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Comment by mechEpleb | Hacker News Reader

They literally declared an autonomous zone. If that is not an insurrection I don't know what is. Words don't mean anything I guess.

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Are you referring to the Red House? You believe that a fenced in house that was sometimes called an 'autonomous zone' (as far as I can tell, most often by people outside - the mayor of Portland for example apologized for calling it such) was closer to an insurrection than people seeking to overturn the legal results of the election entering the Capitol building while congress was in session?

Even if the people defending the Red House did call it an autonomous zone, their only real demands were to protect the livelihood of one family. They did not seek to expand, they did not try to gain political power from it,they did nothing that I would actually view as a significant attempt to challenge the authority of the state beyond a very specific case.

He's obviously talking about CHAZ.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone

Even there, I understand the name "Autonomous Zone" was only used by the people occupying the area between June 8 and June 13 - afterwards they decided to call it an "Organized Protest" instead. They also never challenged the authority of the state itself (except for police), and all of their demands were social, not political. They eventually peacefully dismantled most/all of the area anyway.

I fail to see how this can be presented as comparable in gravity with people attacking the Capitol building with the intent of overturning the result of the federal election.

Social demands are political.

Everything is political in some sense.

But there is a difference between demanding social change and demanding to take down a politician or to overturn an election.

>They also never challenged the authority of the state itself

>(except for police),

I rest my case.

Police is not a branch of government.

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