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No they're usually defined by military and government officials taking over institutions to overthrow the elected government. None of which happened. And when

No they're usually defined by military and government officials taking over institutions to overthrow the elected government. None of which happened. And when crowds do lead to governments being overthrown, usually it's crowds in the millions encouraging those institutions to overthrow the government. Again which didn't happen. By any definition it wasn't a coup d'état or even an attempt at anything with a chance of success.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> No they're usually defined by military and government officials taking over institutions to overthrow the elected government. No, a coup doesn't have to be by military and government officials (though they are usually best situated, and in any case were involved in the autocoup attempt of which the attack on the Capitol was a part—but neither the whole, the beginning, or necessarily even the end once it failed.) And a coup attempt can (this specific subtype is called a self-coup, autocoup, or autogolpe) seek to irregularly extend the powers or the term of the current leadership, not overthrow anyone already in power, and this is what the one involving the 1/6 attack was. And a coup attempt doesn't always involve taking over anything, in the same way a murder attempt doesn't always produce a dead body.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  By this logic I could gather 10 friends from the pub, go to a government building, break a few windows, say we want to overthrow the government, then go home and call it an attempted coup. Really though, that's never been successful and calling it an attempt is being extremely generous. It's like saying writing a Tweet is an attempt at writing a novel.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > By this logic I could gather 10 friends from the pub, go to a government building, break a few windows, say we want to overthrow the government, then go home and call it an attempted coup. Well, sure, and if that's really what you wanted to do, that would be a (very badly) attempted coup. On the other hand, if you had a much larger group of “friends”, including high officials of the federal executive branch, federal legislators, state legislators, and others in and out of government, and instead of going from a pub and breaking a few government windows you coordinated on a scheme to substitute alternative electoral votes for the certified ones from several states relying on an abuse of office by the presiding officer of the joint session counting the electoral votes to effect that, when the regular presiding officer publicly rebuffed the effort gathered a few thousand people including multiple organized armed groups to violently assault the Capitol, erecting a gallows and calling for the hanging of recalcitrant presiding officer, having members and legislative staff escape only moments ahead of the mob (and those moments in part because one breakthrough of barricades was stopped by deadly force), delay deployment of National Guard forces to respond to the attack,... Well, then you’ve got, while in the actual case still unsuccessful, a lot more credible coup attempt.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> No they're usually defined by military and government officials taking over institutions to overthrow the elected government. No, a coup doesn't have to be by military and government officials (though they are usually best situated, and in any case were involved in the autocoup attempt of which the attack on the Capitol was a part—but neither the whole, the beginning, or necessarily even the end once it failed.) And a coup attempt can (this specific subtype is called a self-coup, autocoup, or autogolpe) seek to irregularly extend the powers or the term of the current leadership, not overthrow anyone already in power, and this is what the one involving the 1/6 attack was. And a coup attempt doesn't always involve taking over anything, in the same way a murder attempt doesn't always produce a dead body.

Mikeb85 5y ago
By this logic I could gather 10 friends from the pub, go to a government building, break a few windows, say we want to overthrow the government, then go home and call it an attempted coup. Really though, that's never been successful and calling it an attempt is being extremely generous. It's like saying writing a Tweet is an attempt at writing a novel.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > By this logic I could gather 10 friends from the pub, go to a government building, break a few windows, say we want to overthrow the government, then go home and call it an attempted coup. Well, sure, and if that's really what you wanted to do, that would be a (very badly) attempted coup. On the other hand, if you had a much larger group of “friends”, including high officials of the federal executive branch, federal legislators, state legislators, and others in and out of government, and instead of going from a pub and breaking a few government windows you coordinated on a scheme to substitute alternative electoral votes for the certified ones from several states relying on an abuse of office by the presiding officer of the joint session counting the electoral votes to effect that, when the regular presiding officer publicly rebuffed the effort gathered a few thousand people including multiple organized armed groups to violently assault the Capitol, erecting a gallows and calling for the hanging of recalcitrant presiding officer, having members and legislative staff escape only moments ahead of the mob (and those moments in part because one breakthrough of barricades was stopped by deadly force), delay deployment of National Guard forces to respond to the attack,... Well, then you’ve got, while in the actual case still unsuccessful, a lot more credible coup attempt.