France is on its fifth republic. Their first republic started slightly after the US Constitution went into effect. Between those five republics they've had a couple of monarchies and military dictatorships. Though to be fair, a lot of those transitions resulted from France losing wars.
The coup was attempted by military that were not happy with the way things were going in Algeria (i.e. France was losing it). They were not the only ones, and France was coming apart at the seams.
De Gaul, who had been out of power since 1946 when he resigned, understood that he could unify the country behind him, and "proposed" himself as a mr fixit. He obtained the support of the various generals he still knew from WW II, got himself elected by the French, and lead the country for another 10 years (during which he ended up getting out of Algeria)
He was always very sensitive of having the confidence of the French, and at several occasions made it clear that he would go if such-and-such vote would not work out. He resigned in 1969 after losing a referendum on some subject.
TIL, however I don’t think that’s important in the context of the effectiveness of armed civilians being able to have much influence.
If anything, rumours to the effect that Republican senators/representatives are only still publicly supporting Trump because they fear armed Trump supporters, could (iff true) be a relevant example.
It’s actually a counterexample—the 1958 coup overthrew the democratically elected government.
Then Charles De Gaulle came out of retirement and promised to write a new constitution, and since he was widely respected by both the military and the general public, everything settled down. Of course, this technique only works if you have Charles De Gaulle.
We've reduced the barrier to making a death threat to the point that "X routinely receive death threats" is probably true where X is any public figure.
On the one hand, things like social media make “blowing off steam in private with your mates” basically indistinguishable from what used to be “going out of your way to send a letter to someone to harass or threaten them”. I don’t think that’s a reduction, so much as the system not accounting for the changes wrought by tech (see also: Robin Hood Airport trial).
On the other: while I expect anyone known to more than 1000 people to have other people sounding off about them — and while I expect anyone known to 100k Americans to have indistinguishable-from-plausible threats from gun owners who gained those guns despite specific delusional mental states that ought to have excluded them from gun ownership — Jan 6th had more than just that: it had the extra level of demonstrating that there were a lot of people who were not merely performatively angry FirstnameBunchOfNumbers internet accounts but real people with the means and motivation to travel to DC and to force their way into the Capitol building and private offices therein, to bring Molotovs and pipe bombs with them to DC, to not merely chant “hang Mike Pence” but to do so when someone had set up a gallows (or vice versa, timeline unclear for me).
