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Comment by _xnmw | Hacker News Reader

> festering a community of terrorists

This is what it feels like to live in a country like China, where if you criticize the government, or question the dominant narrative, or call for regime change, you are called a "terrorist" and denied basic rights like expression and put on no-fly lists. Anti-government rhetoric is routinely suppressed, fire-walled, and forced out. Are you sure that is what you want?

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And then when you take up arms and commit sedition you get to act all surprised that actions have consequences. The people who invaded the US Capitol building ARE TERRORISTS. Pure and simple. They should be put on no-fly lists and denied basic rights like the right to exist outside of a small cell (after they are tried and convicted for their crimes.)

This is what it feels like to live in a country which tries to uphold the rule of law. Sorry if it inconveniences you, but not sorry.

I absolutely agree that those who advocated for violent acts should be investigated and punished. Go after those authors on Parler. But shutting down an entire platform, which is used by lots of other people who are NOT violent, on the basis of some violent posts? You can find far worse content on Facebook, are you going to advocate shutting down the whole platform?

And Twitter while we're at it /s

Facebook and Twitter do not have the violent posts solved by any measure. But at the very least they make the gestures and put money towards trying to fix it.

Parler has been vocal that they have no plans solving it. If they had at least showed some vague plan to resolve it, they would have earned some sympathy.

Did you see the images of these so called terrorists? They have committed an illegal act by trespassing on government property but to call them seditious terrorists is a bit too far fetched. They're a bunch of clowns who happened to storm the capitol.

I'm not American, but what I saw on my TV last week was an outgoing President organising an armed mob outside the seat of Government and inciting them to disrupt the democratic transition of power. There were people inside the building that were clearly intending to take hostages.

There was a gallows out the front.

In any other nation on earth, this was an attempted coup. Just because it failed doesn't mean that those involved didn't have intent.

Well, it was a very incompetent coup. If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters. He shouldn't have said "now go home". It's a very half-hearted coup on the part of the president.

Note well: I am far from saying that Trump is innocent. He absolutely should have known that his words would incite violence. In the most charitable light possible, he's still clueless about the effect his words would have. (I could kind of see his intent being to use the mob to pressure Congress, so that they would be inclined to see it Trump's way. He may have intended the mob surrounding the Capitol, but not the breach... in a very charitable interpretation. Even in that interpretation, though, he still very dangerously misjudged the effects of his words.)

And Trump may well be guilty of more than that. He may well be guilty of attempting a coup to remain in power, and just not have had any idea of how to do it right. (I prefer that rogues be incompetent...)

The Armed Forces [1], Capitol Police [2], and other law enforcement agencies around the country are investigating the participation of their members. It's going to take a while to sort everything out, but I'm betting it's more sinister than it appears give the gallows, flex cuffs, the former AF officers in tacticool gear, and the general rhetoric.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/military-investigating-servi...

[2] https://www.wesh.com/article/2-capitol-police-officers-suspe...

> If Trump really intended a coup, he should have had friendly military embedded among the rioters.

There were military personnel friendly to Trump among them.

> He shouldn't have said "now go home".

I may be confused on the timeline; wasn't that after members and electoral votes had been evacuated safely so the people overtly calling to execute the Speaker and VP, or otherwise plotting to capture, injure, or intimidate members, or destroy the electoral vote certificates to provide a pretext for their Congressional allies to resort to a vote-by-states in the absence of certified votes or to count the votes with selected states excluded had already failed?

Could be; I'm not sure. Still, at that point, saying "Go look in the House Office Building" (or wherever - I have no actual idea) would have been a better move for someone attempting an actual coup.

But a cynic could easily think that Trump could tell that sufficient force was arriving to stop the mob, and that cutting his losses was therefore his best option at that point, even if he were really trying to do a coup...

I think that's exactly what happened. He hit a point of no return and rather than go ahead, decided to save himself.

> They're a bunch of clowns who happened to storm the capitol.

Clowns who beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher, planted pipe bombs, and roamed the capitol with sidearms and zip ties to take hostages.

Still sure they're just clowns?

Not denying that part of the group became violent. They should absolutely charged with whatever crimes they committed. But a lot of the reaction to them is a coordinated theatre by the left to make it seem much much worse that it was. Part of the strategy to make things seem worse then they are is to use words like sedition, insurrection etc

They didn't "become" violent. It was an organized attempt to prevent the lawfully elected head of state from being certified and overthrow American democracy using violence.

Even the least violent among them committed a felony by entering the Capitol building. That someone else broke the window they entered doesn't make their entry any less illegal.

Inserrectionists who stormed the capitol to take Congress people hostage and stop the vote got distracted by posing for the cameras, taking selfies and casually enjoying themselves

It was an organized insurrection surrounded by a circus

> to take Congress people hostage and stop the vote got distracted by posing for the cameras, taking selfies and casually enjoying themselves

There's no contradiction there, despite your efforts to portray one.

People often take glee in and celebrate violence even as they commit it against others.

The german language has even given us a word for it: schadenfreude.

Thanks to the lies from the politicians and media personalities they follow, primarily the president, many of these people also fantastically believed that they were overturning a fraudulent election, and were therefore celebrating what they thought was an imminent success in that objective.

Some of my favorites are the little old lady carrying a little American flag, the people walking in a line between the roped off areas and the folks cleaning up after a couple of trash cans got overturned.

Seemed incredibly tame compared to the riots that went on over the summer that had massive amounts of looting and had buildings burnt to the ground.

I dunno. I think once you build a gallows, hang a noose on it, and start chanting about hanging someone as you push against barricaded doors where that person is sheltering, tame is no longer is quite the right word.

This is what it feels like to live in a country like China, where if you criticize the government, or question the dominant narrative, or call for regime change, you are called a "terrorist"

There's a big difference between criticizing the government and storming the capitol.

Talk all you want. Engage in constructive debate. Run for office. Change laws through the system. All of those things are OK in the United States.

Dragging a police officer down the stairs and beating him with a flag pole is not OK in the United States.

There is a qualitative difference between concretely planning an attack and the things you describe. I am taking the platform's statements at face value, but what I understand is that they observed concrete, specific planning to coordinate a physical attack on US democratic institutions. In that sense, this is not about free speech at all. The actions taken were done with intent of preventing violence, not speech.

Okay, sure, China is scary _but Parler was literally doing those things_. This was not some overreaction, this is not ostracizing mere disagreeing philosophies, this is not like Trump calling the media the enemy of the people. They literally were plotting kidnapping, murder, and sedition. This is an appropriate response.

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