Jan. 6 ‘tourists’ were planning to erect gallows weeks before they attacked the Capitol

One of the most enduring—and horrifying—sights of the Jan. 6 insurrection was an actual gallows erected on the west side of the Capitol. Yesterday, People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch revealed that plans to erect the gallows were underway almost as soon as The Messiah, Lord Donald Trump, The Most Merciful, issued his now-infamous call to arms on Twitter.

According to analysis from the nonprofit research group Advance Democracy, literally within hours of Trump calling for his followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6 and “be wild,” posters at TheDonald.win—successor to the r/The_Donald subreddit—took it as an order. One poster, CaptainChrisBacon, posted a picture asking, “Who Is Bringing The Gallows On January 6th, 2021?” The picture depicted the hanging of a Confederate war criminal—ironic given the number of Confederate flags on display at the insurrection.

Another poster, sunlessmage743, started a thread about the details of building a gallows, saying it could easily be done “with the right plan and the right people bringing pre cut materials to the site.” Respondents were positively giddy. One claimed that the scene would be “so 1776.” When user DJT2020 suggested they should also build a guillotine, user webthing offered to build it. User jc99ta mused that a guillotine could be used to slice watermelons when it wasn’t being used to behead people.

Talk about a gallows dominated TheDonald.win for days afterward.