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?
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.
https://youtu.be/yzNxLzFfR5w
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.
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.
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.