The Capitol Attack Relitigated

[CmdrKing]

Your deeply suspicious insistence the modern Republican Party are not ethnonationalist authoritarians bent on the logical conclusions thereof aside, we don’t in fact know what the best parallel for January 6th is yet because it happened a mere two years ago and we have no sense of how it’s going to turn out yet. Trials for its on the ground actors are still underway and it’s ringleaders and cheerleaders are still being investigated. The comparison to the Putsch is useful for illustrating this aspect of it.

[Riedquat]

What I learned from those four years is that the bulk of our democracy's safety measures and checks and balances were nothing more than gentleman's agreements that could be ignored if you didn't care about the consequences.

What makes you say that? OK you say "our" so I assume you're American and thus have a much better idea of them than I do but I got the impression that Trump frequently thought he could do whatever he felt like and kept getting stopped by them.

What such measures won't prevent though are people you don't want to be elected from ever being elected. That's something you have to accept from time to time in a democracy.

[Jonathan101]

Your deeply suspicious insistence the modern Republican Party are not ethnonationalist authoritarians bent on the logical conclusions thereof aside, we don’t in fact know what the best parallel for January 6th is yet because it happened a mere two years ago and we have no sense of how it’s going to turn out yet. Trials for its on the ground actors are still underway and it’s ringleaders and cheerleaders are still being investigated. The comparison to the Putsch is useful for illustrating this aspect of it.

I'm curious who you think this "we" is.

My point is that historians have written extensively about the Beer Hall Putsch, how it unfolded and how it was organised, what the historical background was and who the personalities were, and they are any number of differences between the two.

There are hundreds of other coups and disturbances in history to choose from that more closely resemble January 6th, and people ignore them (probably because they know nothing about them) to make a lazy Nazi comparison, because that's how shallow their knowledge of history is (and as such, treating it as the same can easily backfire).

And the Nazi's were far more than just ethnonationalist authoritarians- those are a dime a dozen.

[CmdrKing]

“We” as in the entire population of earth, because January 6th 2021 was less than two years ago and it’s fallout and knock-on effects are still ongoing and those who seek to replicate it still occupy seats of power, so there is in fact no reputable way to confidently claim to know it’s impact and result.

If you believe there are better, readily understood parallels that illustrate this, then by all means share them. This insistence upon precision of historic parallels without providing better examples does nothing for anyone except muddy the waters.

[Jonathan101]

“We” as in the entire population of earth, because January 6th 2021 was less than two years ago and it’s fallout and knock-on effects are still ongoing and those who seek to replicate it still occupy seats of power, so there is in fact no reputable way to confidently claim to know it’s impact and result.

If you believe there are better, readily understood parallels that illustrate this, then by all means share them. This insistence upon precision of historic parallels without providing better examples does nothing for anyone except muddy the waters.

The point is that you clearly do NOT know other parallels and don't seem to know much of anything about the Beer Hall Putsch either, but still insist on making comparisons on the grounds of "It might be the same, we don't know", which is just silly hypervigilance and historical ignorance, and if anything might even backfire.

The Beer Hall Putsch was just one of several attempts to overthrow the Weimar Republic (by both the extreme left and the extreme right) in it's infancy, after the Republic had been imposed from above practically overnight on a population used to a semi-democratic authoritarian constitutional monarchy, at the end of a major world war that saw the rise of numerous authoritarian regimes across Europe and the world including the Soviet Union, a Marxist state that saw Communist revolution in Germany as essential for it's own survival and for that of Communism in general. The plan was to overthrow an existing Socialist government and install the aging Field Marshall Ludendorff as a military dictator, and Hitler was only invited to participant in the plot as a co-conspirator; it only became associated with him because he hijacked it after the others got cold feet but Ludendorff screwed it up himself and the Putsch didn't get within 300 miles of the capital before it was foiled, but had clear goals and a mixed chance of succeeding. due to the army being sympathetic and at that point very weak.

The USA has been a democratic republic for centuries and has the most powerful military force in human history. The rioters didn't want to overthrow the existing government but to keep it in power, and didn't have any clear plan for making it happen beyond just protesting, looting, smashing and attacking people, and weren't were more like an angry mob (or bunch of mobs) than an organised military coup. The whole thing comes off as more "last minute" and they didn't have any realistic goals for succeeding if the army had to be held back from stopping them- they could have done a lot of damage and perhaps even killed many people but they had zero chance of actually keeping Trump in power without the army supporting them, and so far as I know none of the participants had plans to start a war of expansion with their next door neighbours. The sentiments that brought Trump to power have been festering in America for a long time and exploded as the result of changes in the law during the Bush / Obama years as well as the rise of social media and many other trends, and those problems aren't going to just because the leaders are thrown in jail.

If you want closer historical comparisons to what is going on in the USA right now, look into things like Spanish Carlism or the late Roman Republic, or the Know Nothing Party or the time Jackson was elected and rioters trashed the White House if you want to keep things American. Look at any number of instances in history that have any number of books and essays written about them; don't fall back on Hitler all the time just because he's one of the only historical figures you've actually heard of.

[CmdrKing]

0/10, chose insults and broad historical movements over actual illustrative examples. Continues to fail to understand the importance of known points of reference in human communication. Continues to demonstrate worrying need to distance current Republican Party from fascistic tendencies despite their clear willingness to lay the foundations for genocidal acts.

[clearspira]

0/10, chose insults and broad historical movements over actual illustrative examples. Continues to fail to understand the importance of known points of reference in human communication. Continues to demonstrate worrying need to distance current Republican Party from fascistic tendencies despite their clear willingness to lay the foundations for genocidal acts.

You basically just ignored every point he just made.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I agree with the points Jonathan is making for the most part. It does beg the question not for if it's historically significant in comparison, but that if it has to be compared in the first place. It's a significant point in history when our political system is at odds with itself despite the effectiveness of the attempted coup.

A lot of the concern seems appropriately comparable to the different levels of, say, football fanatics. You have your professional attire, and it travels similarly down to the high school level in some areas. This type of coup we kind of have a hard time not recognizing it as the high school variety, in which case it's more charming of the particular area itself more than an underlying condition of football in general compared to collegiate or professional.

[McAvoy]

Oh I think there is without doubt the Jan 6th riot is historically significant. It probably will be in public school text books in about five years. At least in the more liberal ones. I am sure it will take longer in other places.

I do agree it's more riot than any form of attempt at government takeover. If you think it was a take over:

What was the goal?

How do they accomplish the goal?

How do they make it permanent and not reversed the next day?

Everything suggests that this was a protest that got violent and became a riot. There was nothing organized about it. No way in hell would anything they did would be permanent. Nor does it look like there was organized with intention of doing it.

With absolutely no support. US Military would not answer to them and in fact will shoot them first and ask questions later.

[Draco Dracul]

What was the goal?

To prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which is why it was happening on January 6th.

How do they accomplish the goal?

By murdering congress.

How do they make it permanent and not reversed the next day?

By having the sitting president on their side. If that would be enough is a question we won't know the answer to because they failed.

With absolutely no support. US Military would not answer to them and in fact will shoot them first and ask questions later.

The question isn't if they'd answer to them, its if they would answer to Trump because even if he had zero direct involvement, we know for a fact he was looking for a way to get the 2020 election declared invalid and had they succeeded the election technically wouldn't have been certified, and the main civilian check on his power would be the Supreme court, three of which he apointed, two of whom shamelessly vote for what ever the republicans want, and one who has a modicum of shame, but is extremely conservative.

If the Supreme Court sides with Trump and hands him the election, the military is at a crossroads, they can either stand down and let the country be stolen or uphold the election at the cost of making it very clear that when push comes to shove the military gets to decide who is and isn't president. It could even have a split that puts the US into a brutal civil war.