• barsoap ( barsoap@lemm.ee ) 
    2·
    1 year ago

    how does that not still get used as justification for militarized escalation by police?

    It splits the whole thing. Liberals can have their prayer vigil while the police is busy. Especially with jackboots, with individual motivation and not “crack down on them and I mean everyone” being the order from above, all you have to do is occupy them, they just want to have fun. Scratch that itch. Use their toys.

    And then liberal media can go on waxing about non-violent protest, about that beautiful prayer vigil, how nice that is. Before, they couldn’t: Because there was no clear delineation, the vigil and the riot couldn’t be told apart. Thus you enable things getting air time, positive or at least neutral coverage, that would otherwise be swept under the rug.

    And before you go on and say “but the whole US media landscape is captured by capital interest and racists” – yes. And the capitalists want their immigrants. They don’t, in principle, mind speaking of “ICE excesses”.

    I think you’re just a shitlib who enjoys larping as an anarchist.

    What I think is the actual issue here is an American incapability to actually organise. Last time you had a civil rights movement with any sort of discipline was, well, the civil rights movement. MLK, Black Panthers, etc. I suggest reading up a bit on what they did instead of jacking off to pseudo-insurrectionist fantasies.

    the police were already escalating before the protests started.

    You act as if that was something that never happens elsewhere. As if others haven’t found ways to deal with it. Me saying “Telling everyone to just throw stones is a stupid idea” is not an opinion, it’s observed history. It has been tried. It doesn’t work. Other approaches work better. But Americans, in their infinite wisdom, will do the right thing only after having exhausted every other possibility. Listening and learning from other people’s experience? Why, what’s the point, America is so exceptionally exceptional nothing could ever apply to you. Protesting with discipline, diversion, and de-escalation tactics cannot work because you have more people per capita or something. I retract that “fed” and will simply call you “yank”.

    • anarchiddy ( anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
      1·
      1 year ago

      It splits the whole thing.

      It absolutely does not. Anything that happens in LA is being attributed to protestors, and it’s been that way for every protest in the US since before the 1950’s. Any protest with more than a couple hundred people either doesn’t get covered by US news or it gets implicated with every act of violence and vandalism for the entire city. That’s not even me being hyperbolic, US media will even uncritically report on completely unrelated events as if they are a part of a large protest. It’s not as if black bloc is a uniform that makes them invisible to protest coverage.

      What I think is the actual issue here is an American incapability to actually organise.

      I don’t actually disagree, but I think our hyper-connected social media makes it practically impossible to avoid the kind of cross-contamination that soils the optics of even a well-organized protest here. Maybe it’s different overseas, but from what I’ve seen written about it in our media you have the same problem.

      Me saying “Telling everyone to just throw stones is a stupid idea” is not an opinion, it’s observed history.

      Nobody has said they should.

      I’ve grown bored with this disagreement. I think I’ll just leave you with a MLK quote I think is relevant.

      Let me say as I’ve always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. … But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.

      • barsoap ( barsoap@lemm.ee ) 
        1·
        1 year ago

        Anything that happens in LA is being attributed to protestors,

        “The tactic that we’re not employing in LA has no effect in LA”.

        I don’t actually disagree, but I think our hyper-connected social media makes it practically impossible to avoid the kind of cross-contamination that soils the optics of even a well-organized protest here

        On the live feeds I watched I spotted exactly one protester who might have had training. She was good at leading a chant, that’s it. Noone had an understanding of the larger situation, everyone was driving by the seat of their pants.

        Now, of course, it’s too late to build those structures, build professionalism, but in the civil rights era you had it. Rosa Parks didn’t just decide one morning to sit in the front of the bus, the thing had been prepared for months and months. Everything was gamed out, people trained to have the right reaction in every circumstance, the whole shebang.

        Fun fact: I actually played “Greenpeace and police” on the primary school schoolyard. About ten people sit down, hook into each other’s arms, four or five “cops” try to separate them. That’s the kind of cultural diffusion you want, enough dissemination of tactics through workshops that primary school kids pick up random fun exercises as a game.

        I think I’ll just leave you with a MLK quote I think is relevant.

        Indeed, it is relevant: Because you still haven’t learned how to make yourself heard.

        And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity.

        That’s not a call to violence. It’s a call to get out of a comfortable rut and fight for justice, equality, and humanity. Show me an MLK quote where he says “Yo dudes, just riot, man”. Especially the black civil rights movement was vulnerable to being portrayed as violent (racist stereotypes and everything). How did they get around that? Did Rosa Parks spit in the face of the cop who arrested her?

        Maybe it’s different overseas, but from what I’ve seen written about it in our media you have the same problem.

        “Protests were overwhelmingly peaceful with riots at the fringes”. The social media sphere is its own battleground, the AfD basically employs the same fake news outrage tactics as the MAGA sphere does in the US. No, you won’t get Fox News to change its narrative and to stop just making things up, but that’s not the only news network you have. Achieving anything on the social media front requires consistency and reach, honestly not my speciality. Ask someone who has never used a dial-up modem. Centrist-compatible edgy meme accounts with the occasional leap into the radical when the opportunity is right? Broad outreach is crucial otherwise the important stuff will stay in your bubble.

        Also never forget that Antifa action can look like this. People do love to laugh at fascists, also liberals, even plenty of conservatives, give them plenty of opportunity to do so. Nick their clothes while they’re bathing, the whole republic was snickering. Those things are click magnets as you can see them being picked up even by US media.