this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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What do you expect when "protests" involve widespread destruction of private property, looting, fires, and vandalism?
Well a proper response from the government? Not something that antagonize the population, maybe something more human than using ILLEGAL weapons against your people ? Proprety destruction and looting is what you get when you push your people to the brink.
Look, I understand that the people have a grievance, and there are 101 ways to protest that does not include violence and the destruction of property.
We saw evidence during the BLM protests that violence was being started by police by both beating on peaceful protesters and using agent-provocateurs. The most famous example was the hooded man wearing police issued boots, who wasnt participating in the protest, knocking out the windows of a Target.
My point is that if violence and property destruction discredit a protest for you then the police have already won. They can turn any protest into violence and destruction if not by outright attacking peaceful protests, then by using an agent-provocateur.
Absolutely, and I'm not saying that it's better/safer to protest against police in the United States.
You need to also keep in mind that the President of the country at the time was a racist and a despicable human being, who would constantly stoke the flames of unrest, and put citizens against the police on several occasions.
I'll admit that I don't know as much about Macron than I do Trump, but only because Macron's decisions don't directly affect what happens in my country (Canada).
They don't discredit the protest, but they make it really hard for me to be on the side of protesters because I don't believe that destroying private property is effective.
And I hold this belief no matter the cause. I've been part of animal rights protests, but completely reject groups who use violence or otherwise break the law to "support our cause", because it only creates divide.
Yes but how do you know if the people causing property damage are protesters or anti protestors?That was the crux of my last comment. Nobody likes when protesters are violent so showing up to a protest and starting violence is an easy way to shut it down.
That's a huge accusation. I'm sure there are hooligans and anarchists who just want to fuck shit up, and will create chaos whenever a protest comes up.
But in that case, the protesters would unequivocally denounce the violence, not embrace or partake in it.
It's easy to pass the blame, but it's even easier to call out anti-protesters and to separate them from your cause.
Its only easy to call out anti-protesters if you're well organized. When police attack peaceful protesters and launch tear gas into peaceful crowds, to force dispersion, people panic and act unpredictably.
How many of them work?
That's a very loaded question. All of them can work under the right circumstances.
I support violence and destruction, but it needs to be directed at your oppressors, not your neighbors.
Americans didn't fight off the British with picket signs, they fucking shot them. Then enshrined their rights to own firearms and defend their right to liberty into the constitution as a basic human right.
"The tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants"
Yeah, this is a very important point. The best way to lose support for your cause is to destroy property of those you want support from. It's why support from BLM dropped so severely.
BLM wasn't even doing the rioting, but they did nothing to ensure those who used their cause to riot/destroy property were snuffed out. If you come to my home or buisness and destroy my shit, or stand by while others drive in with you and destroy my shit, I'm not supporting your cause.
If people's property are instead protected, and the violence/destruction is focused towards those who are oppressing them, they'd have way more support and things would get done.
Based on research, the most effective are the ones that don't devolve into riots....
And if government would have listened to those 101 ways, People would have resorted to the 102nd way.
Riots are the voices of the unheard. The French govt has a long and proud tradition of violently oppressing protests. Things in France have been contentious all year over a variety of issues. What exactly are the French people supposed to do? A letter writing campaign to stop having their rights stripped away? Sit quietly outside of Parliament and ask nicely to stop being oppressed? Politely ask that the pigs only crush their neck a little? If you abhor disruptive and violent political action done by the people, surely you've found the non-violent alternative that works better. What is it?
Protests can be.
Riots are criminal attacks against innocent businesses and residents, which contribute nothing to any cause, and only results in aggressive reactions from police and governments.
This is truly unfortunate, and I do sympathize with protesters.
Not hurting innocent people and local businesses would be a good start. There cannot be an effective protest without the support of the community. If you're burning down the community, then you've only made more enemies.
It may be helpful to learn (based on studies) what methods of protests work and why.
If a protest can't be effective, then it's a waste of time.
You do understand that, when being discussed empirically, nonviolent protests often includes riots and looting right? Here you go.. I'd also like to add that your own source states that violent protest is effective. And that nonviolient, nonnormative protests are better at garnering public support. They article states the author personally believes those protests may be better at introducing change. Not that it is. They think it might. For a more thorough look into things here's a video that's worth your time and consideration.
So it's A-OK for the billionaire class to set our world & society on fire, but when people get upset about that & are then told "too bad, shut the fuck up", we're just supposed to take it?
How's that boot taste?
Riots like these are what you get when you prevent any other forms of protests: banning protests (illegal but by the time you get through court to get the ban lifted it is too late), making unions and strikes irrelevant by never ever yielding, preventing votes in the National Assembly using pressures on MP and all that the means that our constitution allows to bypass parliament, even though there is no clear majority for whatever you are doing, forcefully removing peaceful protestors, etc There are reasons why unions was good for everyone, elite class included, they allow peaceful resolution of conflict. If you remove all peaceful avenue, there will be people going into the not peaceful avenue.
I get it, the people of France are in a bad position, and there is a long history of protests and pushback from the government.
But there is no benefit to adding violence, unless the goal is to hurt the communities you are protesting for. This particular protest literally had no peaceful beginning, it started in violence and only got worse.
What's the end game with such a strategy?
It's the only effective ready to get a response. Stonewall was a riot.
The only thing those in power will listen to is the destruction of property, because what they care about isn't the life of most of us. It's money. They care about money.
To scare the living shit out of the oppressors, and ultimately remove them from power one way or another. If they don't take the hint that is the city burning, chop-chop!
A small business in Paris that's been vandalized, looted, and burned should be scared of whom? The community they serve and live with?
Perhaps, protestors and rioters need to focus their efforts away from the innocent and towards those who are oppressing them. That would make more sense to me, anyway.
AFAIK, small businesses are not harmed much and the targets are government buildings and such.
And even if they were, insurance will clear it. And even if not, honestly, the only ones who suffer are the business owners, and I have little sympathy for them—small mom'n'pop ops can't afford renting premises in downtowns, anyway; shops in these locations are luxury boutiques. Nothing of value is lost if a business selling designer handbags or overpriced cuisine ceases to exist.
I am not advocating for violence. However, it is not historically acurate to say that violence has no benefit. As a matter of fact, I can think of instances in the 18th, 19th and 20th century where violent protestors obtained rights or the end of some kind of oppression. I am not sure I can think of even one instance where anyone got anything without some kind of violence (or destruction of private property), even in the 20th century (there was violence in the May 1968 protests, or in the 1936 strikes, etc). The term "sabotage" itself has something to do with workers destroying the workshops by throwing their shoes (called "sabots") into the machine.
No doubt, violence was often necessary historically because fundamental human rights and other freedoms simply didn't exist, so it became nearly like a war to get them. So I agree with you on that point.
But unprovoked, modern day violence seems so inappropriate in the context of a protest, and very often moves the goal further away.
The issue is that who gets to decide if violence is an appropriate response, and where is that line drawn?
Should workers burn down their place of employment because they don't feel that the rules around bathroom breaks are fair?
Should extreme religious who are protesting any number of things be justified in killing doctors or political leaders over matters that are handled in court?
In the context of violence erupting as a means of self-defence, I can't argue against that. I don't like it, but if otherwise peaceful protesters are being shot at, then violence is a balanced response (although, it may not get them to their goal).
But I don't think I could ever agree to people burning innocent people's cars, or looting uninvolved shops, or destroying the homes and communities of regular folks.
I dunno if you know literally anything about the French, but Rioting is a long-standing part of their political culture over there. I'd argue it's a good thing.
It got France to this point (descent into authoritarianism), and you think that's a good thing?
Riots may have worked for France 800 years ago, but not in this modern world, I'm afraid.
..... Do you know what the French historically do to authoritarians???
The most famously successful riots happened in 1789 (234 years ago). I'm sure you were just being hyperbolic, but its important to note that this isn't some relic of ancient history, its the cornerstone of their modern democracy.
No, I mean 800 years ago, like the 1229 University of Paris strike (riot), but yes, there were many others that happened in the last <300 years.
Regardless, I think the impact of a modern day riot isn't nearly the same as one taking place hundreds of years ago.
If government addressed the peoples concerns at the word stage, things would never get to the firebomb stage.
Violence, Destruction, Etc are a direct result of government not addressing grievances satisfactorily.
Except, you can't mad at a government when half the country didn't care enough to vote.
You get what you vote for.
Yes, you can. The government is supposed to act in your interest, whether you voted for it or not.
You seem to be exercising a very concerted, propagandistic attempt at blaming protestors for being angry at their grievances not being addressed, and not a single word of criticism at the government facing the inevitable consequences of its lack of desire to answer to their citizenry, forcing citizenry into escalation.
Everyone has different interests and needs from the government, which is why you vote.
Someone who is against abortion will vote for an anti-abortion government. Someone who needs more social support will vote for a government who will fund them.
No government will satisfy the needs of everyone, unless everyone votes! That's how democracy works.
Far from it. I'm against the use of violence against innocent people and communities, regardless of who causes it.
Governments have a role to represent the people. Unless they have permanent terms in office, the people should use their power to vote, use the court system, use effective forms of nondestructive protest, and form grassroots movements to support their needs.
Just going along with it is why Russia is the way it is today.
I’ve spent some time just walking around looking at what’s happening during the protests in a large French city, and those didn’t really feel violent or overly destructive, more like a show of strength and trying to make the overwhelming public stance heard.
The only establishments that I saw had their windows broken were either large international chain stores or some municipal buildings, small cafes or various boulangeries were intact. There were burning trashcans and other stuff, but never too close to a building or something that might catch fire, everything was moved towards the center of the streets. It worked to disrupt car traffic and give the city a protest vibe, but it didn’t feel like the reason was pure destruction. You could’ve even come up to both masked protesters and cops and just have a chat in most cases. I think it was more violent in Paris, but I’d guess a lot of it had similar vibes still.
The thing is, it’s not like it started with this, there were peaceful protests and strikes at first. But when you ignore your population long enough, they see that peaceful means aren’t working and escalate. It could’ve been prevented if there was a reasonable governmental response.
I'm assuming this is related to the 17-year-old youth was shot by police? Or are they protesting something else?
Because the police shooting protest started violent from day one.
That escalated it a lot, but the protests and strikes started way earlier with a pension reform that kinda robbed the people of 2 work-free years. And it wasn't even that applicable to most of the population, instead it unfairly targeted those who held some of the most physically demanding or damaging jobs. Macron doubled down, and then that traffic stop killing... so yeah, it's really not surprising that it escalated from there.
What didn’t help is that police has a long history of violence in general, see this article from 2016, for example. It’s been like this for a while.
There is currently a climate of defiance of our government in France. So I guess every little thing can just light everything up unfortunately. My other comment is more explicit on why we are in this context.
Maybe you expect the government to do something to stop it? Instead of making it worse? 🤷
Is the answer to let people destroy cities? I don't understand the reasoning behind wanting inaction against mass vandalism, looting, and arson.
No, the answer is to give them what they want.
Not really. Because "they" is quite unprecise here. It's the same thing when policits are saying "people want this, people want that". But people is composed by so many individuals and opinions that you can never say that "they want" something. I guess you can have a majority on some topics but if you're not changing the way we vote currently I'm pretty sure we'll never be able to have a 100% positive opinion on something.
If you are a politician and don't understand why your people are protesting, you need to just step down from your job because you're very very bad at it.
But that's not what's happening. What's happening is a fight for control. The people vs. the government.
I guess the issue with that argument is that you only apply it to people destroying things. Though it can be reversed to our political class currently. It's more insidious of course because they have "the law" with them as they make them. The main problem in France right now is not that we "have a long history of not being in line with our government and to destroy everything", it's that at this moment in time, the way politics are handled are very one sided. Our parliament is not listened and cannot vote on main topics (retirement is the main example but there was a dozen like this where government used the famous "49.3").
So indeed, I agree with you, we won't go far with violence, though it's a bit biased to only speak of the degradation and violence of the street when it actually started by the one of our current government, and at the end, the main threat here is that the attention is all focused on the street degradation made by the people and not on the root cause of all this.
And I need to say it again to avoid misinterpretation : I'm in no way in agreement with any kind of violence.
PS : sorry if things are not crystal clear, I'm not a native english speaker.