What do you expect when “protests” involve widespread destruction of private property, looting, fires, and vandalism?
Well a proper response from the government? Not something that antagonize the population, maybe something more human than using ILLEGAL weapons against your people ? Proprety destruction and looting is what you get when you push your people to the brink.
Look, I understand that the people have a grievance, and there are 101 ways to protest that does not include violence and the destruction of property.
We saw evidence during the BLM protests that violence was being started by police by both beating on peaceful protesters and using agent-provocateurs. The most famous example was the hooded man wearing police issued boots, who wasnt participating in the protest, knocking out the windows of a Target.
My point is that if violence and property destruction discredit a protest for you then the police have already won. They can turn any protest into violence and destruction if not by outright attacking peaceful protests, then by using an agent-provocateur.
And if government would have listened to those 101 ways, People would have resorted to the 102nd way.
How many of them work?
That’s a very loaded question. All of them can work under the right circumstances.
I support violence and destruction, but it needs to be directed at your oppressors, not your neighbors.
Americans didn’t fight off the British with picket signs, they fucking shot them. Then enshrined their rights to own firearms and defend their right to liberty into the constitution as a basic human right.
“The tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants”
Yeah, this is a very important point. The best way to lose support for your cause is to destroy property of those you want support from. It’s why support from BLM dropped so severely.
BLM wasn’t even doing the rioting, but they did nothing to ensure those who used their cause to riot/destroy property were snuffed out. If you come to my home or buisness and destroy my shit, or stand by while others drive in with you and destroy my shit, I’m not supporting your cause.
If people’s property are instead protected, and the violence/destruction is focused towards those who are oppressing them, they’d have way more support and things would get done.
Haiti won it’s independence from the French when it finally killed all the French people on the island. What did France do? It charged Haitians for the loss of property of French citizens. Which property did the French lose? Their slaves. Literally. So the French put a price on each black person on the island and calculated a debt.
In today’s dollars, that debt was in the billions. That debt still exists today, it is stl generating profit for white Europe. Citi holds the debt and collects the interest.
Sure, it’s possible to protest in a way that makes you comfortable, but white society, and in this case especially French society, has demonstrated that they won’t budge unless you do this. They have zero interest in justice, rule of law, human life, sustainable society. If you ask for liberation they will kill you. If you win your liberation that will punish you and enslave you in different ways. And their allies will support them.
I dunno if you know literally anything about the French, but Rioting is a long-standing part of their political culture over there. I’d argue it’s a good thing.
I’d argue it’s a good thing.
It got France to this point (descent into authoritarianism), and you think that’s a good thing?
Riots may have worked for France 800 years ago, but not in this modern world, I’m afraid.
It did not get France to descend into authoritarianism.
When your policies are so unpopular that it comes to that level of rioting, you have two options:
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You dissolve the National Assembly and organise new elections. If your party loses, you step down from the presidency.
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You increase the budget of the police and the military, create additional surveillance laws, criminalise actions you feel are a danger to your ability to hold power, you ban environmentalist groups.
A democratic government would go for the first option. Macron has always been authoritarian.
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So it’s A-OK for the billionaire class to set our world & society on fire, but when people get upset about that & are then told “too bad, shut the fuck up”, we’re just supposed to take it?
How’s that boot taste?
Same old West.
