[smoe]

I don't know how effective the French protests are, since I haven't lived in Europe for a while. But even as a Swiss, at least judging from TV, protests in the U.S. generally seem very tame.

Not advocating punching the police as a default, but in my opinion, protests need to be disruptive if they're going to get anyone's attention at all. I don't really see what a few people standing on the sidewalk with cardboard signs are supposed to accomplish.

[ramgine]

American police are much more inclined to escalate any violence instead of trying to de-escalate.

[pesus]

And if there isn't violence, the police tend to escalate things and make it violent. I suspect this works to prevent/neuter any serious protests so long as the potential protestors still have something to lose, and in America there is very little in the way of a safety net, so living conditions would have to (continue to?) deteriorate quite a bit before protests started heading in a French direction.

[phatskat]

Yep, and even when the majority of protests don’t turn violent, the media does an amazingly good job of making it seem like they did. I remember multiple family members posting about, and even talking about in our group chat, how multiple US cities were on fire and essentially war zones in 2020.

[mc32]

I don't know if you know, but quite a few European countries are known to send police or "state" confederates into protests to give authorities an excuse to Escalate. You also see lots more water cannons being used over there.

In Paris the burning and destruction typically happens in the outer "boroughs" of the city -usually by disaffected groups -sometimes they happen to be disenfranchised- though typically they harm the older generation's property and that generation typically frowns upon the destruction.

Of course, in the US, we've had organizations who on paper are for justice and redress being found to foment agitation. It's a total corruption of their mandate. We had an "anti-hate" group paying hate groups to "do things"[1].

[1]https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/119311/witnesses/...

[IX-103]

So your "evidence" is the transcript of an interview that references an indictment containing information that hasn't been publicly substantiated.

[mc32]

There was also testimony to the Congress by its CEO which wasn't very convincing. There is a dude running for congress in Maine who has a troubling political background due to his past associations and this guy could not call him out. I'm pretty sure if the congress hopeful were running as an IND or repub he'd be treated differently by this organization in question.

[mikrotikker]

If the things stop happening then the non profit will have to shut down destroying jobs

[segmondy]

Only because the people don't fight back. If they know that folks would fight back, they would behave themselves in the most polite and proper ways you won't believe.

[mothballed]

It's rarely acknowledged but a big reason why ATF and FBI toned things down after Waco is because McVeigh (he was there watching) directly retaliated causing nearly 1000 casualties of government employees. At that point they went to the current plan of just divide and conquer a single person at a time via surveillance of the targeted group after things quiet down rather than try to take on groups head on.

[frogperson]

Yep, you can see it in the way ICE operates. 10 agents jump out of several cars, they grab one helpless person and they all drive away. Like a pack of hyenas picking off a young calf.

[sarchertech]

I’m sure that fear of retaliation had some impact, but I’d say it pales in comparison to their fear of the optics of another Waco. Post Waco, favorable opinion of the FBI dropped from 70% to below 40%.

[yongjik]

Is this supposed to be sarcasm? As far as I know, America is the only nominally democratic country where cops routinely shoot people, and their number one excuse is that they thought they could be shot.

Nothing makes cops more trigger-itchy than the thought that a random stranger could "fight back" any moment.

[jimbob45]

Haha have you never watched COPS? I’ve seen tamer UFC fights than some COPS episodes.

[andriy_koval]

> American police are much more inclined to escalate any violence instead of trying to de-escalate.

American police inclined to do nothing, because it is locally hired and not paid/controlled by government.

[Tostino]

Are you just being intentionally ignorant here? What are you even trying to convey?

[mothballed]

In the US if you're with a group of people and there is some leader or group planning unlawful property destruction or violence, there is a very very good chance it is a fed or confidential informant operation and you are the mark/patsy to which all the blame will be assigned when you're staring at a sheet of paper that says US v [your name].

[eudamoniac]

Not really a "very very good chance", but the few instances of this happening have accomplished the intended effect of making everyone terrified of the possibility and thus never doing it.

[soco]

Are you trying to say the US are snitches? Or in any case, more snitches than the Europeans? More snitches than the ex-communists from the Eastern Europe?

[ipaddr]

Not snitches but paid government workers trying to get you to commit crimes and then you get arrested.

[morkalork]

Americans don't even protest on weekdays, they wait for a weekend to do it. So it is easy to say that they aren't serious but on the other hand, they're a lot closer to the knife's edge of stability and missing a day of work can get them fired (especially in at-will employment states), Europe is not like this as much.

[johannes1234321]

And if they lose the job they lose their insurance, thus their medication.

This increases stakes to protest quite a lot, compared to European worker protection and social security.

[morkalork]

Yes, they've wound up having their whole lives very effectively taken hostage. Also criminals lose the right to vote don't they? Seems like the perfect incentive to criminalize any political movements that are contrary to the ruling class.

[kelvinjps10]

But in latin America and poor countries don't have these benefits and still people protest way worse

[stavros]

Well maybe you can get some worker protection and social security by protest... oh, wait.

[SauntSolaire]

That's somewhat understandable, what I find more interesting is that people around me won't show up unless it's between 70-80 degrees out.

[vasco]

Do you think perhaps the two are related

[keybored]

Oof, could never be the case.

Guys, I feel like we should get another anti-union thread here soon. It’s getting a little too hot for comfort. I’ll start. Whew While I do like unions in theory, I was really peeved when I was getting my start in the working forces as a banana picker and this guy Bob took midday naps...

[trinsic2]

I agree. people should be shutting down all commerce, but people are so overworked or living from paycheck to pay check its probably hard to do the kind of protesting that needs to happen. Seems like UK is bad.

[oytis]

There are people with cardboard signs, and there are BLM protests or occupy Wall Street. Can't remember when the last disruptive protests were in Switzerland, but in Germany I'd say tame protests are the norm and disruptions are an exception

[vkou]

99% of BLM protests were just people with cardboard signs. There's always the occasional anonymous asshole who might throw a rock at a window and run off, but that's the nature of any gathering of 100,000+ people. There will always be a turd.

In the other 1%, the police decided on a policy of always picking a fight with crowd, every fucking day, until they ran out of gas.

[uxp100]

There was a lot of arson at BLM protests, and plenty of people beaten in the street, some of whom were in no way asking for it. The majority of the violence probably was the cops though.

[BryanBigs]

Watch any random sampling of body cam footage and you won't think the majority of violence was the cops. I'm amazed at the restraint honestly.

Now when I was a kid...getting thrown into a paddywagon while hammered after mouthing off to a cop was a right of passage.

[BobaFloutist]

Do you think the selection of what body cam footage cops make available is without bias?

[oytis]

Still I can't think of an event where Swiss cops would be able to collect similar footage.