[jcims]

    coup
    /ko͞o/
    
    noun

    1.  a sudden, violent, and illegal 
    seizure of power from a government.

Sudden? Sure. Violent? Yes but on the lower end of the spectrum of human conflict. One person got shot by the police, one died of a heart attack, the rest had ‘medical emergencies’. (Edit: An officer died after being attacked by one of the rioters.)

The part I’m not understanding is where was the attempt to seize power?

[zerocrates]

I mean, they stormed the seat of power of the legislature, halted the process of officially determining the next president, and caused the evacuation of a joint session of Congress, all quite literally under the banner of the loser of the election. How successful at it do they have to be to even rise to "attempt" in your mind?

The people who came in armed and with zip-tie flex cuffs, what were they attempting to do?

[jcims]

In my opinion this was a sloppy mob that bum rushed reprehensible security and got farther than they ever expected. People die in riots all of the time, I don't really see what elevates this to anything beyond that...the process got stalled for a few hours and then proceeded. If you want to call it a coup attempt be my guest, I just think it's histrionic.

[cmurf]

Was it violent? Yes, it was illegal entry by force. Was there plunder? Yes, property was stolen. Was there pillaging? Yes, property was damaged. Was the capitol occupied by an unlawful force having evicting the lawful power? Yes. The entire Congress was evacuated under the threat.

A sloppy mob sacked the U.S. capitol, and occupied it for a few hours.

If this exact same thing happened to the White House, would you call it a coup attempt?

Do you remember last month's attempted kidnapping of the Michigan governor that was foiled? Are you aware their backup plan, if they couldn't find the governor, was to lock themselves in with the legislature and start executing them? That's certainly violent, and the legislators are certainly where power is held in a democracy. Executing them would definitely be the violent overthrow of that government, quite a lot more so than the executive. Not least in terms of numbers, the greater difficult of replacing them, in contrast the straightforward presidential succession process.

You knew that the Vice President was with the legislators in the capitol when this transpired, as was the Speaker of the House. Right? The #2 and #3 in the order of presidential succession?

In my opinion, your position looks timid, lacks imagination and awareness. Perhaps you're not American and have no attachment or pride in the the U.S. capitol being sacked by a sloppy mob that included white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Trump flag waiving cultists and Confederate battle flag waiving losers.

Does their incompetency make it less serious of a problem? You really have no imagination at all for how very differently things might look had it been more sophisticated?

[jcims]

I think you've encapsulated my problem with the coup talk. Too much imagination and not enough evidence.

If they interview people from that group and an actual plan emerges beyond mess up the Capitol building and steal shit I'll eat crow.

[w0de]

A demagogue riled up the plebs and they stormed the senate. Would you call this a coup attempt in 60 BC, Rome?

[cmurf]

The president did ask for this. He's been asking for months, by spewing lies about the election being rigged, a fraud, and stolen. Lies about how to set aside that election's outcome. Recounts and lawsuits are cool. Shaking down legislators to undo it is not OK. It's not ethical, moral, or legal.

Threatening various state authorities to undo it, including constant ridicule and lies directed at Georgia and Pennsylvania officials what they should do and could do is part of this plan. That is not ethical, moral, or legal. Yet he did do that, we have audio of it. And it is a crime against democracy.

And then the big lie that Congress could change this on January 6th. Trump told this lie, over 100 Republicans in the Congress spread this lie.

And then on Wednesday, winding up his supporters at a rally at The Ellipse, telling them more lies about a stolen, fraudulent election, telling them they can't allow it to happen and should fight fight fight. And also proposed that Mike Pence could unilaterally just declare Trump the winner. We have video, audio, and transcripts of that actual plan and effort.

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-sav...

Had this coup attempt worked? Trump absolutely would have taken it. He would accept a second term on this basis and he would have bragged about it. You know he would. I know he would. And I know that you know that he would. Because that's what he does, it's what he has always done.

Had the Republicans in Congress had the majority, would they have gone through this anti-democratic charade? Set aside legally certified results from the states? This is a national security story. You don't like it. I don't like it. You are being timid about it, and I can understand that. And this is why I totally understand your cowardice, I get it, let me put a fine line on it.

This country is founded on violence. It is founded on two revolutionary wars. The first is the war of independence, and it is unquestionably about representation, and self-determination to establish self rule via elections. It was bloody. Far bloodier was the American Civil War. Lincoln won an election, the minority losers did not like that he won and asserted the right to break up the union. Lincoln said no, they must accept their loss or democracy is ruined. We fought a war, in effect, to force the losers to accept the result of an election. We murdered each other over an election.

And that was not the end of it. And it is relevant today. Reconstruction was ended in 1877 with the Hayes Tilden Compromise. That resulted in the Jim Crow era. It resulted in lynchings. These murders, morally worse than the Civil War because it forced freed Blacks to disproportionate shoulder the sins of this society. Yet again. Now, you tell me what kind of person says we need to use the Hayes Tilden Compromise as a model to to resolve the 2020 election question, which is not a question. Questioning its veracity is a lie. What do you think the end game is? Just making money? You hope that's all it is about is stealing money from racist fools with too much money. But what kind of person is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, for proposing this specific solution?

You might think this is mere politics. I think it is language that asks for violence, it begs for people to give up on a peaceful civil approach to resolving disputes and just revert to murdering each other. It is not that I have an imagination for it, I am all too well schooled on the history of humanity and especially the United States, and the actual murders that have happened as a result of election disputes, over self-determination disputes.

Had these people succeeded, Trump would have gladly accepted the win. He has made it clear over the past two months he will accept the most craven bullshit reasons to claim he has won, including claiming he has won by a landslide when he plainly has not.

This is an incendiary blood lie, to falsely claim that elections are stolen when they are not. The entire intent is to commit a fraud followed by another. And it is a crime against democracy. Had it succeeded, it would have had not one tiny bit of legitimacy, even by Trump's own supporters. They, like him, simply would have accepted the win anyway.

And we would absolutely murder each other for that. We would. There's ample evidence of it. I do not want to find out. But I know it to be true.

Trump's white nationalist, white supremacist supporters are appalled at being shot at by police this week. Only BLM rally goers are supposed to be shot at by police! White people should not have to comply with the police on demand! Black people should!

White nationalism must be made to submit to equality, to truth, and to democracy. If they do not do it peacefully, the foundation of this country demands that it will be done with murder. That is America's past, present, and future. There is no escape. It must be confronted and people are going to have to stop being cowards about the rampant white supremacy of this presidency. It started that way on the racist lie of birtherism which Republicans, overwhelmingly, profited from. And it's now ending on a series of lies that know no bounds that are at their core both white nationalist and anti-democratic, one in the same thing because they know when all legal votes are counted they lose.

I understand you don't want to call it a coup attempt. But that's what it is.

[rsynnott]

I mean, it was particularly _incompetent_ as these things go, but I don't think it's ridiculous to call it a coup attempt. An extremely shoddy one, but a coup attempt nonetheless.

[VeeRay]

They took both houses, and were never gassed nor exposed to rubber bullets, no one was tased, there were far too few security forces on hand, and in spite of the attackers being armed and carrying bombs, only one person was shot. This episode was carefully planned by Trumpers, and went exactly as choreographed. Someone had influence with the Capitol Police, the Capitol Guard, and even the National Guard wasn't called for hours. This was planned and almost succeeded.

[zwily]

Did they even know what they were attempting?

[Solocomplex]

Chaos is the MO for this administration.

[Fjolsvith]

Steal the laptops of Pelosi and her staff.

[tomjakubowski]

One capitol police officer was also bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher. Several rioters were openly carrying and pointing firearms indoors. Your post falsely minimizes the violence of supporters of the president seizing the capitol building while congress meets inside it to intimidate them into overturning the lawful democratic process to favor their preferred candidate.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/us-capitol-police-officer-dies...

[ttyprintk]

Both a successful and failed coup are attempts to seize power. It seems to me that failed coups are more obvious because successful ones can rewrite themselves to avoid being mistaken as riots.

If you can't tell this is a coup, then it might be your first -- the punchline from: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/trumps-far...

Riots are sudden, violent and illegal. This was a riot organized to specifically stop the transfer of power. Only the characteristic "sudden" is doubtful; this coup was organized in the open, without the usual element of surprise.

[jcims]

> This was a riot organized to specifically stop the transfer of power.

How? This is the part I'm missing. Yes it got stalled for a few hours while everything was going down, but after folks got their selfies and pilfered swag it was done. I'm not sure this motely crew really anticipated squaring off against the US Secret Service and National Guard to indefinitely suppress the transfer of power.

[erentz]

If it had been successful it would just be called a “coup”. It’s the fact that it wasn’t successful, that they were unable to reach and steal the ballots, and were eventually expelled from the building that makes it a “failed coup attempt.”

There were organized elements in the group. The event was organized on Parler, and other sites, a week in advance. They were goaded and led by the president, his family, and loyal senators. Their aim was political, to retain power using violent undemocratic means for their leaders. They had weapons and bombs. They had enough planning to position caches of weapons and ammunition. They weren’t there to protest some new agricultural rule and just got out of hand. It was a coup attempt by any definition. It is only because it happened in America people are having trouble with that. There’d be no such trouble if this happened in Mali, or Niger, or Chad, or Albania, or any European country.

[dragonwriter]

> How?

By intimidation, at a minimum, and potentially (though this wasn't acheived) by (potentially selective) destruction of the electoral vote certificates and violence against the persons of legislators (including the Vice President, who some involved have pointed to as a specific target.)

> Yes it got stalled for a few hours while everything was going down, but after folks got their selfies and pilfered swag it was done.

That's because, despite being too overwhelmed to prevent the Capitol from being taken, the security forces at the Capitol were able to execute an effective delaying and evacuation effort, getting the legislators and electoral votes to safety.

> Yes it got stalled for a few hours while everything was going down, but after folks got their selfies and pilfered swag it was done.

It wasn't “done”, as many of the insurrectionists explicitly stated the intent to return and continue violence until and unless their goals are met.

[w0de]

> How?

Imagine the legislators didn't escape - that a majority of them were killed. Trump and his people use this as an excuse to illegally "send the vote back to the states." Kelli Ward suggested this while the mob was in the capitol. We were not far from that scenario.

[dragonwriter]

> Imagine the legislators didn't escape - that a majority of them were killed.

Less bloodily, imagine the boxes of electoral vote certificates didn't escape in the hasty evacuation, and the certificates from th contested states were selectively destroyed, so that when the session was able to resume and the certificates were counted, they weren't present. (Remember that a recent public scheme to overturn the results was a campaign to simply have Pence not open the certificates from the states whose votes Trump disputes toe exclude them from the count.)

[cyrus_]

There were people with zip tie handcuffs and guns in the chamber, fortunately after it had been evacuated. I don't know what they planned to do, but I imagine best case would be a hostage situation where they demand that the electoral count be stopped until their conspiracy theories about electoral fraud were considered. Worst case they execute democratic leadership, which is far from an implausible scenario given reports that they were looking for Pelosi and Schumer's offices (and found them, and looted them). Keep in mind that their media sphere is full of conspiracy theories that accuse politicians of child abuse. Minimizing what happened here would be a big mistake.

[pensatoio]

It wasn’t. All this talk of a coop is ridiculous. A bunch of idiots pushed through lacking security and wandered around the building for a short period. No power was seized. Just an angry mob that was allowed to get out of control.

[Isamu]

We don’t have a word as popular and overused as “coup” to describe the attempt to shut down the transfer of power.

But this did involve the storming of a legislature in session in a obvious attempt to thwart the proceedings in a power grab. It was poorly organized but seemed premeditated on the part of many participants.

[dragonwriter]

> We don’t have a word as popular and overused as “coup” to describe the attempt to shut down the transfer of power

The more technical term for the kind of coup attempted (an extension of power beyond the legitimate term or scope by or on behalf of the current leader, is “auto-coup” or “self-coup”.)

[rsynnott]

> But this did involve the storming of a legislature in session in a obvious attempt to thwart the proceedings in a power grab

I mean, that's a coup attempt. There's no need to look for another term. It was an incompetent coup attempt, sure, but the term still applies.

[ChrisRR]

Well their call from trump was to convince them to do the right thing, when confirming Biden's presidency.

So that heavily implies that whatever their methods, the intention was to get them to ignore the democratic process and confirm trump instead

[VeeRay]

The idiot who stood at the Podium and shouted "Trump won the election" and the other "special needs" guy who took the podium in the Senate. Short of those actions it might have passed for a riot, and been trespass, but when it came to attempting to burn the elector's votes and harass the members of Congress, it became a violent attempt to overthrow the government. Had not the President said "take back our government" to the very people who invaded, the case would be much less than it is.

[ryan_j_naughton]

This section of the article puts it in language commonly used to describe coup attempts:

> One NATO source set the stage, using terms more commonly used to describe unrest in developing countries.

"The defeated president gives a speech to a group of supporters where he tells them he was robbed of the election, denounces his own administration's members and party as traitors, and tells his supporters to storm the building where the voting is being held," the NATO intelligence official said.

"The supporters, many dressed in military attire and waving revolutionary-style flags, then storm the building where the federal law-enforcement agencies controlled by the current president do not establish a security cordon, and the protesters quickly overwhelm the last line of police.

"The president then makes a public statement to the supporters attacking the Capitol that he loves them but doesn't really tell them to stop," the official said. "Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle."

The insurrectionists/rioters were not simply attempting to disrupt the vote. Many of them explicitly posted on social media about intending to kill members of congress. The woman who was shot and died, Ashli Babbitt, said on social media the day before, that “Nothing will stop us. They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours …. dark to light!” The Storm is an explicit QAnon conspiracy forecast event where Trump / his supporters would conduct mass executions of the democrats and his opponents.

Similarly, many of the insurrectionists were explicitly looking for Mike Pence in the Capital. They had weapons, they had zip ties for detaining people, several had pipe bombs. If they would have found any of their targets (or the full group of lawmakers on lockdown) and a hostage / execution scenario began, that would have created a power vacuum / level of chaos that could have opened the door to Trump trying to stay in power.

So this was clearly a coup attempt -- a pathetic one that wasn't well executed. But the folks who stormed the building were explicit in their motivations -- to stop the legitimate functioning of government, to foment revolution, and to force the world to keep Trump in power.