> Complete lie?? No. The protests have been mostly peaceful with a few small incidents. See my comment in the sibling thread. The protests have been composed o

> Complete lie?? No. The protests have been mostly peaceful with a few small incidents. See my comment in the sibling thread. The protests have been composed of both violent and peaceful members. While peaceful protestors far outnumber violent ones, violence does occur most of the nights between those two dates. Calling the protests peaceful is a lie and saying the federal police started the violence was a lie- it was well established there before they arrived. > Letting a demonstration be judged by its most violent participants but not judging a police force by its most violent cops is the language of the oppressor. I fail to see why this is relevant. I think the demonstrations are fine. I think the riots are not. I think the federal police can defend their federal courthouse from vandalism and breakins. > Calling them a "few feds' as if they were inconsequential is again disingenious. My mistake, I am willing to amend to "many". I used "some" as I do not actually know their number. > The problem is not their number but that they are not in uniform, they have no insignia and they kidnap people off the streets. Kidnapping is an exaggeration. It is an arrest. While I agree the uniforms are problematic, it doesn't make the act illegal. > The big problem here, of course, is if white supremacists show up in "tacticool" gear and truly kidnap you to murder you then it'd be prudent to resist. It's prudent to resist in any case where someone tries to arrest you without cause. That said, you may incorrectly judge whether or not they have cause, so simply listening to their orders since they are police is a better option. When you can't identify them as police, as you said, that is a problem. That said, the odds that you will encounter a situation where you are have unknowingly committed a crime and cannot identify the person arresting you as an officer are highly improbable. It's worth criticizing the officer's uniforms and approach, but going from that criticism to "tactics of an authoritarian regime" is a unfounded jump. > This is why my so many of my friends in Portland joined the protests, this is absolutely not tenable. Simple way for your friends to avoid arrest by the feds: don't go hang outside their courthouse while people throw shit at it. > I was born behind the Iron Curtain. Our phone was bugged. We knew. I know a ... little ... about authoritarian regimes and secret police. These aren't KGB breaking into your home at 3am for whispering some slight dissent to your third cousin- these are federal police arresting people for standing on the fed's doorstep and breaking shit. There is an obvious difference and I will be side-by-side with you when they actually start abducting people. That said, where did you live and what did you experience? Why do you think the feds, who I see as arresting people for obvious acts of vandalism, are similar to a secret police, who punish people for spurious crimes without a public trial?