Jpx0999 - His girlfriends overthrowing the government would be a twist lmao.
Shahryar - At least he's ambitious xD
(***)
For legal reasons, I wish to state that the explanations on how to overthrow a government in this chapter are purely theoretical. Don't do that at home. Unless your home in Venezuela, Iran, Russia or China, then I'm open to negotiations lmao
(***)
The art of overthrowing a government is much more complicated, but also much simpler than a lot of people suspect, the waters here being muddled by terminology being so consistently misused that many words became basically interchangeable. While they probably shouldn't.
There are several ways of doing it.
The first one is a riot, typically defined as bottom-up and rather aggressive street protests, with a lot of clashes with the police. You can expect them to - if they last for a longer period of time - start being organized, but in the end, their beginnings are typically spontaneous.
Riots aren't organized nor armed enough to successfully overthrow the government through force of arms. However, they signify a deeper problem with public distrust and hatred towards the government, especially when sufficiently large and paralyzing to the country as an institution.
As a result, it's not uncommon for sufficiently large riots to force the government to resign, with no military involvement on either side whatsoever.
When you go up in the scale, you have a revolt. Revolt is a synonym for mutiny in its root, being little more than a riot but not among the general populace. Military units can revolt, navy crews can revolt, the term also growing to encompass armed revolts from smaller social groups, like an ethnic minority.
In all cases, it's still mostly spontaneous, but unlike a riot, you can expect the revolting groups to be better armed, and the clash to end in various degrees of bloodshed. The fact that it encompasses at least some groups of the army in most cases makes it significantly more dangerous, due to the risk of the revolt spreading through the rest of your army.
Like riots, it still has to be organized on the fly once it's already started, meaning that the government typically has the time to respond before it spreads too far. However, on the other hand, when the government fails to respond, things can get extremely tricky - the revolting soldiers of the 1st Machine Gun Regiment in Petersburg (together with the revolting seamen in Kronstadt) became one of the main driving forces for the events of 1917.
Above that you have a rebellion. Rebellions, unlike revolts, are typically much better organized, having a plan and forces to send against the enemy army. Unlike almost all other variants presented here, rebellions typically intend to become civil wars.
You can expect secessionist groups to strive for a rebellion - they have no need to take over the enemy capital, their goal is to defeat the army and secure their independence. As a result, unless the government raises a white flag right off the bat, rebellions will almost inevitably result in an outbreak of a civil war.
There are, however, cases of groups that know that they can't hope to take over the enemy capital right off the bat and still strive for rebellion. In the end, its best definition is probably 'a pre-organized armed insurrection', insurrection being another synonym of rebellion.
(there is also the term insurgency but it's typically used to describe rebellions that end up operating according to tenets of guerilla warfare, avoiding major engagements)
Far above the rebellion is a revolution. Revolution, unlike rebellions, tend to have a much greater scope, promising a complete overthrow of the social order in favor of a completely different system, one that actually gets far enough to even potentially achieve their goals.
In a way, a revolution is a revolt (typically of a small, but ideologically motivated group) that managed to ignite a significant part of the country's lower class, due to a wide-spread dissent. The French Revolution was most decidedly a revolution. The October Revolution in Russia was, most certainly, a revolution.
The Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution, in the meantime, most certainly weren't. Their names taken from the meaning of revolution as a 'revolutionary' (ergo, large and complete) change, despite the American Revolution being a very successful revolt that organized itself into something more resembling a full-blown rebellion, while the Glorious Revolution was basically speaking a coup d'etat.
You can consider them a proof that Anglo-Saxons exist to muddle definitions.
Finally, a coup d'etat. Something of a completely different department than all the forms presented above.
Coup d'etat, by definition, is an illegal seizure of power or removal of a government and its powers by a political faction, politician, cult, rebel group, military, or a dictator. In a way, it exists as a polar opposite to revolts, rebellions, revolutions and riots, just in a bit different way.
A Coup d'etat benefits from a public dissent, but it doesn't technically require one to start. Unlike a revolt and a riot, its success depends entirely on its organizational foundation and preparations. It also doesn't require mass support (like a revolution), and starting a civil war is actually something that planners of a coup d'etat do their best to avoid (unlike a rebellion).
Coup d'etats have one advantage over the other forms of overthrowing the government - you don't need even nearly as many people to perform them, they just need to be well positioned and your plan has to be good. The present government being unpopular, as stated, helps greatly, but isn't (technically) a necessity if you managed to pull off a plan flawlessly.
There are many types of coup d'etat, an example being a self-coup. Self-coup happens when the country leader rises to power through legal means and - after putting his men and women in the right positions - overthrows the political system of the government by, for example, assuming a dictatorial position, dissolving the constitution, arresting his enemies etc.
What happened in Japan that day wasn't a self-coup.
There are, as stated, many types of coups. A head of the opposition party discovering something nasty about the president and blackmailing them into giving up their position in order for the opposition party to seize power is, technically, another form of a coup d'etat (referred to as soft coup or bloodless coup).
What happened in Japan that day wasn't a soft coup.
The most 'common' form of a coup d'etat is a military coup, when it's the army that attempts to seize power, or a political group or (rarely nowadays) a cult are attempting to seize power by using their support in the army.
What happened in Japan that day was a military coup, although of a particular subcategory.
It was a putsch, a term coming from the Swiss-German word for 'knock'. It's a term denoting the political-military actions of an unsuccessful minority reactionary coup, the term coined after Züriputsch, a putsch of the rural conservative population against the liberal rule of the city of Zürich on the eve of the formation of the Swiss federal state, that occurred on 6th of September 1839.
Much more known examples of a putsch was Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Another case is the August Coup in 1991, when the remaining communist hardliners attempted to overthrow the Russian Government in order to stop the dismantling of communism (and failed).
Military coup d'etats hang on three pillars, requiring all three to succeed. They are best described as initiative, momentum and confusion.
The first and most important is always initiative. Military coup d'etats tend to start with less than two or three hundred members. They are a prime case of a David vs Goliath situation, except, arguably, in an even worse situation.
A coup d'etat has to be a complete surprise to the government, because if the government knows what's going to happen, the coup is going to be crushed before starting with minimal involvement or resources.
This is the initiative pillar. Most successful military coups could be dealt with by the police (military or even not), if the government realized that the coup was incoming a few hours before it happened and managed to identify at least several key conspirators. That's because before it happens, coups - as stated - are literally hanging off said few key conspirators.
Unfortunately for Nana Shimura's government, this time the putsch had the initiative, as no one was suspecting that it was coming. The organizers were competent, their preparations were deep, and yet the PSIA and all the other agencies of the government failed to spot that anything was amiss.
Or, to be honest, they managed to uncover a lot of signs of the coup being prepared, they just failed to realize what they were looking at, only noticing minor details without seeing the bigger picture.
As a result, the Government was completely surprised when it happened.
It started around 6am, with few simultaneous actions. Group of soldiers seized one of the major TV stations in Tokyo, sharing the coup's manifesto with Japan. Part of it referred to the Government's general incompetence and inability to fix the problems with the country due to being way too lax.
Part of it claimed that the metahumans were a clear threat that Shimura was surrendering before completely, a fact that - seeing as what sort of quirk Dictator had - indicated that she was most likely mind-controlled or manipulated by the metahumans.
At the same time, several dozen military officers that were a part of the conspiracy gathered up the soldiers serving under them on an unexpected morning muster and told them that the government was seized by the metahumans and that they have to act now.
Soldiers didn't know a lot about metahumans. The threat appeared genuine. The dissent among the soldiers (for both the state of the country and recent pay cuts) was there. Crowd mentality was a bitch, and the fact that the army was supposed to follow orders contributed.
Many of the soldiers were swayed to the side of the coup. Many refused, and were temporarily apprehended by their comrades (no one was killed or injured, they were still comrades, there wasn't enough anger to kill people over that), typically locked down in their barracks. Others decided that they have no idea which side to support, so they won't support any.
The coup was mostly hanging on colonels and majors, with scarce few generals being a part of it. As a result, a lot of generals that protested and demanded for the coup members to stand down were subsequently arrested as supposed puppets of the metahumans or traitors to the country.
Soldiers swayed to the side of the coup gave it much needed manpower. While the Government was still largely unaware of what was happening, they began to be deployed towards local governmental offices and other strategic locations.
The biggest group began to march towards the National Diet. The instant victory condition of any coup d'etat is arresting or otherwise eliminating the government, as then you have no one left to resist you.
It didn't work as intended everywhere. A good example was Musutafu. Death Arms had issues adapting to the new world, but he was still well liked by his soldiers and a proof that not being a fan of the protagonist doesn't automatically make you incompetent, a traitor or both.
Besides, some of his soldiers ended up meeting the heroes, especially during the Gunga Mountain battle.
As a result, the putsch in Musutafu lasted for about twenty-seven minutes before all agitators were arrested, Death Arms realizing correctly that there was an on-going military coup d'etat and calling Yagi Toshinori.
This is where the second pillar of a coup d'etat comes into the play - the momentum. While the primary objective of any coup d'etat is the elimination of the government, the secondary objective is always obtaining the aura of inevitability.
Many people are willing to follow the victors, especially those who in general have no strong feelings about either side.
In order to sway those people to their side, coup d'etat has to appear successful and victorious at all times. Informational chaos in the media has to be taken advantage of, the media have to report (true or false) successes of the coup in order to make it appear like it's winning, even when it's not exactly winning.
The French Revolution and the fall of Bastille was a good example of momentum, although during the early stage of the revolution. Bastille was a prison-fortress - one barely garrisoned, and no longer used for political prisoners. However, revolutionnaires capturing it sent a message saying 'we can win'.
And that was enough.
Momentum was a reason why the coup leaders didn't exactly care if Shimura and the parliamentarians were in the National Diet. Even if there wasn't anyone there, capturing the National Diet building and the Prime Minister's Residence right next to it would send a powerful message to the country.
A coup d'etat was no place for indecisiveness, especially on the side of the coup. Sudden bout of indolence or indecisiveness among its leadership turned almost successful attempts to overthrow governments into complete failures in the past, simply because it made potential members of the coup (or even those that already switched to its side) start suspecting that something was going wrong.
And, worst of all, it gave the Government - who was still a Goliath to the coup's David - time to respond.
This is where the third pillar came in - namely, the confusion. The biggest advantage on the side of the coup is that they know who is with them and who isn't, while the Government is being totally surprised.
If there is something akin to a coup d'etat 101 (probably a CIA brochure, then again, most great powers of the world planned a lot of those), then the rule one on it would be to not give the Government time to respond. And, even better, to not give it the time to realize what was happening.
The coup d'etat against Nana Shimura's government took that to heart.
Communication lines were cut, major radio towers in the vicinity of the National Diet were captured, switched off or blown up, the coup forces deploying several radio jammers in order to keep the government in the dark and prevent Shimura from managing to rally the loyalists to her defense.
Eventually, the power station supplying that part of Tokyo was switched off. Slightly excessive move, with the National Diet having its own emergency power supply, but the coup decided to take no risks with it and go all out.
The internet was filled with fake news, most of it not even produced by the putsch members, merely spawned naturally from the chaos. A lot of things weren't even reported about yet, the coup at this point lasting for less than two hours.
What was prepared were fake words of support from many key figures of Japan from the computer, unleashed upon the internet and the media by the coup. They were nearly indistinguishable from real ones (especially on a timescale counted in minutes), but they strengthened the legitimacy of the coup and made Shimura unable to tell who was with her and who wasn't.
She was in her residence when the coup started, but her means of communicating with the world were heavily limited; what was going through indicated that the coup had all but succeeded.
It was psychological warfare, too. If Nana Shimura decided that the putsch won, it would win. Instead, she refused to back down and decided to stay in the Diet, using whatever phones around that still had a reception to try to figure out what was happening.
However, she couldn't be sure if the people she phoned were on her side - meaning that they could as well be leaking intel to the coup, potentially threatening what was left of the Government's chances of resisting the coup.
But that's when things get tricky - and not for the Government. Because the coup's third pillar failed. For two separate reasons.
The first one was the fact that Death Arms succeeded in suppressing the putsch in his own military unit and warned Yagi Toshinori of what was going on. The original coup plan was for Yagi to be arrested by the soldiers, due to being seen as one of the most stalwart supporters of Nana Shimura - and a popular figure.
This plan, clearly, failed. It was a major oversight, the coup planners suspecting that he was having heroes around him and wanting to overwhelm him with soldiers. He, in fact, had no heroes acting as his bodyguards, and could be easily arrested by merely a few armed people, without relying on the local JSDF garrison to do the deed.
Yagi Toshinori was a man of action. Less than thirty minutes after the call from Death Arms, he stormed into the Takoba TV station (accompanied with whatever police officers and soldiers Aizawa and Death Arms could spare) and made a speech rallying loyalists against the coup.
He was, after all, a war hero. And a man whose prefecture was - somehow - recovering. He was popular, both among the army and the civilians. His words had weight, especially as he knew what to say.
He listed the countries out there that suffered military coups 'for security' after the Third World War, and how it never ended up giving the people a lot of security. How the people behind the coup were clearly cowardly enough to not show their faces, and that they very well could be the ones being under some villain's control.
He called the citizens to (peacefully) resist the coup, and the soldiers to stand by the democratically elected government. And many listened to him.
With a single speech, Yagi elevated himself to the unofficial head of the loyalists nationwide, doing what the Prime Minister couldn't. Becoming a person that the loyalists could contact to receive orders when not being certain of the loyalties of their superiors.
Many military units leaning towards the coup side or even those that had already switched to its side began to waver in their loyalty once more. Many civilians took to the streets, their protests slowing down the coup's progress.
Because the soldiers in question were trying to save the country, at least from their point of view. You can't exactly justify shooting or beating defenseless civilians, not to mention that seeing their anger made many soldiers reconsider their recent life decisions.
The biggest blow to the coup from the side of the public was the mass protest of Tokyo railway operators, who refused to work despite being threatened by the soldiers, blocking the fastest road into Tokyo. With streets crowded, the march of coup's forces towards the National Diet was significantly slowed down.
And in a coup d'etat, speed - thanks to the pillar of momentum - was crucial. Not to mention the fact that wasting too much time threatened the coup by giving the government time to realize what was happening and form a cohesive response.
The second reason for the confusion pillar to fail were the heroes. Or, to be exact, Eclipse and HeroNET. The putsch organizers didn't realize that HeroNET was a satellite-based network completely separate from those normally used by the police or army, resulting in their failure to jam it. And Nana Shimura had one of the HeroNET phones given to her, if only to be able to read details about villains and heroes in her country.
She knew how to use it.
As a result, by the time the coup's vanguard forces reached the National Diet, they encountered not just its normal security but also a line of ballistic shields of the Tokyo Riot Police, including it's Anti-Firearms Squad and the local Special Assault Team under Tsunagu Hakamada, who found out what was happening and received orders from the legal government through Koichi Haimawari.
The thing about the coups is that both sides spoke the same language, and in the case of the army, made the same oaths. Served the same public. Especially in more 'civilized' countries, to actually willingly shoot at each other, you need a large degree of dissent and political strife.
Japan had a lot of it. But not quite enough.
As a result, while the coup soldiers could walk through the police formation in front of them, they hesitated. Both sides began to stand in front of each other, trying to persuade the other side to disperse or surrender with words.
All while Eclipse (whose anger at being woken at an ungodly hour during her free day evaporated instantly when she heard what was happening) began to warp loyalist soldiers to Tokyo.
Not just to the National Diet building, also elsewhere. She couldn't move a lot of heavy equipment (her warpgate had a maximum size), but an armed soldier was an armed soldier.
As a result, a strange form of bloodless warfare started in Tokyo. Loyalists and turncoats either staring at each other in front of crucial locations, or the numerically stronger side walking in, the weaker one (often without a word) leaving, only to return with reinforcements and the entire event repeating itself again.
The coup was wavering, the loss of confusion beginning to undermine its momentum. But it wasn't quite over. However, it was quite enough to make its leaders consider a slightly more aggressive tactic.
(***)
Nana Shimura sighs with relief, while putting her phone down. They are all in her personal office, and to be honest, Repulse feels out of place. Her bodyguards clearly have reservations about the hero being there.
He is also standing right next to the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior while they are trying to suppress a military coup, and… how the hell did his decision to use his quirk to beat some muggers in the Tokyo alleyways escalated into this?
"The 6th Division just announced their support for us." Shimura says to the minister. "Yagi announced that Musutafu garrison is going to march to Tokyo, and since it's seen as the most certifiably loyal military unit out there, the coup here is on a time limit until their arrival."
Koichi Haimawari doesn't know it, but Nana Shimura is already attempting to avoid the worst possible outcome of a coup d'etat. If a coup is neither successful nor defeated within several days, it'll mean that it obtained a solid support of a large part of the population/army.
In short, that it will almost inevitably escalate into a full-blown civil war. This was the worst case scenario for everyone involved. Giving the coup a time limit before it will inevitably lose Tokyo was a big step towards avoiding that.
The coup could still succeed if someone managed to rouse the soldiers gathered in front of the National Diet into storming it, but the chances of it were slimming down by the minute. More and more soldiers from Musutafu were arriving to garrison it, a lot of them taking positions by the windows just enough to be seen by those outside.
They moved between the windows to make it look like they were more of them than there actually were. As a result, the soldiers in front of the police line were starting to be more and more discouraged.
"Looks like we'll win." The minister replies, using a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his head. He was sweating a lot, then again, being nervous and worried was a common thing in the building right now. "Who the hell tried that? We still haven't figured out who is behind it, and that…"
Someone enters the room, one of Shimura's assistants, with a report about something from the soldiers. Right behind him, the door closes.
With a slight bump where one shouldn't be.
Repulse activates his quirk, pushing the assistant (who screams in shock) to the side and pinning something to the wall. Something or, to be exact, someone.
Someone invisible.
"Chameleon, I presume." Repulse asks calmly. If only to avoid being shot by the rather jumpy bodyguards. They rather clearly have complicated feelings about being right next to a hero (who could probably kill them all if he wanted to), but they are professionals. They read the bios of notable villains, especially those more tailored to assassination.
It's enough for them to realize what was happening.
Chameleon doesn't answer. Instead, Repulse hears a click, and then a sound of something being spit out.
A grenade falls to the floor.
She had it in her mouth.
Bodyguards pull Shimura behind the desk, kicking it over to make an improvised cover before covering the Prime Minister with their own bodies. One of them is kind enough to pull the interior minister after her, the assistant diving behind the couch.
Repulse jumps back, the room split in half by his repulsor fields. Chameleon takes the moment of being freed (Haimawari has more important things to deal with, it's a goddamn defensive grenade, someone truly went all fucking out on it) to dive through the door and vanish into the corridor behind it.
The grenade explodes. Everyone in the room is at least partially deafened for some time, but no one dies.
Chameleon escapes in the commotion.
Nana Shimura has enough. The explosion was audible outside, and she decided to take the risks. She ends up walking out of the Diet, covered by Haimawari's shields to avoid being sniped and still clearly injured (not to mention having her clothes tattered). She grabs a megaphone from Hakamada and announces that she was just almost assassinated by a metahuman.
The soldiers that came to save Japan from the metahuman plot have no idea how to respond to that. Some claim that it's a set-up, none of them saw the supposed assassination attempt. But others were already wavering in their loyalty to the coup.
They begin to surrender ten minutes later, a single man surrendering starting a landslide among his comrades, the coup's attempt to decapitate the government and cause further chaos through the assassination of the Prime Minister failing spectacularly and sealing their failure.
It was 9:32am when it happened, a bit more than three hours and thirty minutes after the coup started. The events in front of the National Diet became the catalyst for the coup's swift downfall, its momentum, confusion and a sizable part of legitimacy lost.
Less than thirty minutes later Izuku Midoriya woke up, just to discover during breakfast (when Mei's father checked the news on his phone) what he missed.
The last group of soldiers loyal to the coup surrendered four hours later.
(***)
Sorry for missing out on an update (or maybe two even), I've decided to take a hard-earned monthly break from writing after dishing out like 1,5M words in the past forteen months and I've gotten a bit too engrossed in playing Rimworld.
Also, 'Moderates' am I right? xD