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coup /ko͞o/ noun 1. a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government. Sudden? Sure. Violent? Yes but on the lower en

• zerocrates 6y ago
  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?
  • Fjolsvith 6y ago
    Steal the laptops of Pelosi and her staff.
  • zwily 6y ago
    Did they even know what they were attempting?
    • Solocomplex 6y ago
      Chaos is the MO for this administration.
  • jcims 6y ago
    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.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • cmurf 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
          A demagogue riled up the plebs and they stormed the senate. Would you call this a coup attempt in 60 BC, Rome?
• tomjakubowski 6y ago
  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-after-dc-riots/ https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/us-capitol-police-officer-dies...
• Isamu 6y ago
  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.
  • rsynnott 6y ago
    > 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.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > 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”.)
• ttyprintk 6y ago
  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-farcical-inept-and-deadly-serious-coup-attempt/617309/ 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 6y ago
    > 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 6y ago
      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.
      • deleted 6y ago
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• cyrus_ 6y ago
  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.
• ChrisRR 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  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.
• pensatoio 6y ago
  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.
• ryan_j_naughton 6y ago
  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.