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  • HeavenlyPossumHeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
    Oct 20, 2026, 3:57 PM

    “Violent protests” no they’re not. This is a lie. Every single fucking time, it’s a lie. Period, without exception. This is a heuristic I rely on.

    The state has all the power. It has police with guns and armies with tanks. It has money and surveillance and legitimacy. When people turn out to protest with their bare bodies against the power of the state, they are exquisitely vulnerable. Agents of the state might beat them, handcuff them and kidnap them, spray them with high powered hoses, deploy chemical weapons like tear gas to torture them, or use increasingly exotic weapons involving sound or microwaves.

    Or the state might just shoot them, or burn them, or drive over them with tanks.

    There is nothing protesters can do that even remotely compares.

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Replies

  • HeavenlyPossumHeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
    Oct 20, 2026, 3:59 PM

    Without fail, if someone uses the phrase “violent protests,” they are lying. They don’t exist. Period.

    Sometimes, when people are attacked by agents of the state, protesters defend themselves. They might throw stones, or kick tear gas canisters back at the cops, or shoot fireworks. They might even cobble together incendiaries like Molotov cocktails.

    The violence belongs to the state and its suppression of protests, not the actual protest.

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  • HeavenlyPossumHeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
    Oct 20, 2026, 4:02 PM

    Do I want cops, who are themselves just workers coopted by the state to do its violence on behalf of state and capital, to get hurt or die? No, I honestly don’t.

    The way to prevent this from happening is for the state to decline to deploy them against protests, which are—in virtually every case—at least formally legal, a right that allegedly belongs to the public. But the state tattles on itself, deploying cops to crush protests with violence and then crying false tears about violence against its poor police and its poor property.

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 20, 2026, 4:09 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum I object to the idea that "cops are workers". Workers can be fired when they defy their bosses. Cops OTOH can bring down any mayor/civilian government who tries to tell them they can't do what they want to do.

    Cops are organized crime, not workers.

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  • KFears& 🏳️‍⚧️KFears@mstdn.games
    Oct 20, 2026, 11:05 PM

    @dalias @HeavenlyPossum Speaking of, are there even cop unions? You know, if we& give them the benefit of the doubt and try to see them as workers - where are the unions, to give them power to punch up?

    Genuinely asking, cos we never heard of such thing existing.

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  • Johnjohnzajac@dice.camp
    Oct 20, 2026, 6:05 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum

    I find it extremely difficult to judge people raised in a neofascist culture, in a society that basically murders the poor as policy, for doing anything to get work and protect themselves from those outcomes.

    Once those conditions are eliminated, we can harshly judge people who choose immoral and unethical ways of participating in the economy and interacting with society. Until then, balancing our judgement with an understanding of relative social agency is important.

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  • Johnjohnzajac@dice.camp
    Oct 20, 2026, 6:08 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum

    Not to be confused with the necessity of having accountability for (the significant number of) cops who are straight up antisocial abusers and grifters. Just trying to say that "being a cop", absent specific offenses, shouldn't be a totally disqualifying bit of history.

    How many cops there are who aren't antisocial abusers and grfiters is a whole other question, and probably one with an unsurprisingly low answer.

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  • ModernMaslowModernMaslow@techhub.social
    Oct 20, 2026, 6:22 PM

    @johnzajac Nice addendum, as it covers a considerable range to also... consider.

    Gen Z on has a relatively unseen element, of subconsciously seeing their agency being further and further abused, as the Tech Bros and Fossil Fuels Oligarchy swing the pendulum of value exchange, more and more in the abusers' favor.

    Combine this with more viral social media stimulii, and you have a recipe for resistance at levels that... well, it's still difficult to measure this pushback at the level of the 1%, going to .01% - since it's such a rarity in human history. These abusive 'elites' literally have luxury bunkers they can retreat to, come too much of a monumental resistance.

    Add in the level of wealth and Hollywood level script writing, that the current US Admin brings with it, and it gets even more difficult to see a 'way back'.

    Sux big time.

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  • eestileib (she/hers)eestileib@tech.lgbt
    Oct 20, 2026, 9:09 PM

    @ModernMaslow @johnzajac

    I have a high school aged kid, exactly zero kids in her age bracket that she knows gives a fuck about the nation state they are assigned to, because the state obviously doesn't care about them.

    It's a short step from there to "nothing left to lose and revenge to gain", and the doddering boomers who have been spoon fed their entire lives simply can not understand that.

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  • Cycy@fedicy.us.to
    Oct 20, 2026, 8:03 PM
    Protests are definitionally, fundamentally nonviolent. That's just how protests work. If people want to be violent, and wreck shit, and attack the poor innocent elites, they're not going to advertise it. Nobody would engage in protest, with the intent to do something that would delegitimize their protest. It's kind of a ...weakness of public protest in fact, but protests cannot be violent. People protesting must always be the ones defending from attack.

    Absolutely nobody ever: I'm protesting these unfair conditions, and also I'm going to shoot this puppy.
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  • DavidM_yegDavidM_yeg@beige.party
    Oct 20, 2026, 4:10 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum

    Indeed. Our headlines ought not to read “protests turn violent” but instead “protests subjected to police violence”

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  • ZiggyZapfZiggyZapf@dice.camp
    Oct 20, 2026, 4:13 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum If the world were sane, deploying the police to a protest would be seen as violent provocation on the state's part.

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  • Meljoannmeljoann@topspicy.social
    Oct 20, 2026, 4:16 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum this is such a good point. Surely by definition protests are non-violent, cause then it’s always called “riots”, and they would be only delighted to call them riots, sooo…

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  • JWcph, Radicalized By Decencyjwcph@helvede.net
    Oct 20, 2026, 6:44 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum Exactly right. In my half-century on this Earth I have never, not fucking once, seen or heard of a protest which was intentionally violent or destructive - protests only turn into riots when they are attacked by the police.

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  • Juan Per¢ent,🇲🇽 🍉,🇻🇪dacig@mastodon.social
    Oct 20, 2026, 7:29 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum
    There are also all those other joyous, generous acts that happen within and around the protests.
    People smiling, dancing and embracing.
    Making fun, creative banners, costumes chants and slogans.Serious ones too.
    People playing music, fanfares.
    Sharing of food and drinks, serum for stung eyes.
    Medics and security volunteers.
    Being together with a purpose.
    Supporting each other if the state decides on violence.
    So much more than "rioting" but you wouldnt know it from the press

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  • 🇳🇿 :tinoflag: 💉*10 Rogerrogerparkinson@mastodon.nz
    Oct 20, 2026, 9:31 PM

    @HeavenlyPossum I can think of one incident that has to be called "violent protest". Here in Aotearoa/New Zealand we had our Parliament grounds occupied by various "cooker" groups. They were a mix of anti-vaccination, anti-lockdown (though we weren't in lockdown by then) and ant-government. Many of them did not like that we had a female prime minister.
    The occupation went on fer weeks because the police took a gentle approach. The protesters were noted for all kinds of disruption such as harassing members of the public for wearing masks (kids on their way to school etc).
    Eventually the police said they had to go and deployed a line with riot shields. IIRC they were not otherwise armed. Our police do not normally carry guns. Also it was a small force, outnumbered, I think this was deliberate. Protesters pulled up paving stones and pelted the police. There were injuries. Some of them set fire to a nearby children's playground. I call this a violent protest.

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  • HeavenlyPossumHeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
    Oct 22, 2026, 2:50 AM

    @alfredo

    The violent overthrow of the Bashar al-Asad regime that resulted in the liberation of children who had been born in the torture prison at Sednaya.

    The liberation of Auschwitz.

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