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Comment by rtkwe | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the guillotine was meant as a literal threat to his life personally. It was a wage protest lead by a former Amazon employee and IIRC was never violent.

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>I don't think the guillotine was meant as a literal threat to his life personally

Isn't the narrative the exact opposite for capitol attack? eg. "these rioters had gallows set up and everything, could you imagine what would have happened if congress wasn't evacuated in time?"

that would be more plausible if they hadn't beaten a cop to death.

I get what you're saying. In my mind, the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan changes the priors in determining if it was purely symbolic.

Yeah, there are at least sub-factions in that group that would actually very much like to put that gallows to actual use and seemingly came prepared to actually take hostages when they got inside.

They had gallows outside, armed participants broke into the building, some participants that got into the senate chambers were carrying soft cuffs, one group didn’t stop trying to get to capitol staff and Congresspeople until a women with them was shot.

If I was Bezos I wouldn’t shrug off a guillotine but you have to ignore a lot of what happened in DC to try to make the events and intent equal.

What were these people armed with?

Which people do you mean by “these”? The insurrectionists had pipe bombs and molotovs. No idea about the BLM or the anticapitalism stuff in the summer.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/2-pipe-bombs-and-cooler-of...

And it'll be forever hard to answer what the people in the Capitol had with them because they were just let out and weren't arrests didn't really start until that evening when supporting LE finally came in.

There are photographs and video. A truck was found parked outside the capitol filled.

They found them during the riot, not afterward.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurati...

Having watched a chronological, narration-less series of footage from the day it does appear there was an organized contingent operating among the larger chaos.

I meant literally the people that went inside the Capitol we know those things were floating around in the crowd generally but not what the people inside had. I also saw that one LARP group heading up the stairs looking organized but IDK if they were spotted with anything particularly bad, haven't watched everything that happened for sure though.

There are photographs of people inside the chambers with cuffs and tasers. One was recently arrested for it: https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates...

The gallows were clearly for show in my opinion, but the same group also did actually storm the building and send a bunch of cops to the hospital, killing one.

I've been reading Trump spaces online for a long time and I feel strongly that a subset of those protesters absolutely would have murdered members of Congress if they got that far in time.

Just a friendly chop off your head threat!

I think there's a line between prop to get attention and a threat which comes down to will you use it given the chance (or can you use it). At the very least they never tried to break into anywhere Bezos actually was...

I have a hard time believing that the person who set it up didn't think it would be perceived as a threat.

Mostly peaceful guillotine.

Threatening to behead someone outside their home is violence!

It may meet the threshold for assault, depending on jurisdiction.

In the U.S., the crime of assault consists of acting as if you are about to hurt someone, including verbal and gestural threats. Actually harming them comes under the umbrella of the separate crime of "battery", hence the phrase "assault and battery".

So yes, if you go to someone else's house, set up a "slicey boi", and behave as if you fully intend to use it, you could be charged with a violent crime.

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