Just wanted to thank you all for such thorough and thoughtful answers to an idle question I’ve been pondering for well over a year and a half. Great job!
Pre-January 6, there was online discussion of how to properly build a gallows to “hang the traitors” including sharing of design plans. While it was not built to hang Mike Pence specifically, it was supposed to be for hanging people who behaved like Mike Pence did on January 6. From the NYT (gift link below):
“Could be built very quickly with the right plan and the right people bringing pre-cut materials to the site!” a user wrote on a pro-Trump online forum. “Anybody got a blueprint for a standing gallows like that? Who’s with me?!”
Days later, a second user posted a diagram describing the cuts of lumber and rope that would be needed to erect a gallows and fashion a noose. A lengthy planning discussion ensued. A third posted a manual on how to tie a hangman’s knot.
“We will be building a gallows right in front of the Capitol, so the traitors know the stakes,” another user wrote.
I didn’t see the actual plans and I’m not going to search them out, but I assume the actual gallows we saw did not follow the discussed plans at all. I agree it would have been useless for an active hanging. But I will guess that it could have been used to hang someone already unconscious or dead. After all, the powerful imagery of a hanging is mostly in the dead body swinging on a rope, not the act itself.
If that was what they wanted to evoke, then an effigy of whatever individual they wanted to hang from the gallows would have been more symbolic yet.
And I love this thread. The Dope can and will go into detail about every thing, no matter how atrocious, and debate the physics and materials-properties thereof.
Many years ago I had to cut down a suicide by hanging. The guy was tall; the rod he tied his noose to was not more than head height to him; he was hanging at an angle with his feet still on the floor. And he was very dead.
Given the other cites I think you are clearly right that the Gallows was not constructed with Pence in mind. However, that doesn’t mean the two weren’t related. I find if highly probable that the people who chanted Hang Mike Pence had seen the gallows and the chant was inspired by it.
There’s a million cameras around there but no images of people carting in a makeshift gallows?
Maybe everyone brought a piece.
This is possibly true, but I think ‘highly probable’ is overstating it. I can’t think of a way to find out though.
If they hadn’t seen the gallows, wouldn’t they have chanted “Kill Mike Pence,” not specifically “Hang Mike Pence?”
You are vastly underestimating how prevalent the idea of hanging traitors and noose/gallows iconography is among right wingers.
e.g. this ADL article on the Day of the Rope includes some memes.
Here’s some stuff from Michigan from before January 6, 2021.
Signs ranging from profane and misogynistic (“Tyranny Bitch”) to violent (“Tyrants Get The Rope”) were raised at the event.
A message from one of the men threatened the state representative, including using vile language to describe women and threatened Johnson, who is Black, with being lynched, telling her: “Your time is coming …from the (expletive) gallows you’ll be hanging.”
These anti-American shitbags love talking about hanging people.
Jim Bourg of Reuters was there that day…
They weren’t talking about that tinker toy gallows.
I swear, some people are so tied to the notion that Jan 6th wasn’t a big deal, it wasn’t a real threat, it was a bunch of dumb hicks, that if they’d actually hanged Pence they would claim “that was supossed to be symbolic, they didn’t ecpect it to work, tragic accident”.
Just a note that it wasn’t the only noose around that day. Perhaps the chant was inspired by this:
I’m not sure whether or not you’re referring to me, but if you are you are off base. I think January 6th was a huge deal and very nearly ended our democracy. I also think that it’s not over and if we don’t take serious steps to hold those responsible to account that they will finish the job.
It’s the biggest deal there is.
I wasn’t. I would have named you if I was. I jist meant that there are still a lot of people out there who are really invested in this being “blown out of proportion” and theor reqction to what was pretty clearly a seriois attempt at a gallows makes me think they’d rationalize anything.
It is, 100%, not a serious attempt at a gallows.
This Tweet from Ryan Miller of USA Today shows the gallows without a crowd around it. You can also see that whoever made it affixed some helpful signs that read, “This is art.”
This is true.
Cite: my 12 year old self.
A favorite pastime when we were learning knots in Scouts was to make nooses, so we researched (homework is fun when you assign it to yourself).
So when I saw the noose on 1/6, I knew it wasn’t functional. Didn’t make it any less scary, though.
It is nice to know that the Trump Presidential Library will have at least one piece of art on display!
I’m curious if any of the folks that think this wasn’t a working gallows would be willing to put their head through that loop of rope and take a step off the platform . . . just for science of course.