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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

What's really interesting in the Capitol attack is how the terrorists ended up simply surveilling themselves, posting their videos and pictures onto their own social media with their own identifying information attached. You don't need a police state when the enemy is this stupid.

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That tells me that they didn't think what they were doing was something to hide. Definitely stupid, but also probably not an attempted coup if that's the case. That is, I don't think the protestors themselves were attempting a coup.

A coup is when state actors illegally overthrow other state actors. Most coups are pulled off by militaries, e.g. how Pinochet got into power.

This would be an uprising; it's being called a "coup" because uprising sounds sympathetic.

I still think it's possible someone was attempting a coup but that the protestors were not in on it.

If so, I struggle to see what the desired outcome would have been at the capital.

But people need to be careful, because by saying it was a coup, it normalizes the concept for those who saw Wednesday as a good faith protest march, regardless of what it's now perceived as.

Changing/ shifting the definition of words has behavioral consequences.

I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them had some kind of underpants gnomes plan to snatch a Senator.

But, really, it was a protest. The point was to engage in drama and theatrics. Why break into the Capitol? Even more drama.

Now people are dead, it's managed to tar even Trump's public image, and they're going to get hit with federal charges.

Of course they were, they just didn't believe they'd see significant resistance because they believed the vast majority of people agreed with them.

They didn't think they had anything to hide because police organizations and state AGs helped incite the event. This is a typical characteristic of right-wing, white militants. They do not see their actions as vigilantism because they earnestly believe their actions carry the weight of law. Veterans and police officers were among the insurrectionists in the Capitol.

Its a really big stretch to call a mob of unarmed people who took a bunch of selfies a terrorist attack. It was just a riot

They were armed.

And they terrorised people. They forced their way in, shouted the names of politicians they were looking for, forced their way through barriers. A mob doesn't need guns to be a threat.

Since when is a shut-in an act of terrorism? As far as I'm aware these protesters at the Capitol didn't kill or attempt to kill anyone. Yes, they damaged government property. Many will face prosecution for this.

Supporters of BLM have committed far worse acts in recent years but they are not labelled as terrorists. The only people that died at this event were the protestors - one at least was unarmed and murdered by a police officer. The whole thing is on video.

They killed a police officer.

Not "murdered" by a police officer. The officer was defending an area that contained the politicians this mob was looking for.

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