Makes me think of the UK:
Extinction Rebellion and just stop oil did a load of stunts that didn’t do any real harm and the press treated like they burnt a city down.
Literal Nazis committed programs and riots in the streets and the press said they had “legitimate concerns”.
They only have an issue with disruption when it’s the left.
Always with the “liberals”.
Yeah, exactly which liberals are we talking about? Maga? This shit is beyond moronic.
Philosophical liberals. Right to private property and engage in commerce, individualist, idealist, legalist ethics liberals.
maybe people who are really into Liberace?
Usually for posts like these I assume they’re talking about the unfortunately large group of milquetoast left-leaning Americans who think the system destroying their livelihoods can be reasoned with, as if the people stepping on our necks are just unaware of their actions, and would feel really bad if we wrote them a letter explaining the situation. They’re certainly better than the neck-steppers themselves, but neither will ever actually fight to improve the situation we’re in.
Ah, the Liberal Surrogate ™️.
Insert the thing you want to use as a punching bag. The right, the left, the middle, doesn’t matter. Choose your own adventure.
To be fair, back when I would have identified as a Liberal, I was exactly the type of person to say “If we just communicate that we’re unhappy more effectively, they’ll listen this time for sure!”
I mean, I miss those days.
Bright eyed and bushy tailed. Believing that most people are kind at heart…
Now I’m pretty sure my neighbors will call ICE on my other neighbors if they ever do anything even slightly annoying.
Spent nearly a decade doing data analysis for the corrections system. Just one small part, but we interfaced with many others in different parts of government, academics, and NGOs, spinning our wheels discussing how to implement progressive reform, reform we have had mountains of hard evidence corrects a lot of problems, especially reducing recidivism. The big hurdle wasn’t corrupt politicians, or privatization of the prison system (not saying those weren’t major problems, just different ones) the big issue was that the average person is vicious, and wants to sit in their house, seeing “bad” people on a screen, get destroyed by the system. A HUGE portion of the population have a vicarious blood lust for seeing people get punished, the harsher, the better. This allows for the punitive system we have, which makes it an open field for other predatory practices. Suggesting anything to the counter will not get anyone elected, and will stir backlash from throngs of morons asking why we should do anything less than just execute criminals on the spot.
Those who don’t either are a minority that grew up differently, or had this unjust bloodlust targeted at them, or someone they care about.
They keep forgetting to put “neo” in front.
They don’t learn that part during their tankie training
Where’s that tankie factory anyways? They must come from somewhere
.ml mostly
I dunno man, there are some who ONLY operate under the Marxist definition of “Liberal”. They don’t believe language evolves and that maybe to most people “Liberal” is the term used to describe anyone with progressive ideals.
Because the Marxist version of liberals still call themselves liberals and have intentionally erased the semantic existence of all ideologies left of them so that they can pretend to be the left.
Sure. But the bucket of people that term encapsulates doesn’t match that definition anymore.
That’s not how that works. That only makes sense if like liberal parties didn’t exist. Saying Social Democrats or Socialists or Greens are more liberal than Liberals on some issues doesn’t make any sense, it like implies that the Liberals are ontologically the most progressive.
Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK)
Is it democratic? Is it a Republic? Names don’t always represent their namesake.
There also is no party titled “Liberal” in the USA, which is what I’m specifically referencing since this post is about USA “liberals”.
Like no, just no, stop trying to make “liberal” synonymous with progressive, they are different things.
The word “liberal” is useless because there is no consensus on what it means. Similarly useless are the words “left” and “right”. “Marxist” is still useful because nobody can deny that it denotes adherence to the ideas of Karl Marx. Similarly, even though people TRY to erode its meaning, “Christian” must ultimately mean adherence to the philosophies espoused by Christ. So for example anyone who identifies as “Christian” but makes no attempt to follow the principles he espoused, is simply lying.
It’s a Tankie thing. They call everyone a liberal.
Nah it’s a leftist thing.
Liberals are centrists who maintain the status quo and at best ask for “reforms” without substantially wanting to change the underlying system.
They think improvements like ranked choice voting would make capitalism magically end poverty and inequality. That if a few more people benefit from social programs, that you can overlook the others still suffering because it’s “better”.
I am a leftist. I’m telling you they call everyone liberals. They even call Trump a liberal.
Liberals are moderate conservatives, a.k.a. Establishment Democrats. And then you have the GOP, which consists of extreme right Fascists, so far right they’re practically the antisis of liberal. There is no dominant centrist or leftist party in the United States. The closest we have in office are AOC and Bernie, and even they’re just barely to the left of center in my eyes.
Ranked choice voting won’t solve everything, but it’s a step in the right direction. It’s worth giving it a chance.
Leftists often call them liberal because many of them use the term to define one who believes in Liberalism.
“Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law.”
Thus anyone who is liberal believes in the right to private property. MAGA strongly believes in such. No leftist believes in such. Thus in their use, a leftist cannot be a liberal.
It’s just a different usage of a term based on cultural differences.
Liberals are moderate conservatives
What kind of brainrot is this?
This worked in some places with social market economy and such.
Social democracies in the West also benefit from being imperialist.
“liberal” here, smash that storefront for me I have to go to work thanks 👍
classical liberals maybe
Are we talking about Martínez de la Rosa-era liberals? (that was on the 30’s. The 1830’s)
Classical liberalism was an improvement over what came before it. Neoliberalism is when it morphed into anarcho-capitalist-esque “austerity for the poor; rights and subsidies for corporations”
There is no such thing as “anarcho-capitalist”
Anarchism is fundamentally oppositional to capitalism.
These tend to be libertarians from Texas or something. You are right though
Confidently wrong. There are different kinds of anarchism, and yours might be fundamentally oppositional to capitalism. But to deny the existence of anarcho-capitalists is counterproductive, because they exist, and they’re a serious threat to be aware of.
The idea is that in an anarchist society, there’s no governing body to regulate businesses, and so they get to do whatever they want. It results in a neofeudal corporate oligarchy, a la Curtis Yarvin. You can argue that it’s not really anarchistic if it results in oppressive systems. They might argue that it’s only anarchy if there’s nothing stopping them from oppressing you.
The point is, anarchy is a big umbrella, and just because you might be anarcho-syndicalist or something else doesn’t mean that your version of anarchy is the only version of anarchy.
Arguing over what constitutes “the true anarchy” is pointless. Critique anarcho-capitalism to your heart’s desire, but to deny that it exists implies that there’s nothing to critique.
It results in a neofeudal corporate oligarchy
Yes, because it is neo-feudalism trying to wear the label of Anarchism. That doesn’t mean it is Anarchism.
By your logic, “National Socialism” is a socialist philosophy because it calls itself socialism. Which is an utterly stupid thing to claim.
I never said what it calls itself is an accurate description, only that there are people who claim it
it ain’t the same guys saying both.
Goomba fallacy
Keep in mind, the property damage after the murder of George Floyd was started by a white supremacist, too. “Umbrella man” smashed windows on an auto zone and spray painted it “free shit zone,” it would later be set on fire. Out of 20 people charged in Minnesota for rioting, only 4 were actually local to the state.
and msm and fox was showing mostly the looting and not the protest itself.
Hate to break it to you but the same is true in France. Media coverage here has focused almost exclusively on small shops being looted. The human brain has a much easier time focusing on individual tragedies rather than systemic issues, and the government and its cronies (and the local versions of fox news) are taking full advantage of that bias.
Less a “human brain” focus than a main media focus
Um, all BLM has to do is wear merch and hold up a sign and the police start lobbing CS grenades.
The point of protest isn’t to riot, but to get the state to over-respond, brutally. Its why the entire world knows about and sympathizes with the BLM cause.
At least that’s the game, according to COIN. Hearts and minds. Though in the Civil Rights movement, we added lawsuits.
And Trump and the red states are quick with their riot squads. Left wing movements just have to represent and make booga-booga faces to trigger anti-riot shooting civilians with rubber bullets. (They’re plastic and steel, actually.)
And then two years later, the victims are awarded millions from the districts or the US treasury, depending on the department of the officer who decided it was time to bust heads.
Law enforcement in the US has already lost its legitimacy in the public eye, worldwide. We know they’re just thugs of the state, and their response to protest, especially minority protest, especially black protest, figures largely into that paradigm shift.
So, just because protesters in the US still carry signs instead of molotovs, doesn’t mean the protests are weak. It means the state’s responsers are incredibly easily trolled into initiating violence while camers are watching.
The point of protesting is not to provoke the state to kill you so that people will watch it.
There are many points to protesting. Provoking the opposition is one of them. We see this in civil disobedience protests and noncooperation actions.
Provocation of state responders is one of the effects of protest, regardless of whether it is intended. But it’s so consistent, especially in authoritarian regimes, that it is absolutely figured into the calculations of organizers. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, staged actions expecting casualties, but knowing they would ultimately further the cause by orders of magnitude.
It’s unlikely you (a specific person) will get killed at a protest, but we see casualties at protests all the time, and they are often honored, such as the Kent State victims, who have a folk song written about them. It also sparked a student strike four million strong, and helped to speed the end of the war.
Not all antagonistic responses have to be lethal or even injurious to to create a backlash in support of the cause. The No Kings Snapchat account shutdown by Meta is already resulting in backlash against the Trump regime, against Zuckerberg, and against the tech bro coalition in general.
But again, all a state really needs to do is manage a protest with grace. Authoritarian regimes just jave a tendency to take visible dissent personally (or any criticism, really), and then more liberal states often fail to instill in their law enforcement a predisposition of deescalation. I suspect right-wingers just enjoy the notion of cracking dissenter heads so much they can’t help themselves.
During the BLM demonstrations right wing provocatours deliberately caused damage to discredit the demonstrations. Two were caught and prosecuted in Cleveland where i live. Don’t be a tool
Yep. Pretty much all of the negative issues from the BLM protests were off duty cops or non-local white supremacists trying to provoke violence.
Remember the conveniently placed pallets of bricks?
Here we had The Umbrella man https://abcnews.com/amp/US/man-helped-ignite-george-floyd-riots-identified-white/story?id=72051536 And another guy who set fire to a parking lot attendants booth
Ahh yes how could we forget those government-provided taxpayers’ bricks that mysteriously overnight appeared on city street corners.
Then after nobody used them to break windows or anything at all, the brick pallets mysteriously disappeared the next night.
To be fair, I’ve never met someone who doesn’t either support or denounce violent protests in general - French or otherwise. This sounds like someone getting angry at the internet as a whole, without seeming to understand that it’s made up of so many different people that it simultaneously holds all possible viewpoints at the same time.
I don’t think the people saying “protest like the french” are the “liberals” OP is claiming “lost their mind” at BLM. This feels like strawman of strawman.
One sounds like leftists, the other sounds like right wingers.
Leftists would support BLM and not care about property damage. And no right winger is going to want America to revolt against Trump.
The people that “denounce violent protest” are people that have never been to a protest that wasn’t a planned parade. Violence is an inevitable result of protests because the state itself uses violence to stop the protest. No matter how peaceful its initial intentions of protest are.
A “protest” that has a start and end date coordinated with the state is not a protest. It is a parade.
The majority of what people call “violence” is property damage. Property damage is not violence. But somehow we convince everyone that broken windows are worse than broken bones.
The same people that “denounce violent protest” also seem to have no problem with the use of chemical weapons on crowds of unarmed people. You go out to a protest, the first time your eyes are burning from tear gas you’ll understand why any protest will fight back when violence is first placed on them by the state.
Steps to make people watching on TV “denounce violent protest”
(0) Society reaches a breaking point and protest form with the purpose to disrupt the ability of society to operate without acknowledging the injustice the protest is pointing towards. (1) Protest are labeled “violent” because of property damage. Usually with less property damage than the aftermath of the average football match “celebration” results in. But these initially small acts of property damage are the focus of the media. Very little is said about why the protest started to begin with. (2) Police use chemical weapons (banned in warfare) on their own citizens. Rubber bullets, flash bangs, hoses, etc. All acts of actual violence. Don’t believe me? Take a rubber bullet to the head and tell me it’s not violence. (3) Protesters respond to violence with self defense measures. Kick back tear gas canisters, using leaf blowers, and becoming more defensive in body armor and gas masks to maintain the disruption the protest is meant to create. Yes. The goal of a protest is to disrupt society and inconvenience you. That’s the whole point. Stop saying “it makes me not support them when they block the road”. Dude, they are blocking the road because you weren’t supporting them. Protest is the voice of the unheard. (4) Police work to escalate violence through plain clothes officers working to increase property damage and get crowds of people to reach levels of property damage not intended by the protest. An individual act of violence of a single protestor or act of property damage can be used as justification to use violence on to a larger degree on the crowd. The police goal is not to keep the protest peaceful. The goal is to escalate the violence so they can justify their own levels of violence. (5) Media covers the protest primarily on the property damage and violence of the protesters. The violence of the police is not spoken about. The violence of the police is treated as “keeping order” when it is doing the opposite. All the time we watch media people on the ground not “afraid of the violent protesters” but are literally running away from tear gas and flash bangs themselves. Next time you watch media coverage, watch how the media acts, it’s far more telling than how the media speaks. (6) The protest either dies out due to people not wanting to risk their lives as the violence is escalated by the police. OR the protests continue and are primarily maintained by those willing to use violence in self defense.
All of this time. The protestors would leave and allow the disruption to end if even a fraction of their demands are met. Paris protest started because of a failure in the education system. The government would rather spend their money on a militarized police force than on education. That should tell you a lot about the reason why protest became necessary to begin with.
TLDR: There are no “peaceful protest” that are capable of achieving the end results the protest itself is trying to achieve. The state will respond in violence to stop anything that actually has a chance of forcing change. There is no staying peaceful when chemical weapons and rubber bullets are introduced.
It’s refreshing to see someone else explicitly state that property damage isn’t violence.
It’s capitalist and media propaganda to conflate the two to protect themselves.
It’s one of those things that is just heavily a part of the education system and media that no one really questions.
However, it’s also a very easy thing to explain. When people realize that their governments and their media care more about property damage than the lives it’s populations children; it’s a very radicalizing moment for a lot of people.
Thanks. My app always errors uploading images.
I’m going to print this out and post it next to all the No Kings posters. 😆
The same tea-partyers that wanted to overthrow the government because Obama wore a tan suit, are also the people that openly call for the death of people that don’t agree with them, while also talking a lot about the sanctity of life. Fucking psychopaths.
deleted by creator
i support violent protests. light teslas on fire, raid a walmart, block amazon delivery trucks.
but i don’t support, for example, people breaking in and robbing some independent shopkeeper’s grocery store. like, those are working class people on your side…
The petite bourgeois are not working class.
Uh, the Internet is not the problem here. The problem is that liberals in real life work their asses off to make sure that their protests do nothing more disruptive than get people to honk horns. And even THAT is sometimes too disruptive for liberals.
That is a problem, for sure, but it’s not the same problem as “Someone who isn’t a liberal supported violent protest on the Internet, but then a liberal denounced it!? What’s the deal?”
Like, yeah, people who think they can make change peacefully within the system that exists to exploit them are making it harder to actually make change, but they’re not the ones crying out in support of French protests in the first place.
I wish people would realize that the ability to protest is directly tied to social safety net.
You get beaten by a cop, you will get free healthcare that is not directly tied to your job. In the US, if you do have healthcare, it is tied to your job and your job can fire you for protesting if they want (unlike France we have no protection for being fired for political opinion).
Not just that, but US police are extraordinarily different from police in most of the world. They trace their roots back to organizations first formed to hunt escaped slaves. They are heavily militarized, almost never face any consequences for abusing their power, and are usually encouraged to use violence against left-wing protestors.
At points during the BLM protests, Trump called in the National Guard, who proceeded shoot and kill both protestors and bystanders.
they still do that. if they accuse you of drug abuse, and you are too poor to hire a lawyer you get sent to a forced labor camp (private prison)
There is also the gun factor. Self defense is not generally accepted as a reason to own a gun in France, so there is no self defense carry. That automatically makes the cops less likely to react suddenly and violently.
the cops less likely to react suddenly and violently.
Truly spoken like someone who knows nothing of European policing. CRS resort to violence as the priority solution to all of their problems, the French just understand that fighting the cops is an inherent part of fighting for your rights.
Are they this quick to resort to lethal violence though?
Nineteen seconds elapsed from when Stillman got out of his squad car to when he shot Toledo.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/video-shows-chicago-teen-wasnt-holding-a-gun-when-shot-by-cop
French police trace their roots to sending Jews to Germany, just fyi
And drowning north Africans and such
Isn’t that why some of you guys worship the 2nd amendment? in case you have to deal with a tyrannical government?
So it is true. Americans can’t protest like the French. You just interpreted it wrongly
Nationality isn’t the issue, location is. You can’t protest in America like you can in France.
Tell that to the entire American working-class movement of the early 1900s that gave us our right to unionize. They had those same problems but it didn’t stop them. Why? Because they fucking organized their communities to provide that safety net for each other without relying on a third party entity to do it for them.
The problem with America these days is no one knows how or wants to be part of a community with each other. We are so fucking endeared to the capitalist system that people can’t fucking imagine doing anything without it.
A century of dedicated propaganda and class division will do that. And our police are better armed now, and the federal government is very openly on their side.
The federal government has always openly been on their side. That’s nothing new. The state has always been the enemy of the working class.
Them being armed isn’t an excuse to not take action. It just means we have to take precautions and adapt our tactics to deal with it. They aren’t invincible.
Tell that to the Nepalese.
JK the French know how to protest
Because they’re terrible at war, and that’s sorta okay.
Oh no, not this trope again.
Education at its finest.
My problem with rioting is it often seems to be the working class shitting on their own doorstep… surely the most effective rioting would be to target parliament buildings, political party offices, banks and the properties of the very wealthy? Just my twopenn’orth.
This is why riots without organization are just as ignorable as nonviolent protests without organization. Neither threaten the power of the state because there is no power in individual acts.
The french have riots and gillotines. Americans have the 2A.
The fact there isn’t more Brian Thompsons is astounding. Crazy that some lib-cuck-fag (used ironically!) is America’s biggest patriot.
We need more tractors with slurry wagons spraying the houses of politicians.
sorry but that’s an amazing photo. i hope it’s a photo, i ain’t look too close
I’m pretty sure I remember that happening, because my shithead dad was angry about it.
They should make him eat there
Are the liberals in the room with us now
Yes, almost certainly
I see the problem. You heard something from leftists, and then brought up something said by liberals.
Easy mistake in the bullshit US discourse
Yeah the monolithing OP is doing is honestly impressive. Here, let me try another:
“Americans say trans rights are human rights, but then they also say trans people should be banned from public restrooms. Wtf lol???”
Americana’s will only do shit that doesn’t inconvenience them. Which pretty much rules out any and all meaningful protest. They’ll gather in streets, sure. But the moment it comes at a cost- they’re far too busy.
This happens because they slept. And it got worse because they refused to wake up.
Americana’s will only do shit that doesn’t inconvenience them.
For some, sure. For others I think a good part of it is the fear of doing shit that will negatively impact others like them.
I am in a position of privilege and can afford the inconveniences, but what effective act could I take that wouldn’t result in making the lives of numerous other people tip out of balance and potentially cause them or their dependents to become unhoused or go without food or medicine?
For the average person, living has become more and more precarious. We have fewer and fewer safety nets and the rich are quick to make those they have power over feel the pain of resistance first. We have no guarantee of healthcare, less and less food assistance, unaffordable childcare, poor elder care. All purposely done by the capitalist class. This has created a human shield around them.
It’s like the only options are indirectly accelerationist. Cause unavoidable collateral damage, blame those at the top, and hope it inspires those at the bottom to act instead of turn on you? I don’t like that.
That happens because they are not low educated savages with open borders.
Americans are some of the most politically and historically ignorant people you’ll ever meet, and it’s mostly because they’re fed equal measures of treats and propaganda by their capitalist overlords.
Compared to who?
Not poking particularly at you, but there are a lot of people (including you) making pretty broad generalizations.
For one, compared to almost anyone in the global south who live the brutal reality of American politics.
Ok
