Dear Americans,

I am not an American. Were the Floyd protests anywhere near as chaotic as they were portrayed in the press? I recall hearing that most protests were nonviolent, just slightly property-damaging. Thanks!

Sincerely, rambling_lunatic

  • bl_r@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    A few of these feel like they were said about conservatives but holy shit did you hit the nail on the head with property damage and corpo rep.

    Like “you have to accept the election result” is a liberal thing to say, but the “no matter the cost” bit is something a conservative would say when their dickbag is winning. Things like “protesters are just mad they lost the election” or “Antifa are the real fascists” or “Police repression is A-ok” are all things I’d more much more likely hear from a conservative than a liberal.

    Notably, it is missing the separation of protestors into “good protestors” and “bad protestors,” which is what I associate with liberals talking about protestors. Most liberals feel bad watching a young kid getting brutalized by the cops, but if they can abjectify them by separating them into good and bad protestor dichotomy, thats how they can say police repression is A-ok.

    Honestly, you should just draw parallels between the liberal response to the pro-palestine encampments, since they responded similarly

    • “those people are probably outside agitators, they knew what they were getting into, and therefore the police action was justified”
    • “those antifa kids are the bad protestors ruining our peaceful protests!”
    • “<parroting police report uncritically>”

    Also, the protests here were pretty violent in some cities and at at some points, but in practically every case the violence began with the police, as you’d probably expect if you paid attention to history.

    The nonviolent ones were only nonviolent if you ignored the police response to them, though a few token peaceful marches with minimal police presence happened here and there.

    And for full disclosure, I don’t consider property damage violent unless it was done solely for the purposes of threatening someone. Smashing a cop car up isn’t violent, but breaking a window and spraying hateful graffiti is violent.