We refused to leave and fortunately they left and let us have a peaceful march.
There doesn’t seem to be an interest in separating out the extreme minority that protest violently. There had been zero violence or destruction that day. A very well-behaved crowd exercising peaceful civil disobedience met by violence from police. In 2020.
> after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction.
The thing is that they can. That's a very deliberate tactic, down to planting of provocators.
If you been watching what's going on around the world, the allegations of that, including provocator planting, followed pretty much every major demonstration event.
It's naive, if not silly, to use that "hey, he started it first!" argument at the time when the fact of confrontation happening is already obvious.
The talk now should not be who started the violence, but how to end it, a peace treaty to say.
There exists an asymmetry in the dynamics of protesters vs police during a protest. Very simple:
Anyone can be 'planted' in a group of protesters to start stirring up trouble (agent-provocateur). Then the police have 'justification' to use whatever amount of force they think is required.
On the other hand, it's practically impossible for a regular citizen to be embedded into a riot police response unit.
Add to that the police have practically no real oversight and investigate themselves (assuming internal affairs counts as police).
One side can't fail (except morally), while the other side always will end up with the shorter end of the stick.
Thanks.
Mostly flashbangs, fireworks, tear gas and mace.
A couple of videos associated with incidents in Seattle from tonight are here:
- https://twitter.com/izaacmellow/status/1267679820600668161
- https://twitter.com/jxyzn/status/1267684722341064704 (same incident, higher angle)
- https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1267673936659021830
The general characterization I would give is that there have been calm periods, and then moments of intense chaos. In the chaos, protestors have often been throwing projectiles (mostly plastic bottles, occasionally firecrackers; some have claimed bricks have been thrown in Seattle, but I haven't seen it myself).
However, in general I would say that the SPD has repeatedly been the party to _instigate_ the chaos, by launching a round of flashbangs, mace, and pepper spray.
Are the lockdowns optional now? Are they situational depending on the politics of the event? Because it sure seems like it. Georgia got hammered for reopening too early, but nobody had much to say about Atlanta having massive protests over the past days. Either the lockdowns are unnecessary or they are necessary and people are putting public health at serious risk with these “large gatherings.”
I wish we could reboot 2020. It’s a g-damned mess.
So, yes, context matters. I would absolutely argue the value in the being part of the strongest push against police brutality in decades, that just might result in systemic change, is incredibly more worthy than virtually any other activity. It does not mean there is no public health cost. It does mean it is a tragic choice to have to make.
In this specific case, it looks like the police officer will face justice. But that only happened after the huge public outcry, and it didn't happen in countless other cases even when there was a big-but-not-as-big outcry. In many cases, not only have the officers escaped trial, they've actually kept their jobs!
That's what people are protesting.
Yes, outrageous police conduct has happened before. But for some ineffable reason, this one time was one time to many.
As a less politically sensitive topic for most Americans, I point to the Arab spring uprising as a good example. Tensions had been rising for decades, but the final trigger was when Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, lit himself on fire to protest the local police stealing his possessions & threatening his livelihood. A tragic event, for sure, but after decades of brutality and continual tragedy, who could have possibly predicted that that would be the final straw?
But in the meantime, we now see videos of cops following humvees through residential neighbourhoods and shooting at unarmed people on their own property.
As a result, people are more concerned about police brutality than they were a month ago, rather than less
1. Peaceful protesters against police brutality (including peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters).
2. The radical wing of the Black Lives Matter, who believe that the time of peaceful protests is over and that the only way to change the situation is to use violent methods, especially directed against the police.
3. Marauders and looters: who leverage the protests to rob shops, destroy and set fire to cars and buildings. These people do not give a shit about any other groups.
4. Anarchists and Antifa: their goal is to stir up arbitrary rule, to destroy the system using extremely violent methods. They are catalysts of chaos and their main goal is to create chaos that will lead to the arbitrariness and anarchy of the crowd.
5. White supremacists and extreme right-wing radical groups. They're catalysts for chaos. To make things a little simpler, their goal is to "anti-advertising" any African-American civil rights movement against police brutality and racial riots in the United States.
When has antifa ever been archistic?. They are anti-facist, they dont want to bring down the state, unless that state is a Fascist one (I know Trump is bad but the USA is not a facist state currently).
So pigeonholing people is pointless and no one needs to control anything. Control implies a hierarchy, a hierarchy means you can go after the leaders, the point now is to raise so much awareness that you cant just go back to how it was last week.
The radical wing protesters are all well prepared. There is no way to identify them, they wear bandanas, cover their faces as much as possible. Peaceful protesters are barely covering their faces - basic face-masks to prevent the spread of the virus.
As for the antifa, they are taking the civil rights movement hostage and trying to create chaos on these protests by framing peaceful protesters and peaceful African-American activists.
A lot of violent protests are organized movements. They "advertise" on websites similar to Craigslist and offer $25/h on average. Police is well aware of all of that, which is why they have to act fast. This whole thing is no longer about George Floyd and police. It's much broader. A shit ton of people see this as an opportunity to reach their own goals hiding behind BLM, police lawlessness and so on.
P.S. English is my second language, so when I say control, what I really mean is to make sure peaceful protest stays peaceful. It's needed because not everyone is smart enough to understand that stealing laptops from stores is not normal.
That needs a citation, seriously, even if English is your second language you must know that is a bold claim. Who's paying this $25 per person, how do the logistics of organising a group like that happen? I mean trump pays actors to turn up to his rallies, but they aren't going to get arrested or killed.
Occam's razor though says that they really are just fed up of people of colour being harassed and killed by the police that's why they are protesting, that's why there are so many of them. sure it's co-opted by a some people, or small groups, for financial gain, but these aren't huge global cabals, they are criminals who see an opportunity to exploit.
There was a video circulating of a streamer who tried to instigate trouble at a peaceful protest and he was called out on it by lots of those around him.
If you have ever been in one of these protests you would know that the spark is almost always a police charge or other offensive action like tear gas.
Also remember a riot is not looting, a riot is just defcon 5 on the protest scale, and some people will use that as an opportunity to loot, same people who would loot after a flood or a hurricane or an earthquake. That's doesn't mean the riot is wrong.
Police needs a reform. It's not questionable. But there are many other problems and angles to this whole situation. There is no single truth and it's important to consider all of these issues wearing each group's shoes, including the police.
Seriously? They let him slowly kill a dude right next to him! This isn't a situation where he just whipped out a gun and instantly shot someone, that kind of thing would be hard to stop in time, they had literal minutes where they could've stepped in, and chose not to.
In the military, I would have been convicted of a war crime had I done this to an unarmed and incapacitated enemy combatant; even in ignorance, even if it had been a mistake, even if I was tired and had a bad day. I'd hope our police force would be held to a higher standard dealing with our own citizens than a soldier or Marine dealing with an enemy of the state.
What's the chances that of a sample of officers who responded, those 4 are the only ones who would have let this happen?
If I owned a martial arts studio and I let a student do that, I’d face criminal & civil liability. Why shouldn’t trained officers of the law be held to at least that standard?
Part of the outrage is how blatantly unequal the treatment of cops and and civilians accused of crimes are. It’s especially galling because not only are they given the power of the state, they are also given extra rigorous training in the safe application of force. If anyone should have reasonably known that kneeling on someone’s neck would be lethal, it would be the cops.
Oh, and all the bystanders who clearly recognized what was going on. Apparently they’re more wise to the dangers of kneeling on a restrained human’s neck than the police are.
I do believe they should be arrested for accessory and face a trial by jury. It’s your right to think to the contrary, but your rationalizations about why they were willing to stand by and watch something that has deeply shocked the conscious of the whole nation is both disturbing and unconvincing.
That’s why we have trials by jury, to determine guilt even though we can’t read minds.
So, why are they still free men?
And they did it even as people yelled at them and were recording. How many more officers might do it if nobody was watching? That's the truly scary thought.
What do we have instead? 3 other "the police" standing by watching and not doing a thing. Being accessories to murder, that they would gladly arrest anyone else for doing the same. Followed by days of police brutality towards peaceful protesters, "the police" showing their itch to start shooting, throwing 'white power' signs and grinning, etc...
Come on.
A global pandemic is awful, but it does not alleviate us of our civic responsibility.
Was it uncomfortable and difficult? Yes. Am I glad I went? Hell yes. Black lives matter.
The protests haven’t worked though for the last 20 years or so. IMO it’s more important to vote and promote change than to block traffic.
People remember how you made them feel more easily than what you actually said. Preventing them from getting somewhere is a great way to just piss people off.
You can. As far as I know, the US is still a democratic country with elections.
How do you know? Do you have an alternate timeline of history to compare it to?
Many of these issues were reversed in an attempt to be tough on crime again with a big push from the AG in 2017. Tensions have been stoked by things like a pardon dealt out to a sheriff who violated a court order relating to racial profiling. I have a hard time believing these acts aren't having their intended effects.
Exactly how is destroying low income housing, small businesses (many of them minority owned) and peoples places of employment going to persuade "the elites"?
If not, please explain how you having a mutual fund means that "the elites" who control Apple aren't impacted by lost revenue.
So if you can't understand how hurting the pocket books of "the elite" can encourage them to compromise, you haven't been paying attention to history.
History says that mob violence is probably more likely to lead to a dictatorship than to another new deal, but you're being willfully ignorant if you don't acknowledge the existence of a potential chain of consequences that starts with "damaging companies' bottom lines" and ends with policy change.
And they were told to "shut up and dribble" and the president said they were sons of bitches and should be fired? [1]
There's your peaceful leadership right there.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_protests_...
Then, people who are complacent complain no one is trying.
You just don’t like the priorities of everyone else so you’re claiming it hasn’t worked.
That bit is correct. Yes, it does work -- for some. But the masses that are angry are whom it didn't work for. When it starts working for the other 90% people wont be as angry.
Are you suggesting shooting rubber bullets is an appropriate means to enforce social distancing?
As per normal, absolute numbers can be misleading to very smart humans when we have trouble intuiting about vast numbers like "100 million". If the goal is to convey scale accurately, its generally recommended to default report population related measures as per capita percentages. That doesn't mean other measures can't be relevant, but the choice really should be very carefully weighed in order to convey accuracy, not to increase shock value.
The fear is that this number (0.026%) will seem too low, which is why we're trying to use numbers like 100,000 in order to convince people to continue acting safely. The real message is: this number is so low BECAUSE we've all been working hard to keep it this low. That's a hard message because its nuanced, but its not misleading. I don't know if its as persuasive, its probably not, but that doesn't make "100,000" not misleading when used for shock.
0.026% is a number that means "most people don't know anyone well who died of covid19", and "many people aren't even directly acquainted with anyone that died of covid19". That's because the social distancing is working.
If it weren't working, based on covid19 survival stats, the human feeling would be "most people are directly acquainted with one or two people that died of covid19". That's a very different feeling. TBH, its still not exactly "black death in the middle ages" type of feeling, but the direct human impact would be MUCH larger.
WITH social distancing, at the present death rate, Covid19 in the US is killing about 1/4 the number of people daily of Cancer+Heart Disease.
WITHOUT social distancing (i.e. run amuk), based on "when hospitals were overwhelmed in some italian cities" survival rate, it looks like it'd be daily killing about 2x Cancer+HeartDiesase.
So social distancing is having big impact, and a really good job everyone, we are gaining a LOT of saved lives for our sacrifices.
All that said, I do wonder if 2x the daily deaths of Cancer+HeartDisease tips into "unthinkable to even openly discuss the tradeoff between quality of life and safety" territory? At what death rate do we consider completely changing the world as we know it? 0.00001%? 0.00001%? 0.001%? 0.01%? 0.1%? 1%?
And at what death rate do we surpress discussion of NOT making the tradeoff as too dangerous (risking thoughtless noncompliance)? 0.001% 0.01%? 0.1%? 1%? 10%?
Lets say you were one of the leaders of a small fishing village without mass media (i.e. without big numbers), and somebody convinced you that you had a choice:
1) Everyone stays in their huts for 6 mos to a year with all the impacts and suffering that entails
OR
2) An extra person will die this year (beyond the usual 3 who die every year). It could be anyone, but you're told its most likely to be somebody who would die in the next 5 years.
Does that seem like a no brainer? It doesn't feel like one to me. That would be a hard decision to me. I think I'd go for sitting in the huts, but if somebody wanted to discuss the decision with me.... I think that would be pretty reasonable. If the whole village wanted to get together and really talk it out and vote rather than just letting the leader(s) make the call, I think that'd make a lot of sense.
Personally? I think I'd vote "everyone stays in their huts" but I would absolutely NOT vote "can't be openly discussed because the discussion is too dangerous".
Similarly, the 40,000 who die each year from traffic fatalities are only some miniscule number of Americans, so why care about those deaths either?
Should we become more risk averse as population grows because the numbers of deaths become so staggering? Or is percentage deaths a more relevant measure?
If you have 10000 people in your medieval media sphere, and ONE PERSON DIES EACH YEAR from an ox cart accident, we probably don't stop using ox carts. What if there's ten billion people in your media circle and therefore A MILLION OX CART DEATHS PER YEAR, should we therefore abandon ox carts?
I don't feel 100% on the answer, maybe the answer is something like.... we should spend the same percentage of resources avoiding unnecessary ox cart deaths as we would at the small scale? That would be a lot of money toward better ox carts, but we wouldn't shut down the world because OMG ONE MILLION either.
> 0.026% is a number that means "most people don't know anyone well who died of covid19"
My wife's grandmother had COVID-19. At 80 years old, she was a lucky one and was asymptomatic. She's in a nursing home and many people around her did die though. I have 3 other friends who lost relatives to COVID-19. Even at the low population rate, it's rather stunning anecdotally.
"I know a few people who know somebody who died" sounds consistent with what you might expect from 0.026% if everyone communicates with about a hundred people... crudely (and wrong, but order of magnitude): 0.00026 * 100 * 100 = 2.6 = "a few".
I phrased it pretty carefully, but I agree it didn't immediately clarify that mostly the victims will look pretty old.... just bebcause "people who are likely to die within several years" is going to be dominated by people over 70. FWIW a few different measures of "likely to die within 5 years" looks like one of the simplest single-index predictors of covid19 survival, much better than just age. If you're 40 and likely to die before 45 due to a serious health condition, Covid will be roughly as dangerous to you as if you're 82.
The number includes everyone who has tested positive, what do you mean by ‘applying it across the whole population’ ?
> An extra person will die this year (beyond the usual 3 who die every year). It could be anyone, but you're told its most likely to be somebody who would die in the next 5 years.
The death rate is not an equally weighted distribution over the whole population. In fact, it's very weighted towards middle age and up, with younger people dragging it down. So in your example it's likely to be more than an extra person in the typical age of older parents and grandparents.
This virus is dangerous to the elderly, but not nearly as relatively dangerous as the flu is to the young:
https://freopp.org/estimating-the-risk-of-death-from-covid-1...
If the young had political power, the response would be a lot different, but because the wealth/power lie with the elderly, the current response is predictable. Fascinating times
The article also uses 60k flu deaths as the average baseline which is incorrect. The 60k number was a particularly bad flu season. Last season flu deaths were ~34k [1]. This season could be much lower because of the lockdowns.
Comparing COVID to the flu is hard, and really should have never been done. Without taking into account the respective IFRs, CFRs, R0, etc... any comparison is going to be severely lacking. It's also hard to get accurate numbers while in the middle of the pandemic. I hope as things open up that COVID just becomes a memory. Unfortunately, that doesn't look like the case so far.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html I'm not really sure how the author got to a 60k average unless 2007-2009 was really bad. The years on the CDC site only have 1 season greater than 60k. Errors like this do bring all of the statistics into question.
Probably doesn't even have to be that long. A large portion of Europe is pretty much back to normal already.
I said we're back to normal, but I wasn't 100% fair: our borders are still semi-closed. We'll probably have another surge if we restore travel in the future from countries where Covid is active.
All in all I think it was a very small price we paid to be back on the tracks in only two months. Some companies are getting out of Kurzarbeit already (government help).
And in case you think 'yeah but the lock downs don't work' look at Vietnam: they are the first country to have local transmission outside China, and they started anti-pandemic measures in December. Results? 95 million people, 329 caught the virus, 0 deaths as of today. Not 329 thousand. 329 people. That is what this could have looked like in most of the world, if the virus had been taken seriously and if our politicians cared about human life.
really, as in having that conversation would bring it into your home???
i dont know where this intolerant shutdown ofconversation even among the educated folks is going to lead us...
Of course there are people in the world who, genuinely or out of other interests, try to contest all sorts of things. The earth is flat, man made global warming is not happening, the earth is 6000 years old etc. That doesn't mean we need to seriously entertain these ideas just because some people do so, or claim to do so.
For all the obvious, on-the-nose proof that reactive states differ from proactive states, I find it very odd that people are still folding their arms and brandishing smug expressions for their equivalently useless ideas as soon as someone else's idea yields a critical failure.
Critical thinking is not an art, nor a science, nor difficult. It just requires someone to maintain a consistent curiosity and skepticism for the utility of information. If someone tells you cats climb trees, you should automatically think, Not all cats can climb trees and How useful is this to me?. And if you have a cat, you might sequentially think, Do I have any trees that my cat could climb? and How much of a tree should I trim to prevent my cat from climbing it? and maybe Do I have a way to retrieve my cat from one of my trees? and so on and so forth. So, someone please explain why, given the seriousness everyone attributes to the lockdowns, to police brutality, etc. Just... why are you doing the equivalent of hearing that cats can climb trees, and then you think, My cat would never climb my trees, because my trees aren't cat-climbable trees, so that makes my cat, my trees and myself better than other cats, trees, and cat owners?
FWIW, German police regularly used undercover, black-clad, violent agents as a pretext for breaking up peaceful protests. It's probably an established tactic. But the situation in the USA looks very different (from here), violent protesters appear to be a small minority of the problematic people, most of which are just criminals using the opportunity to loot.
There are a lot of bad actors that win with choatic protests.
> "Ich weiß, dass wir bei brisanten Großdemos verdeckt agierende Beamte, die als taktische Provokateure, als vermummte Steinewerfer fungieren, unter die Demonstranten schleusen. Sie werfen auf Befehl Steine oder Flaschen in Richtung der Polizei, damit die dann mit der Räumung beginnen kann.
Translation: "I know that we insert undercover agents as tactical provocateurs, as hooded(disguised) stone throwers, among the protesters during large controversial protests. They throw stones or bottles at our command towards the police so it can begin the evacuation".
How many organizers are there compared to participants? How are the participants supposed to know the police intrusion has been agreed to? How do you know there aren't participants who would choose to align themselves with the "autonomous bloc" over the police? Assuming all "good"(work with organizers) demonstrators work together, how would you give notice without giving the "autonomous bloc" ample time to disappear into the crowd? It isn't like the demonstrators are surrounding the rioters and/or opening a path for the police.
As for using tech to track rioters, perhaps it is far from good enough in protest situations. I imagine it is hard to get a hold of enough data to train for that situation. Perhaps the police have been prevented from using it. I know Clearview AI tech has already been banned in a number of places.
Did you ever go to the police to find out what you could have done differently to prevent the indiscriminate charge?
It’s already happening in India and China. I’m sure it’s happening here too, with an added startup component with the example of Clearview AI. The big companies get in on the action too:
‘There are many companies that offer facial recognition products and services, including Amazon, Microsoft and FaceFirst. Those companies all need access to enormous databases of photos to improve the accuracy of their matching technology. But while most facial recognition algorithms are trained on well-established, publicly circulating datasets — some of which have also faced criticism for taking people’s photos without their explicit consent — Ever is different in using its own customers’ photos to improve its commercial technology.‘[2]
'In the 1998 Hollywood thriller Enemy of the State, an innocent man (played by Will Smith) is pursued by a rogue spy agency that uses the advanced satellite “Big Daddy” to monitor his every move. The film — released 15 years before Edward Snowden blew the whistle on a global surveillance complex — has achieved a cult following.'
It was, however, much more than just prescient: it was also an inspiration, even a blueprint, for one of the most powerful surveillance technologies ever created. So contends technology writer and researcher Arthur Holland Michel in his compelling book Eyes in the Sky. He notes that a researcher (unnamed) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California who saw the movie at its debut decided to “explore — theoretically, at first — how emerging digital-imaging technology could be affixed to a satellite” to craft something like Big Daddy, despite the “nightmare scenario” it unleashes in the film. Holland Michel repeatedly notes this contradiction between military scientists’ good intentions and a technology based on a dystopian Hollywood plot.'
'In 2006, the cinematically inspired research was picked up by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is tasked with US military innovation (D. Kaiser Nature 543, 176–177; 2017). DARPA funded the building of an aircraft-mounted camera with a capacity of almost two billion pixels. The Air Force had dubbed the project Gorgon Stare, after the monsters of penetrating gaze from classical Greek mythology, whose horrifying appearance turned observers to stone. (DARPA called its programme Argus, after another mythical creature: a giant with 100 eyes.)'[3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/millions-people-upload...
I have been in the middle of protests when I worked for Reuters and the difference between peaceful and violent is very tiny. I was in the no-man’s land between the KKK and the New Black Panthers in the wake of the James Byrd Jr. lynching and it went from frenetic but peaceful to riot in 8.3 seconds. Actual combat is a a lot less ambiguous and disorienting. Not defending police or condemning them, but when an airborne brick heads your way, it’s a pretty tall order to expect immediate and accurate identification of friend or foe.
It is fascinating to me how left wing protests seem to frequently degrade into violence. Recent case in point was the reopen protesters. I don’t think a single shot was fired by the crowd, nor were any buildings burned or looted. The Charlottesville, VA protest by the extreme right wing however is a counterexample — but it’s an exception that proves the rule. The Tea Party protests were never violent. In almost every large-scale protest that has left and extreme left wing elements, looting, fires, and violence is a foregone conclusion. It’s historical record.
It’s really tragic because pretty much all Americans were outraged about Floyd’s death, but as soon as looting, fires, and violence starts, then a large portion of the population now starts discussing and being angry about that rather than the core issue.
Can you spot the difference between an African and European swallow? I bet you can't. But a professional bird watcher could tell them apart in a second.
Same thing with protestors. When I was active I could easily tell the difference between someone potentially violent and someone peaceful. Woman with a stroller - probably peaceful. Person in all black with a large backpack - potentially violent. Admittedly, this was many years ago but I don't think rioters are any harder to spot these days.
Thing is, most riots are planned and not spontaneous events. Troublemakers infiltrate the crowds and try to cause confrontations with the police. The police reacts with heavy handedness causing those who are peaceful to sympathize with the troublemakers. More of them join the troublemakers side causing more confrontations and eventually it spirals out of control.
The simple solution to this problem is for the police to target the troublemakers and to let the peaceful protestors be. It actually is that easy because organizers almost always knows who the troublemakers are and would share that info with the police. But the police isn't interested. I suspect that is because by and large they love riots just as much as the rioters.
Wait for it...
> The simple solution to this problem is for the police to target the troublemakers and to let the peaceful protestors be.
You are suggesting that the police should profile individuals based on their appearance?
I think I know what you want to imply, but did you note the complete absence of race or colour in OPs comment? And alos the completely different circumstances, crowd control vs. standard law enforcement?
I did notice the absence of race or color and you will note my comment does not include any notion of race. You added race. I did note judging by appearance. You added age, out of nowhere.
Using appearance to treat people differently is profiling, though not always racial profiling. Should non-racial profiling be okay? To your inclusion of age, should we treat gatherings of youth differently than gatherings of the elderly?
The GP says "...for the police to target...". No distinction is made between crowd control and standard law enforcement.
https://twitter.com/s_Allahverdi/status/1267240521052946432
Many protest organizers are constantly trying to identify troublemakers and stop them.
If true, then it’s sad that loss of property is such an effective distraction to facing down centuries of systemic oppression. On a more conspiratorial note, this seems like a good counter strategy for the people who ostensibly would rather the masses focus on property damage than laws, statutes and police training.
On a separate note, the historical record of protests is mostly disseminated through MSM, which has a profit motive for click/read bait. So it’s truly hard to know the extent of violence occurring in recent protests. The citizen record (captured through Twitter, Instagram, TikTok) seems overrun with police violence against protesters and the media record seems overrun with pictures of looting and burning buildings. How does one truly grasp the extent of either?
On a more conspiratorial note, this seems like a good
counter strategy for the people who ostensibly would
rather the masses focus on property damage than laws,
statutes and police training.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
There's a lot of direct and circumstantial evidence pointing toward exactly that sort of thing happening during this current time of unrest.
There are plenty of incidents during the current protests that, and I'm going phrase this very mildly for HN's sake, certainly invite... uh... speculation as far as whether or not there are agents provocateur at play.
Moving away from speculation and into the realm of hard facts, this sort of escalation is an explicitly stated goal of some movements. Example:
You're comparing protests about systemic racism and murder to protests getting hair cuts and lowering taxes.
Of course one side's protests usually break out in violence. They are protesting the very fact that they are inordinately subject to widespread state-sanctioned violence.
People in Waco were also heavily armed.
There's a big difference in protesting because you're being taxed too much (in you opinion) and protesting because people with your same skin colour are being systematically targeted by police and killed for no reason.
I'd also like to see numbers. There are a lot of pride parades, various demonstrations, women's marches etc that aren't met with violence.
I guess my point was that at a police brutality protest, you have protestors facing police which is instantly adversarial and a form of counter protest if cards are played poorly. If you have a reopen rally per the example up-thread, you're (very generally speaking) not going to have quite the animosity between them and those securing the area. And combine that with the fact that someone not wanting to rush and reopen is likely to stay at home per state instructions.
thats very interesting. The difference seems to be in initial reactions of the police to peaceful protests. With lockdown protesters, police showed up in soft clothes and didn't initiate violence on the protestors.
Regarding the much more serious issue of police brutality, police responded very violently to the initially peaceful protests. They were the ones that escalated things. Very interesting overall, and I think the obvious answer is that left wing causes seem to offer critiques that are much more incisive and dangerous to the government.
Why the "government"? I don't think the police automatically defend the interests of the currently-elected politicians. In the absence of distinguishing evidence, I assign much higher priors to them defending their own interests.
"The Women’s March on Washington was likely the largest single-day demonstration in recorded US history" and entirely free of violence.
> all Americans were outraged about Floyd’s death
"Outraged" is a strong term. "One more tragic item in the news which is quickly forgotten" is more accurate for most of white America.
> as soon as looting, fires, and violence starts
No longer forgotten, is what that achieves.
It's not any kind of exception. Protests involving the klan and the Nazis have often been extremely dangerous.
Aside from that, the point you're making is trivial in an obvious way that you really ought to understand. Violent right wingers are not typically on the protesters' side in American demonstrations, Nazis and KKK notwithstanding, because they are on the side of the police.
Think about what these ideological categories mean for a moment and you wouldn't normally expect leftists to put on riot gear and bust heads for the man, or for conservatives to go out and violently oppose the status quo.
This is just you being selective in how you view things due to your personal politics. I live in Portland and for the last couple summers we had to deal with Joey Gibson and his band of goons repeatedly attempting to incite violence at protests. It's a core view among modern white supremacists that they will rise to power atop a race war that they instigate. And let's not even start talking about the 2A crowd that shows up to everything armed in an attempt to intimidate people.
It's a bit much to ignore all that just because you wanna take a jab at left leaning politics you disagree with.
Well, because one is made by enemies, vs friends of the power? One expects retaliations, and prepares to counterattack, and another don't because they don't even know why they should?
Every time when the revolution happens, and the power is toppled, its topped by a greater power, which means one with bigger guns, and heavier fists.
I find it very saddening as the victims of these crimes end up being victims that are ignored by "privacy" advocates and proponents, as if "privacy" is a bigger concern than violent crimes.
I find it very odd that the police still cannot after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction.