WHEN PRESIDENT DONALD Trump announced on Saturday night that he would send the National Guard to Los Angeles to crush protests, a narrative emerged on social media that demonstrators had somehow given a gift to the authoritarian president by escalating confrontations with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
“Los Angeles — violence is never the answer. Assaulting law enforcement is never ok,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., posted on Sunday. “Indeed, doing so plays directly into the hands of those who seek to antagonize and weaponize the situation for their own gain. Don’t let them succeed.”
In reality, the protesters throwing rocks at heavily armed security forces or attempting to damage the vehicles used to kidnap their immigrant neighbors did not introduce violence. They are instead acting in militant community defense.
After all, would the situation somehow be less violent were ICE left to snatch and disappear people without impediment? Does Schiff imagine either his pronouncements or the empty condemnations of his Democratic Party colleagues will slow down the deportation of our neighbors?
I hope these protests continue indefinitely.
I hope more and more and more people join these protests. Enough so, where the economy is drastically affected each and every day.
More people protesting = less people working = less money for the states = less money for the federal government.
We can stand our ground, defend ourselves physically, as well as hurt the economy financially.
In other words, I’m wanting a little bit of anarchy. Just the tip.
The Regime, and yes, its the Regime from now on, is only following the blueprint from its Russian Mafia Masters.
Over there, Protesting is just disorderly, its viewed as immature and irresponsible. You dont go out in the street and yell at the government for your problems,
you are supposed to calmly write a letter or other appeal to the
TsarPresident and ask them to personally intervene, and go after the middle managers at the factory , or the foreign traders ripping you off or whoever is really responsible for your troubleThe thing about the Reichstag fire is that Hitler was going to do that shit eventually no matter what.
The only violent group at a protest is the Police. So forward all complaints to the people heavy armed in riot gear who are going around shooting at journalists.
Which is crazy, you’d think people seeing this would fight back
Hearing the LEO parrots quack on about, “oh, the protesters are interfering with lawful action,” is so tiring.
Show one valid warrant signed by a judge, I dare them. Trolling Home Depot parking lots and restaurants is called stalking. Abduction and kidnapping is called abduction and kidnapping. All are unlawful crimes in a country that allegedly is “lawful.”
When the “lawful action” is plain clothes nazis black bagging people off the street because they failed a brown paper bag test they should be interfered with. With deadly force in my opinion.
Also all those right wing influencers that have spoken about tyranny and how the democrats and leftists are evil and then are incredibly excited at seeing the exact thing they claimed was happening to them (which was bullshit) that was actually happening to the people they didn’t like.
At this point I wouldn’t give a fuck if there was a real purge and these people were outright shot and left to rot in the streets.
So if protests can’t be violent, and the authoritarian regime mows down the non-violent, how EXACTLY are we supposed to actually win this?
We’re not? One of our parties may be significantly less sadistic, but they both exist to lock the American people into a life of servitude for the rich. Our votes won’t get us out of fascism, they’ll only let us choose 4 years of “good cop” or “bad cop.” We’ll have to actually be okay with making our overlords mad at us in order to escape, and that includes the media; if the news is on your side, you can be sure the rich people who own it aren’t sufficiently concerned.
I’m going to steal your “good cop bad cop” analogy because it’s perfect and I’m tired of making references to the situation being like a scripted WWE match.
I think a really good lesson comes from the documentary “Winter on Fire” about the 2014 Maidan protests. The tl;Dr is that the protestors organized a peaceful march, and the police set up a sniper corridor and started mowing people down indiscriminately. They shot people who ran out with stretchers to carry the people who’d been shot. That night, the protestors regrouped and announced their plans to march again tomorrow, and to do so armed, all 90,000 of them. Like a Christmas fucking miracle, the cops found somewhere else to be the next day, and nobody got shot.
A very important disctinction about the Maidan protests and riots, was there was effectively Two different law enforcement groups on the scene in Kyiv. The black uniforms, and the blue uniforms.
The Internal Troops, who were basically local police who were mobilized for riot duty. acting on the orders of the local regional government, They wore Black.
and the Berkut. who were a militarized police force that was acting as lawgivers on the orders of the President, The Ukrainian President Yanukovitch was a puppet of Putin, and he had his own group of militarized thugs that were used as a personal regime security service, they wore Blue. Berkut was the ones that were largely responsible for dissapearing and murdering people.
Russia still has various forms of this internal security today, their whole job is basically protect the regime from the inside. meaning they exist to terrorize people who are affiliated with the army and regular police, incase they get any funny ideas about revolting.
Anyway, after the Rada (Ukrainian elected officials) Impeached and removed Yankukovitch for Treason, an important note to all those Russian shills who allege it was a coup, Yanukovitch’es own cabinet impeached him… anyway, after he was gone, the interim government disbanded and fired the Berkut unit for their brutality against the people of Ukraine.
This story doesnt have a happy ending though, Russia offered them asylum. and the vast majority of Berkut members left the country and swore allegiance to Russia. So they fled first to Crimea, and then filtered out into Russia after it was formally annexed.
Whats happening in America, Started in Ukraine, this is a decade long battle against an organized crime syndicate thats taken control of multiple national governments. Its all connected.
While definitely not the same level of violence of that, during the protests in 2020, I never saw the police riot and assault the group when there were armed civilian guards. Even five or so out 100+ people was enough to give the cops pause.
Just out of curiosity, what retribution was enacted on the cops for their indiscriminate violence? Because at this point I’d no longer be in a “shake hands and make up, live and let live” state of mind.
None, because the cops skipped town; I think it was said that they all left for Belarus, for the most part.
Non-violent protests capable of dissuading hostile official intervention through MAD. Peaceable ≠ peaceful.
LA is doing a great job of keeping everything calm. There was no reason to send the National Guard and now the Marines. Trump knows he looks like an idiot and is going to try and speed up the dictatorship early. Let’s not give him a reason to look like he’s doing anything and continue to be calm. Republicans, you’re in on this or I would hear something from you. You r’s better start speaking up mf’s.
Right? It’s the cops with the guns and the gas canisters, not the protestors.
And the protests are well into the thousands, yet only a few dozen arrests, and no reports of serious police injuries or death (if anything like that had happened, news everywhere would have been plastered wall-to-wall with that story). On the other hand, plenty of reports of protestors and media being harmed by police weapons. That is less violence and injury than after a major sports game.
Republicans, you’re in on this or I would hear something from you.
Always has been.
The cons hate America, hate freedom, and hate the Constitution. Always have.
Do you actually believe that? It’s a pretty simplistic view of the situation.
I think if you honestly look at the situation, it’s pretty clear to see that conservatives definitely love America, but they have a VERY different idea of what America is and how to make it better. They are working towards that goal of making America better, it’s just that their privileged, bigoted, deeply problematic views would produce a truly horrifying version of the US.
The other issue is conservatives seem comfortable using an “ends justify the means” mentality, when the means are evil and the ends are only based on one interpretation of their faith. That kind of thing would certainly bother most progressives, but in their own eyes, they’re “doing God’s work”.
Yeah, nobody’s been hurt except by the cops. Some waymos and cop cars got burned; that’s what they call Monday in LA.
whats a waymo?
It’s a robotaxi or on-demand flammable barricade, depending on your particular use case
ahh gotcha. thanks!
those that make peaceful protest impossible…
Kidnap vans need functioning tires, just sayin.
Caltrops pop them very easily
Very easy caltrops - garden hose and nails
Apparently, rawlplugs make for better caltrops than simple nails. The hollow tube permits air, which keeps the caltrop from getting plugged into the tire.
Now, the question is how to get the plugs to stick together. Maybe wrap them with Play-doh? It isn’t like they have to last for more than one tire, long as they get the job done.
Epoxy clay for modeling is good for bonding metal kind of expensive for the task though I guess
Maybe dental floss or fishing line to make a bundle? And/or wrap in black masking tape to blend with asphalt but easily allow punctures.
If stealth is key, black play-doh and dunking the screws into black paint might do the trick. Biggest problem with that, is that civvies might walk onto them. As with landmines, caltrops don’t care who stumbles across them - be they cop or child, they are the same.
It is going to be a major issue with resistance and a civil war, that our efforts could potentially harm people who aren’t jerks. 😥
Don’t do anything and therefore agree with authoritarianism. Protest and therefore justify authoritarianism.
They are just beging for someone to hurt them. According to their own logic.
Because it justifies their escalation, this aint LA’s first rodeo, they can handle this. I would not suprise me if there are more feds than protesters in some areas. Hopefully this simmers down and we get some good drone photos that show the crowd ratios and make the feds look like fools.
Man, Schiff is such a fucking limpdick. Sometimes, violence is the answer. Otherwise, we’d all be speaking German and Japanese.
Don’t believe the doubters: protest still has power
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.
Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.
Working with Maria Stephan, a researcher at the ICNC, Chenoweth performed an extensive review of the literature on civil resistance and social movements from 1900 to 2006 – a data set then corroborated with other experts in the field. They primarily considered attempts to bring about regime change. A movement was considered a success if it fully achieved its goals both within a year of its peak engagement and as a direct result of its activities. A regime change resulting from foreign military intervention would not be considered a success, for instance. A campaign was considered violent, meanwhile, if it involved bombings, kidnappings, the destruction of infrastructure – or any other physical harm to people or property.
A very big portion of How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm criticizes this study and how it ignores the more violent and property-destroying aspects of the movements it studied.
As Malm describes, the radical flank effect is a well-documented phenomenon in which the presence of a more militant faction in a social movement makes the authorities much more likely to compromise with the moderate elements.
I suggest you read the book if you haven’t already.
I’m not saying protest doesn’t have power. But the power of nonviolent protest diminishes sharply if there’s no implicit threat of violent protest if matters get pushed too far. One of the primary reasons MLK succeeded was because Malcom X was waiting in the wings.
Nonviolent protest against a status quo ante is one thing; nonviolent protest against an aggressively authoritarian regime that’s grabbing more power by the day is quite another. It is a very, very different context.
I feel like we’re all saying the same thing: if you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable. It’s not about what’s right or wrong, or what the public should or should not do; it’s about which of those two options Trump himself has decided we’re doing. And he has chosen…poorly.
As an additional point to add to yours, every single political protest movement in history has included violent elements. It’s unavoidable. When these political “moderates” start pearl clutching about some windows being broken or whatever it is an attempt to de-legitimize the entire movement, and draw the focus away from the actual source of the majority of violence, the cops (including ICE).
I think I need to be clear, I don’t give a shit if windows are broken or they throw scooters off bridges onto cop cars, I’m talking about violence against humans. TBH, the looting sends the wrong message of greed instead of being for a cause, but not because they’re damaging shit.
I don’t even need to reach into the past for a very clear counterexample: do you really think Zelenskyy could have asked Putin nicely to not invade his country anymore, and it would have made a damn bit of difference?
This is not an invasion of our land, these are democratic protests. There is a huge difference between Russia sending bombs to bomb LA and Americans protesting. If Russia sends bombs, fuck them up.
It is very rare for the president to send the National Guard into a state without the governor’s cooperation. The last time was when LBJ used it to protect pro civil rights protestors in Alabama.
Unfortunately, Trump’s goal in LA is not so well-intentioned, it’s to establish authority so ICE can continue disappearing citizens without due process. It is, for all intents and purposes of the word, an invasion. Thing is, if Newsom attempts to intervene, Trump would loooove to arrest him for treason. And if they do nothing, and protestors step aside, ICE will just continue disappearing people, moving state to state, pushing and pushing, further and further, hoping that someone gives him an excuse to escalate.
And if America sends bombs to LA?
I see what you’re saying, but I live in Seattle. I saw how they spun our city as a “hellhole” and “it’s on fire” for months. I had family members calling to see if I was okay when it was very contained and our cops had been quiet quitting for years anyway, it was that fucked up. You have to have the people on your side, and not be on the side of the soldiers/agents/whatever.
They will say that regardless of how much violence protesters actually do. Purity testing demonstrations only makes the situation worse by allowing the right the ability to dictate the narrative.
What are you trying to say? That the demonstrators should start killing people, looting and setting everything on fire? I don’t think that’s a good solution. In fact, that would just get a lot of protesters killed.
There’s no purity testing. I’m counteracting a lot of people saying to bring their guns and start shooting. I wonder why people are calling for that? It doesn’t seem in the protester’s best interest.
I am saying that:
- the vast majority of violence perpetrated at these demonstrations is done by law enforcement
- if cops wanted people to stop throwing water bottles at them they would stop trampling people with horses and shooting reporters with rubber bullets
- framing these demonstrations as “violent” only serves the narrative of the right
I agree wholeheartedly with you. People are being mixed in to the comments that want violence and are promoting violence all over Lemmy. I apologize for somehow lumping you in with that.
Daily reminder that the media of the time did not hail King as the paragon of non-violence as we do today. The rhetoric were that his protests were violent and disruptive, and that they ought to be stopped. It was only after he was successful that all that rhetoric was blown away and retroactively painted with the brush of acceptance and approval.
Also worth noting that in the 2014 Maidan protests, one of the only times nobody got hurt was when the group announced an armed peaceful march and the cops made themselves scarce.
The right wing called him a Communist, etc…
None of the right wing knows what a communist is, just like not of the ML know what communism is.
I think the government has learned a lot about suppression of protests in the last 20 years.
Find (or create) an excuse to call the protest violent, apply less-than-lethal weapons liberally, and subvert the message of the protest to turn the public against it.
It’s textbook manufacturing of consent
There is a reason that a country is not supposed to use its own army against its own citizens.
The national guard is not needed or wanted in CA. The governor of CA did not ask for you, and CA does NOT want you to be here.
It should be completely legal to shoot cops with rubber bullets whenever you feel like it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
It should be completely legal to shoot cops
I like this better
If they’re always on edge fearing for their lives, maybe we should give them actual reason to.
Why we should scruple to call such a set of people a mob, I can’t conceive, unless the name is too respectable for them. The sun is not about to stand still or go out, nor the rivers to dry up because there was a mob in Boston on the 5th of March that attacked a party of soldiers.
- John Adams, Founding Father, Patriot, later President of the United States, describing the violence of the crowd on the day that lead to the Boston Massacre.
He used this argument to defend the British soldiers in court, because justice demands due process for everyone. Even the enemy.
The Boston Massacre was:
The day that laid the foundation of Independence.
- Also John Adams.
I know this is quite easy to say from the comfort of my couch in Europe, but guys you need to shoot this fucker in the face already.
The people crazy enough to do something like that are the ones that voted for him. The guy that got his ear was a republican.
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When money has no bounds, the power it creates causes problems.
Tax the rich like we mean it.
It doesn’t matter what they say. As long as they’re congregating and throwing rocks, Trump can say “see I told you” and all his fans will believe him and agree. Whatever they choose to do is fuelling his ascension to dictatorship.
Whatever they choose to do is fuelling his ascension to dictatorship.
Which means the only strategy left (besides capitulation) is to play their game and beat them at it.
Well, the only legal strategy.
Any side can play the game without rules.
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Well when we fought the original Nazis it wasn’t limited to the officers and leadership.
