>The BLM protesters managed to remain peaceful, didn't assault reporters, bystanders, or police, and didn't damage property. They protested, and then dispersed on their own.

Ummm no that's just false. You can easily search the amount of damage caused by those "protests". There were billions of dollars in property damage.

https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a4...

https://nypost.com/2020/09/05/black-lives-matter-protesters-...

https://nypost.com/2020/09/16/riots-following-george-floyds-...

The context here is in Australia.

The links you provider are all about the US.

The Australian BLM protests remained peaceful.

I misunderstood the comment. I didn't realize there were BLM protests in Australia. Strange that there are people who think the Australian government is systemically racist but then are fine with authoritarian lockdowns coming from that same government though.

Wanting to end racism is a different thing to wanting to prevent the spread of a communicable disease. You can want both things simultaneously, they're not in conflict.

It's also not necessary the same governments, or just government at all.

The federal government abdicated their responsibility to manage quarantine and border security to the states. It's been the states that have been managing quarantine, largely through Hotels (except in the Northern Territory, where they've had the Howard Springs facility.

Why is this strange? Turns out there is a lot of people that see no problem with collective guilt by spreadsheet and scapegoating of those caught on the wrong side of said spreadsheet.

I have no idea what your point is with that comment. If you think the government in place is a result of centuries of systemically corrupt oppression and then you turn around place faith in that same systemically evil government you're either drowning in cognitive dissonance or you're just a hypocritical authoritarian that's ok with the "evil" as long as it puts your agenda in place.

The 3rd alternative is that you're not aware of what BLM means when they discuss systemic racism. It is not just guilt, it opines that the entirety of western civilization is corrupt due to it's creation by racist evil white men.

> They were met with regular uniformed police, like in the BLM protests that happened multiple times in the last 12-18 months.

There were uniformed police there as well but they were definitely met by public order response teams who are much more heavily armoured/equipped and travel around in vehicles with blacked out windows. [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSXL5iC...

[2] https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSiM5bT...

[3] https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/cee5e8e0abbb5138fa1c8d40...

That's why I said you've got it arse-about. You are getting the order of when things happened wrong.

You said:

> The problem is that when you make protests illegal and meet them with riot police only the most hardened/radical protesters will turn up.

This is not what happened. The initial response was, as is typical with all large scale protests - to have regular uniformed police monitoring it, and controlling traffic/the direction of the protest.

The specialist/better equipped teams like the Public Order Response Team are almost always on standby during a large protest/march. They're only deployed when things get heated or actually turn violent.

This is pretty much the same thing that happens in other western countries whenever there's a large protest.