It wasn't the first time he was breaking the rules though. He was kicked not because of that particular event but because the virtue-signalling potential of kicking him outweighed the benefits of keeping him around once he lost the election. The Capitol attack was just a convenient excuse for kicking a troublemaker that according to their own rules should've been gone long ago.
If Twitter truly cared about their rules and acted with integrity they would've kicked him way sooner, but they didn't because he generated them tons of "growth & engagement" while he was President.
You watched a group of idiots who thought they knew something they didn't, cosplaying as characters from their 5th grade social studies textbooks. Just plain ol' mob violence. There isn't anything about that day that would have been viewed differently by Twitter in a pre-2001 mindset.
Yes, some things changed after 2001 -- a media company declining to publish statements they don't want on their platform isn't one of them.
Alternative slates of electors, contingent elections, principled opposition from within the party -- you know, just plain ol' everyday mob violence things.
I think terrorism is premeditated and conducted with hatred. This certainly describes some people who were there, but the problem with a mob is that 90% of the people are just blindly following others and aren’t thinking.
You’re a terrorist if you planned for months to storm the capitol. You’re an idiot if you showed up to see your favorite reality TV star and blindly followed the crowd wherever they went.
Terrorists are not Marvel villains that just want to sow pain and destruction against all that is good.
It's just a label applied to the "enemy", and the enemy usually is not much different than you, they just have a different opinion and a different enemy than you do.
The Capitol idiots are idiots like us that wouldn't storm the Capitol. They don't pray to Satan and bathe in blood. They've just drank a little too much propaganda kool aid like you've done, but from another jug.
Trump isn't the root of all evil. Blindly following personalities and ideologies is the root of all evil.
I must have missed the part where the Jan 6th insurrectionists had machine guns and bombs and took hostages. Pretty alarming, if true. Do you have sources for how these two events are at all similar beyond that both involved unlawful entry into a government building?
What terrorism is now (and for most of the 20th century) is an unbelievably politicized term that for around a decade was synonymous with Muslim who attacks anyone or advocates attacking anyone, including the soldiers occupying their countries. The term originated as a positive thing for late 19c anarchists who simply defined it as a tactic of asymmetric warfare against an enemy that so outnumbers you that they would be impossible to militarily defeat, so you break their morale through random, extremely varied attacks against individuals and small groups over an extended period of time, prioritizing as targets those who would normally feel the safest.
Terrorism isn't about "lawfulness." They just threw that in because violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims is what most countries do at all times. The definition wants to call war "lawful."
What specific acts did the Jan 6th rioters commit that would count as terrorism or insurrection? Is it insurrection to damage public property and disobey government orders? How were they planning on taking hostages without guns? Were they going to beat people with flagpoles?
> How were they planning on taking hostages without guns?
Don't be obtuse. Had members of Congress not evacuated their chambers just the fact a mob was outside the doors would be holding them hostage. Several rioters had flexi-cuffs and other bindings. It's not terribly difficult to hold someone hostage. It's downright easy for a large group of people to imprison a smaller group, especially one composed of unarmed geriatrics.
> Were they going to beat people with flagpoles?
You've got from obtuse to insipid. The answer is yes. They literally beat people with flag poles. Several were armed with guns. Many were armed with other blunt weapons, stolen police weapons, and chemical sprays.
> Don't be obtuse. Had members of Congress not evacuated their chambers just the fact a mob was outside the doors would be holding them hostage. Several rioters had flexi-cuffs and other bindings. It's not terribly difficult to hold someone hostage. It's downright easy for a large group of people to imprison a smaller group, especially one composed of unarmed geriatrics.
Yes it is quite difficult for a group of unarmed and unorganized rioters to subdue a highly trained and well armed security force, much less perform a coup.
What would have been a worse case scenario here? They burst into the capital chamber, subdue dozens of armed guards in unarmed combat, and then seize control of the federal government by threatening to beat members of congress with flagpoles?
There is no evidence of this being anything other than a riot. And for the year 2020, it was a relatively tame one.
Nope, most reports that protesters were "armed" are "stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles wielded as clubs" and even that is an exaggeration by the media as the number of even those "weapons" were carried by a minority of people.
To date, I believe there are have been only 3 people confirmed to be carrying a gun that was not law enforcement, none of which have been charged with discharging or using those guns in any way.
when you say "they did have guns" most people think it was a armed resistance, it was not and to be most favorable to you it is simply an exaggeration to say it that way, but if I want to be uncharitable I would say you are engaging in disinformation
>they did beat people with flag poles.
Again here, this is an exaggeration, there was ONE incident of that, where ONE person hit another person with a flag pole, ONE.
Well, I regret being hooked by a troll – this is like a layered cake of bad-faith arguments – but for any passers-by who may not already know, they did have guns [0], and describing it as "one incident of beating another person with a flagpole" is so obviously disingenuous as to be laughable [1].
I am not a troll, I am not even the original commentor, I just happen to have a differing view as you, thus you have no recourse or rebuttal than to label everyone that disagrees with you a "troll" because outside of that you may be faced with someone that would challenge your world view
Noted. Intentionally spreading misinformation and willfully misrepresenting the meaning of words, should also get someone banned. This person is not interested in a meaningful discussion, but re-writing history.
Do you think that it does justice to the victims of Jan 6th and the victims of the siege of the Colombian Palace of Justice to say that both of those events are the same crime? They're both deserving of the same punishment?
Attempted murder is the same crime whether done my a compassionate mother with a pillow smothering, or a violent psycho with a grenade. You are making a useless argument.
The fact stands that plenty of people on Jan6 threatened / executed violent action for a political means by an illegitimate authority.
Not an armed team. There were groups seemingly working to prevent the confirmation vote by relocating Pence. The mob provided some motivation for his security detail to do so.
Combined with the attempts to produce tallies from alternate slates of electors; this was an attempt to change the outcome of the election.
This is misinformation. Security systems were removed. The secret service was deeply compromised. Pipe bombs were deployed and fortunately didn't explode. The response that should have swept these people out the door easily was held back at the highest levels.
This was not a group of yokels. Yes dumb people were there, and they were committing mob violence, but that was not the only thing happening.
Continue to downplay it if you like but don't expect others to be silent while you do so.
I'm of the belief that the Jan 6th attack on the Capitol was a very serious thing and went beyond "mob violence," but I don't believe it was a terrorist attack. ("Attempted coup", etc. may be more appropriate) but the instigators were interested in more than just terrorizing people. Words have meaning.
So you should consult a dictionary. Terrorism isn’t defined by whether it terrorizes people. It it about the threat / execution of violence to further a political end.
I think this might be the first modern event described as a "terrorist attack" conducted almost entirely without meaningful weapons or explosives or incendiary devices.
Either that or calling a rioting mob a "terrorist attack" is hyperbole.
Trump has made many concrete incitements to violence. Telling his supporters to "rough someone up", "someone should punch that person, I'll pay your legal bills", "maybe some of you second amendment folk can do something about Hillary".
