Small amount of looting? That has absolutely destroyed the livelihood of some of the small shop owners while also negatively affecting the local economies for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, mansions, multinational offices, and banks, y’know, the ones belonging to the supposed oligarchs pushing the ever-diminishing standards of living have remained untouched.
Face it, the protests have been hijacked by criminal opportunists with the barest facade of an excuse, and far from it being just “USians” condemning it, now every far-right social network in every part of the world pushed into the feeds by their respective Musks is taking advantage of the mayhem to associate it to their opposition and to top it off with a heavy dose of racism. Seeing Paris burned down by people who are students in facade only (and it’s easy to tell the rioters from the students actually protesting) has absolutely fed the growth of the far right across multiple countries while doing little to economically help anyone but the looters who help themselves.
My only concerns and areas I consider off limits really are pharmacies and medical supply stores, medical places. Thinking on it a bit and ruminating, I can accept small businesses being looted if it provides incentive for the person to be upset with the state as well instead of the protests.
In case anyone would be down to come to the comments of a meme and leave with further reading: In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action by Vicky Osterweil
Spot on!
False dichotomy if there ever was one. The small businesses that are burned down or destroyed or emptied don’t have anything to do with the oligarchs or pedophiles, they are often neighbours of the looters. What have they done to deserve that? Sorry, looting them doesn’t further any good cause, indeed, it is just serving the narrative of the opposing side.
Some things to remember:
- Protests, riots are almost never monolithic and desperate people and local organized crime almost always takes advantage of the commotion.
- There are already reports of Police antagonists stirring up commotion in these.
- There is a very long history of far-right agitators trying to hijack and smear justifiable legitimate protests. Many examples from the 2020 BLM protests.
- Foreign adversaries – notably Russia – almost always seizes on these and has a hand in stirring up division.
So the fallacy is the assumption that the people committing the looting are the same people who originally set out to protest the following grievances:
- Severe under-funding of schools.
- Overcrowded classrooms and lack of air conditioning in excessively-hot climate.
- Teacher shortages and schedules.
To again reiterate, much of the time legitimate protests are hijacked by outside groups for their own ulterior motives (political optics, theft, etc.)
The fact that we’re even having these discussions shows how susceptible people are to this brand of propaganda. There people have the vote, the media and protests, remember that they will try to erode your faith in those institutions at every turn.
I hate when people pull out this stupid straw man argument, “Think of the poor small businesses”. Small businesses in this country are all but non existent at this point, most of them have been forced to close their doors thanks to big chains like Walmart and Target. The closest we have to small businesses in most areas are franchisees from the big chain fast food restaurants.
Eh, small businesses come in all sizes. There’s a dude in town that owns ~100 houses and rents them out. He’s a small business owner.
So is the Uber driver that delivers food to those houses.
That man is enough of a landlord that a molotov cocktail is probably justified in some way shape or form. That dude is part of the petit borgeousie for sure.
The guy driving for Uber and getting paid by them as his employer is not a small business owner. He’s a poor proletariat schmuck just like most of us.
Sorry, I thought this was relating to the French unrests. There is no Walmart in France. Have a look at the shops that were destroyed and then count how many of them are large chains and how many were local businesses.
“all but non existent”
Where in the US is that true?! The worst city in America for chain stores can’t quite hit 3 of 4. Almost every state has better than half of stores in the hands of small business.
“all but non existent”
Where in the US is that true?!
You moralizing about what is essentially an uncontrollable phenomenon, is serving the narrative of the opposing side. Nobody is in control of a riot by definition. All kinds of shit is gonna get fucked up. Focusing on individual incidents is falling into a trap that the ruling class lays for a credulous audience.
People plundering stores are very much in control of themselves, give me a break. I don’t blame anyone else for those actions than those who commit them.
I’m sure that guy that got kicked in the back of the head and has his video game store robbed gives a shit anymore and probably never will.
The French need rooftop Koreans. :)
As much as I like the roof Koreans, they would get firebombed if they were in France, the reason they worked in America was because Americans are pussys and when legit confronted with violence, they piss their pants and run away.
And yet nobody seems willing to acknowledge that America has just turned out a fourth largest protest in the nation’s history over the last two years, mobilizing tens of millions of people with no significant reports of violence or looting.
I guess it doesn’t count when organizers successfully create a peaceful environment that doesn’t play into the hands of the fascists in our government who are looking for any excuse to enact martial law and suspend elections to establish their total and complete authority?
What does that large protest do, though? In what way does it pressure the state to enact change? A large amount of people asking nicely doesn’t make fascists decide to no longer be fascist - at best all you can really do with it is spread your message to more people. It took more than peaceful protests during the civil rights movement, and our state still is systemically discriminatory against minorities.
Not saying it’s perfect but it can help spread the word for voting purposes.
Yes but that only matters if the government your under gives a shit about that sort of thing. You doing nothing as they round up ‘illegal voters’ is playing into the hands of fascists.
We had nationwide protests that turned violent with rioting and looting in 2020 under this same regime. It achieved no meaningful change but to turn public opinion against the movement. We’re still recovering from the social trauma that caused and it’s only given ammunition to the opposition. Portland, OR is still a pariah on the national scene due to the violence and looting that happened here in 2020 despite the last six years of adopting a more peaceful way of protesting.
The regime was unprepared for the violent response then but they are prepared for it now. A year ago they were doing everything they could to provoke a violent response, declaring blue cities as enemies within and deploying our own states’ national guards against us. Our response was to turn out in large, peaceful numbers. It made this regime look foolish and they’ve since halted their deployment of the military against blue cities.
They need us to be violent so they can use it to turn the general public against us; and so we show up peacefully and “do nothing”. As a result, they have no enemy to rally the general public against, their actions have no justification and public opinion of this regime is at record-breaking lows and is continuing to trend lower.
There are pros and cons, the violence and damage done in the French protests also make it easy for the rightwing to shatter solidarity among left and center voices. These protestors take the narrative the rightwing wants to push about the left and immigrants hook line and sinker without reflecting on the consequences of that, which is very very very very dangerous.
Rightwing fascists want nothing more than this to become a fist fight, it is the only environment their shitty politics can survive in because everyone is too distracted by the violence to actually interrogate what each side is saying and determine fascists are violent and full of shit.
You can criticize a protest like No Kings in the US for being wayyyy too deferential to the status quo, but you can also on the flipside point out that everyone who goes to a peaceful mass protest leaves knowing they are in the majority, and that a vast diversity of people have arrived at the same conclusion and desire to exert their will in a collective fashion that no significant percentage of the society resists in a rational way even if the power structures do.
Once you start throwing bricks at the cops and burning everything down you cut the potential for solidarity into two opposing sides which isn’t so say that ACAB isn’t true or that the pearl clutching around property damage isn’t insulting given the human suffering the protests are meant to illuminate but the vision of the social project becomes diminished once things enter that realm, you have a war at that point not a social movement.
All that being said, I don’t think the protestors are the problem, not even remotely, the inhuman conditions for the average person are the problem. I am also not trying to say a certain way of protesting is necessarily wrong, but this idea that we aren’t in a struggle of primarily narrative is a sure fire way to lose catastrophically as the left which to be honest France should be alot more cognizant about given their history than they seem to be…
We all know rightwing fascists need and deserve to be punched in the face, but if you lean into that unreflectively you make it easy for them to portray the situation as a tit for tat fight rather than an existential struggle against dehumanization.
The no kings protests in my area were like six people. And everyone driving by let them know how stupid they looked. Definitely not a majority.
Ok well that is your anecdote, the No Kings rallies have been some of the largest protests in US history and have approached the often quoted percentage of people necessary to ensure a successful social movement/revolution.
pretend i have the digital image editing skills to combine these please:
spoliered because holy fuck that took up a lot of my screen
Reminds me of people that can look past concentration camps, murders carried out by ice, blatant corruption, bombing schools, and genocide but they draw the line at having to pay 2$ more for gas
They only care when it affects their daily lives. Fuck black, brown, trans, gay, and women for they are something entirely different than a white american man.
What murders has ice done? Maybe I’m just out of my the loop
Fuck you, Nazi scum.
You my friend are out of your mind
He’s not a friend, he’s fucking scum and deserving of being treated like it.
This is a fucking joke, right?
There’s death and there’s murder. I’ve heard about deaths, I’m not aware of any murders but I have limited media access.
Oh your one of those padantic losers…
The losers who understand the difference between killing and murder? Yeah I’m one of those losers lol
Yes I’m glad you both understand and are ok with state sanctioned killing and regular murder, vary good.
Evil people should fear a good government and also good people. Yes that is a foundational belief. Governments have always used violence and for good reasons. People have also used violence against governments for good reasons. Yes sometimes violence is the appropriate response and I am prepared as necessary.
Apparently you aren’t, actually
What nationality are you, out of curiosity?
You mean which data center hosts them?
Since you won’t answer my question about nationality, im going to assume you’re from a “western” country, so your excuse of having limited media access is bullshit. You’re a fucking piece of trash if you think ICE hasn’t murdered people and are going to get into a hissy fit about the definitions. You’re fucking scum and deserve to be treated as such.
Mods, before you come deleting this comment for AbUsE, look at what this motherfucker is here commenting. Would you rather censor someone for calling someone a bad name, or for blatantly denying state sanctioned murders? Pick your hill to die on.
You could actually give some evidence of said murders. That’s all I asked for. Some people need real consequences for their bullshit. I wish we could do this face to face.
You are batshit fucking insane. The videos are out there for the world to see. Good shot in her car while driving away from the scene, not trying to hurt any of the officers, and Pretti literally knelt down in the street and executed in the back of the head. All filmed, all major major news that every “western” country saw.
I hope you get exactly what you deserve for being such a piece of shit human, and you deserve that absolute worst.
I find the looting and property damage stupid because there are plenty of Billionaires and Politicians to loot and property damage yet they primarily targeting cafes and shops.
I’m sure theyed getting their buisnesses robbed as well.
Yeah…that’s not really possible?
Oligarchs are very well insulated, both physically and financially. The nice part of town isn’t full of billionaires. It’s full of doctors and lawyers and other professionals.
Even if you do manage to burn down a Walmart or something, chances are the financials are insulated enough that the Waltons won’t even see a drop in net worth.
One guy working alone found the United healthcare CEO. Imagine if 1000 worked together like they did to loot a small shop.
It’s because it (typically) isn’t the political activists who are the ones looting. It is groups of criminals who just take advantage of the situation and the protestors are blamed.
And agent provocateurs sent to stir shit to discredit the movement and give the police an excuse to crack skulls.
And LePen’s campaign manager rubs his hands in satisfaction…
Cuckservatives support billionaire pedophiles because that’s what they aspire to be.
THE TRAINS ARENT RUNNING ON TIME REEEEEEEEEE
choo choo motherfucker
It’s performative. Remember, everything they take time to speak up on is projection of some sort, so they’re just mad about the reasons for the protests and find it advantageous to complain about the small percentage of people taking advantage of the protests to loot and cause damage in order to distract and taint the movements they don’t like or support. They’re literally virtue signaling, another thing they like to condemn when it’s done by someone they disagree with or don’t like, but here they are sitting behind a screen typing out how they would never do property damage or enter a building without permission or when it’s against the law, despite not speaking up when it’s their “side” doing it.
USians don’t even wanna do a mass strike let alone march in and remove the people causing so many people to die and put them out of everyone’s misery. Bunch of moaning little self righteous PC ego trippers.
Yup, so many people cam out of the wood work to point figure at Germany when their nazi party won one Provence, not the whole country, a PROVENCE. Many libs on here are hypocrites looking to point fingers because deep down, they know their efforts are weak.
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it’s a false dichotomy you are presenting. do you want to say any protests against pedophiles ruling the world will necessitate some people being looted, which is a sacrifice you are willing to make. can we not imagine a better world? can we not support the protests with full force while also condemning the looting?
It’s not a false dichotomy because it’s not saying that it’s one or the other.
it’s false dichotomy because it’s presented as if people who don’t tolerate looting must be excusing the rule by pedophiles and oligarchs.
I think it’s a critique about the inaction and then the condemning more than the method of action.
Not to mention that the meme and it’s sentence structure is following the script from the show, Community because that’s how Brenda said it. So I’m not going to read too much into a meme
ITT, a lot of people unfamiliar with the meme. It looses something when it doesn’t include Shirley’s response.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-can-excuse-racism-but-i-draw-the-line-at-animal-cruelty
Please don’t Britta Britta’s name
I just pulled a Hawthorne! Dammit!
