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Contextually, the employment of literally hundreds of armed troopers in anti-riot gear occurred before any violence at the protests, and the local and state aut
by HillRat 10y ago
Contextually, the employment of literally hundreds of armed troopers in anti-riot gear occurred before any violence at the protests, and the local and state authorities ratcheted up the response in the intervening days. Violence and looting within protest actions is definitely a problem, but it can't be considered in isolation from the behavior of the government towards protesters of all kinds.
- golemotron 10y agoDo you see that action by the police as provocation or deterrence?
- HillRat 10y agoAt the risk of being facile, I think it was an attempt to deter peaceful dissent that provoked violent protest. Like the execution of Louis Antoine, it was worse than a crime -- it was a blunder. Edit: It's also worth noting that Ferguson is a particularly pernicious example: an exclusively white power structure that functioned as a rentier class, using its government monopoly on force to forcibly extract revenue from an impoverished, ethnically-minority and, for voting purposes, transient population. It's like a midcentury European Marxist's fever dream of problematic class relations embedded in a matrix of structural racism.
- Zigurd 10y agoPolice deploy undercover provocateurs in order to discredit protests. At least one at Ferguson was caught on video.