwarted.
However, the multiple IED's that were found suggest they weren't completely unarmed.
They also used flagpoles and fire extinguishers and other improvised meelee weapons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Myanmar_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
edit; Myanmar is implicitly an example of both an attempted coup and successful coup. If they failed, it would still be an example of what a coup looks like. It's not protesters and rioters with iphones. It's soldiers with guns and vehicles. The capitol riot was terrible and should be denounced (as it has by almost everyone), but to describe it as an attempted coup is straight up gaslighting.
Also, their organizing rhetoric, i.e. "Stop the Steal," did not imply an attempt to be annoying and temporarily delay the election.
Protests do not stall free elections anyway.
- An election occurs which allocates electoral college delegates for each state
- Those delegates meet and cast their votes for the candidate of their choosing.
- After they vote, each state creates a Certificate of Vote. This is the actual legal document that elects one as president. 6 copies are made: one sent to the VP, one sent to the SoS, two to a US archivist, and two to the chief judge from the closest district court.
- In early January, Congress meets to count the certificates. That is the actual election. Everything before then is just process.
So while the election had occurred, the process was not yet finalized. Until those votes are counted by Congress, then the person elected by the people in November is not elected president. The rioters were absolutely attempting to disrupt the most crucial part of the process -- the thing that legally elected Joe Biden president.
You're right - that is a coup. There's a reason the post you responded to says "coup attempt" which, as we all know, was unsuccessful.
Not to mention that the Feds infiltrated the groups involved & the "coup attempt" was staged, as known BLM-affiliated agitators & government informants with criminal records were outed as the inciters & leadership of the groups involved.
Has there been any public investigation into who is Q-anon? Surely the alphabet agencies with all of the glorious panopticon tech would know who Q is. Surely, with all of these agencies experiences with cults over the last few decades had an inkling what was going on. If there was a grass-roots insurrection, where was the chatter & why was it not stopped? Could it be because these agencies were involved?
In the meantime, there are riots, attacking of government officials, murdering & raping of the people, & destruction of government & private property among many cities around the country, yet these are labeled "peaceful protests". And Antifa is "just an idea" or a "myth" and multi-racial white supremacist neo nazis are literally everywhere. Up is down and down is up in this bizzaro narrative...
Martin Luther King & Malcolm X would both be rolling on their tears in their graves to see how their movements & names have been compromised & turned into a clown show mockery by the very same FBI that persecuted them & race-pimps who profiteered off of their messages...
Imagine hearing this today...
Honestly I think the best argument for it not being a coup attempt is that these people had been deluded into thinking they were trying to thwart a coup attempt from the other side. Because, you know, Biden stole the election. Or whatever.
Not a great look either way. But the fact that it was inarguably an incompetent and generally shambolic effort, or that much better organized people have executed much more effective coup attempts elsewhere in space and time, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a coup attempt.
Coups can take a variety of forms and not all of them include armed forces taking physical control with threat of force.
How many people read those 'FIVE DEAD IN CAPITAL RIOTS' headlines, read the vague articles expressing dread at 'right wing violence', and went away thinking that the protesters had been committing murder? The truth, of course, was that only one person died a violent death during the riot, and it was at the hands of the capitol police. The other folks died of heart attacks and strokes! The fact that the (geriatric) body count was used to sew FUD about right-wing violence was and is absolutely astounding.
How many people still think that two capital police officers were killed by rioters? The media went out of their way to state (and later to merely imply) that Officer Hodges had been crushed to death by a crowd as they tried to enter the building, and that Officer Sickwick had sustained mortal injuries during the riot--neither of which was true. Hodges is alive and well, and Sickwick died of a stroke the next day. The media went on spinning the Sickwick lie as his body layed in state, and on and on for many months after the attack.
Unsurprisingly, the fact checkers did what they do as well, bending over backwards to support the 'armed' in 'armed insurrection' by counting up the pocket knives and pointing out that *one* of the rioters had a handgun[0]! In a nation containing >150 million firearms, and in an era when folks are regularly attending protests whilst armed to the teeth, it's pretty clear that these protesters went out of their way to leave their weapons at home.
The real kicker, IMO, is that if you were following the news in real time, you would have noticed that the rage surrounding the incident presented a stark contradiction to the current narrative. On social media, the lefties couldn't decide whether their rage should be directed at the protesters (who, having broken several prestigious windows, were naturally being hailed as 'TERRORISTS' in a twitter trend), or at the capital police, many of whom were captured on video while contradicting the 'coup' narrative--smiling, opening doors for protesters, and helping feeble old insurrectionists down the capital steps!
[0]https://www.factcheck.org/2021/03/capitol-protesters-were-ar... [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/brian-sic...
There are plenty of weapons out there that aren't firearms. You can be armed and not carrying a gun. While I'd agree that many of the injuries are consistent with a large crowd there are also documented cases of people in the crowd using weapons like tasers, pepper spray, and a flag pole. There are lots of pictures of zip tie cuffs being carried in the capital buildings. How often do you hear about people going to a peaceful protest expecting to capture prisoners? You need a license to carry a firearm in DC. It shouldn't be surprising that in a protest made up of people from outside DC you wouldn't have many people who have the right license. Flying with a gun is also a PITA so that's another reason some people who travelled to the protest may not have brought their guns with them.
Finally, there was at least one group that set up a cache of guns offsite so that they could ferry them in if needed [0].
[0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/capitol-riot...
The end result would have been the same. And I shudder to think how f*cked we'd be as a nation if it had succeeded.
That otherwise logical thinkers are getting caught up in such hysterics is unnerving.
it was neither a coup nor a coup attempt. i have a hard time fathoming the combination of ignorance and privilege that would lead a serious, thinking person to make this claim. at least the politicians grandstanding on the verge of tears are playing an angle.
what do you think would have happened if the rioters captured every single congressperson? what if they were all killed? if you think the answer to either of those questions is "the rioters assume control of any part of the federal government" then im not sure we have anything to discuss. killing congress doesnt, like, make you the new congress.
if you are calling it a coup because they WANTED to control the government (noting how ineffectual their attempt was), then you are making the word coup meaningless. you might as well call any whitehouse trespasser a coup.
context matters. they were political rioters, not a replacement government.
Well, what indeed? Suppose that they killed the ones who were opposed to them politically. Suppose the vote went on, with a different result.
The person who won would surely not repudiate those results. The Supreme Court might consider it, but I honestly don't know what they'd say. The Constitution doesn't have any provision for it, and the majority of the Supreme Court might well decide that the "original intent" was that the vote was the vote.
These were, indeed, just political rioters rather than an organized coup. They didn't have any idea what they were doing, and even if it fell out the way I suggested it wouldn't really have been because they plotted it out that way.
Still... it doesn't seem impossible. And if they achieved their aims, by violence, it seems like splitting hairs not to call that a "coup".
The question isn't what we think, it's what the rioters thought. Considering their chants, preparations and convictions, it's not entirely unreasonable to say they were hoping to make it so the guy they want remains in charge, regardless of election results. Whether or not that is legally possible or how it works isn't relevant to their goals, which is the main thing that matters to determine if it was a coup attempt or not. They thought it was, and that's that.
PS: i'm not American, I don't have a horse in this race
That doesn't dismiss the severity of what happened. I agree that those events were precipitated by a large number of imbeciles and a smaller number of nuts with a half-baked plan.
But the scary thing is that they proved to themselves, the politicians who pander to them, and an unknown number of even worse people that flexing the threat of violence is on the table of possibility in the USA. It's one step forward on a slippery slope that sane people don't want to go down.
EVEN NOW, Rep. Liz Cheney faces being ousted by her own party for daring to speak truth about the Stable Genius. Coups, insurrections and revolutions don't "just happen", they're in the works for a LONG time. We might be seeing the early stages of one now.
Also, when introducing a hot-button political topic (especially in a thread about a different hot-button political topic), it would be nice to do it in a friendly way, i.e. without orating upon the sheer quantity of ignorance it takes to disagree with you.
I think of myself as a serious person and what went down surrounding the 2020 election absolutely looked like a coup to me. The sitting President and his associates tried to prevent people from voting; once votes were cast they tried to prevent them from being fully counted; once the votes were counted they tried to get the votes thrown out; once the votes were included, they tried, by force, to prevent the election from being certified.
The sitting President and his associates actively stoked a riot and prevented additional support from police and national guard from being provided to secure the Capitol.
Taken in totality, that was a fucking coup attempt. A politician attempted to take power by force.
That this entire war had a very slim chance of actually succeeding is an entirely different matter altogether.
In the past there was at least a broad general consensus that no matter how much we disagree or dislike each other's policies, we respect the democratic institutions. There were hickups, sure, but never on this scale. Over 100 members of the house voted against the certification of the election results.
Who knows what the future will bring; it may sizzle out, or it may grow in to something ugly. Either way, dismissing it as merely "politicians grandstanding" doesn't strike me as doing justice to the severity of this.
Then Congress would have been unable to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, at least until the states appointed replacements. Meanwhile Trump would have been shouting "I really won". That still doesn't add up to anything close to a successful coup, unless the newly-appointed Congress people change their votes based on fear for their lives.
What it would have been, though, is potentially the start of a civil war. It would depend on how determined (or deluded) Trump was, to carry on the claim that he won, and how many people in the population believed it.
I would take the opposite approach here. Trump replaced SecDef after the election. He was working on scuttling the post office and proper vote counting before the election. They tried to rig the election. When their efforts didn't give the results they wanted, they tried to overturn the results with violence. He incited the violence, helped direct it, refused to stop it, and cheered it on, as his own VP was asking for help.
I'm not sure what combination of ignorance and privilege would label this "trespassing" rather than an attempted "coup".
> you might as well call any whitehouse trespasser a coup. > context matters. they were political rioters, not a replacement government.
The goal of the prior administration was to remain in power. The folks who stormed the capital weren't the replacement government, they were the brownshirts.
People who call it 'coup attempt' should isolate themselves form propaganda narratives they've been subjected to for the past years.
> Ability to succeed doesn't really factor into what was attempted. That is in the mind & intentions of those who were involved & instigated it.
You had the mob of useful idiots (ie the red capped mob of idiots) expressing their support of the police by beating them, and the more serious people penetrating into the chambers and offices.
Sidearms aren’t as useful as they seem in mob situations. What are the police going to do? Line up Kent State style and just mow the crowd down?
You suppress mobs with physical force. Lots of cops, divide up the mob and gas/beat them to disperse. The administration made that impossible by refusing aid. The New Jersey State police responded before the federal authorities.
The goal wasn’t “taking over the government”. It was a coup, using the stopping of a formality from happening and providing the fig leaf needed for the other guy to hang on to power. Taking a few congressmen hostage, using them as shield, and marching them to the gallows would have stopped that.
It also doesn't take nearly as much effort by a mob to accomplish its goals when the people who would help stop it stand idly by: 1) Not enough security was provided in first place 2) Reinforcements took hours to mobilize 3) The President refused to take any action to defuse the situation.
I watched the whole thing live. It was messy at times, but it was clear as day that the mob didn't have neither a plan nor a command structure. Once they got into the chamber, they just chatted with guards! Or, in that shaman's case, just blessed everyone around.
They had plastic ties and a noose ready for the vice president and the speaker of the house (2nd and 3rd in line) to the presidency.
Once in the building the mob quickly figured out that they don't know what to do next, as was expected.
That’s...not true. The building was breached before members were evacuated. The breakthrough and shooting at the Speakers Lobby occurred, very shortly after that room was evacuated, and where the mob, if unchecked at the chokepoint through which they had just broken, would provide an imminent and overwhelming threat to both security personnel and innocents in the process of evacuating. Security lost control of the outer perimeter and did a collapsing bubble defense to maximize safety of the heavily outnumbered security personal and the ability to protect VIPs and other innocents who had not been evacuated.
If it had been BLM, they would have shot to kill.
What we had was a scary riot and lots of fear mongering.
Edit: for whatever reasons there are large groups on both sides of the political spectrum that want to pretend that we were much closer to successful coup than reality supports.
It was a loosely coordinated effort. Either by sympathy or by design. The individuals involved are being found. The real perpetrators are completely let off the hook. It’s just a game of chess and a King’s Castle move didn’t work this time.
It was a signifant event and one that is well worth being strongly concerned about. That does not justify spreading hyperbolic FUD. In my view the seriousness of this event makes it more important that we bring our full rationality to bear when discissing it and try our best to avoid obfuscating the problems it revealed with the usual partisan games of BS and distortion.
You'd have a Congress and President both declaring that a free and fair election was a "Steal" and they would have the votes, the military, and the levers of power.
The people rioting weren't going to overthrow the country and take over, they were a useful tool for trump to overthrow the election and install himself as President for 4 more years.
"Barely stopped" is a modifier to "attempt" that implies the attempt was almost successful.
If you read my comment, rather than being reactionary, you see that I deliberate do not say it was not an attempted coup.
You can accurately say that this was the closest we have come to a successful coup in our lifetimes. You cannot truthfully say that the coup was close to success or that it was barely stopped.
I too would agree that it was highly unlikely to be successful. Had it gone even a few large steps further in seriously injuring members of congress (also unlikely) I still think the worse-case outcome in terms of transfer of power would have been extra days of delay as appropriate cautions were taken to secure congress.
The too comment didn't mention the topic at all. The reply to that comment that I replied to mentioned the "recent almost successful coup attempt" and I responded to that comment by pointing out that we came nowhere near a coup beinf successful.
So you, and a large number of other posters, are so locked into the mindset of partisan bickering that you cannot communicate effectively anymore. This is a serious problem that will significanly hurt our chances of preventing similar events.
I will point out one more fact though: VP Pence made it out of congress mere moments ahead of the mob, part of were hunting him with the goal of hanging him. That seems like a close enough call that the "barely" modifier is not completely unreasonable. If you want to reply to that aspect of the situation without resort to insults or other inflammatory rhetoric, I'm not unwilling to entertain your point of view.
If Pence had been caught and killed or taken hostage by the mob, that would have brought us no closer to a successful coup. There is simply no way that a single mob can overthrow the US government without significant backing from the institutions of power in this country. To pretend otherwise is to indulge in a fantasy that is completely unrooted in reality.
>Perhaps you need to read slower
The above are the things I took as insulting &/or likely to provoke a more inflammatory conversation. I think there are better ways to ask someone to reconsider what you wrote, ways that are less likely to escalate a confrontational tone.
As for Pence, he wasn't a random target. The only reason he was a target was because he had a constitutionally required role to play in the transfer of power. This was a role that the President Trump and some of his supporters wanted him to use to prevent the transfer of power to Biden, but Pence himself had made clear he would not do that.
If killed or kidnapped & therefore unable to perform that role, the next steps to a constitutional crisis were very much on the table:
1) The constitution would require the President to select a new VP.
2) That person then has to be confirmed by a majority of both houses of congress.
3) Given President Trump's urging of VP Pence to use his position to block transfer of power, he would likely appoint someone who would do exactly that.
4) The House would never confirm such a person. Regardless of Senate approval (which would also be unlikely) the confirmation would be blocked, the VP role left empty.
5) The constitutionally mandated terms of the transfer of power could not be met. Biden could not become president.
What would happen from there? I have no idea. Maybe some peaceful resolution. Maybe, with the success of taking the VP out of the picture, many more of President Trump's supporters would feel emboldened to act in some way.
Since VP Pence got away from the situation shortly before the mob arrived.
I'm open to suggestions but the level of continued misapprhension I was facing called for more strong language than the simple corrections I had already repeatedly tried in this thread.
Note the the constitution does not assign this duty to the VP directly, but via his role as the Senate President. Chuck Grassley held the position of Senate President Pro Tempore and the ceremonial duties would have fallen to him.
Now, he may have refused to perfom his constitutionally mandated duty which would have resulted in legal battle that would probably have ended up in the supreme court.
Now, there is maybe an extremely outside chance the supreme court would have invalidated the election and forced a new one. There was absolutely no chance that the Supreme Court would decide that the VP has the unilateral power to completely bypass the counting of the votes and skip ahead in the process to the allow state delegations to select the president.
There would have been chaos and probably a lot more riots and even acts of terrorism. None of that would have allowed the overthow of the US government.