Bots spreading misinformation to make the protestors look bad? I know here in the states protestors are routinely painted in a far worse light than what is actually in reality...it's one of the...
Bots spreading misinformation to make the protestors look bad?
I know here in the states protestors are routinely painted in a far worse light than what is actually in reality...it's one of the reasons protesting doesn't really work in the states
I don't think these posts are aimed to make them look bad. The reactions on social media are all in favour of the violent protests and that they wish people would protest with the same energy in...
I don't think these posts are aimed to make them look bad. The reactions on social media are all in favour of the violent protests and that they wish people would protest with the same energy in the USA.
Something needs to change in the states because it seems like ever since OWS that anytime anyone protests something that isn't "status quo" they get smeared in the court of public opinion until...
Something needs to change in the states because it seems like ever since OWS that anytime anyone protests something that isn't "status quo" they get smeared in the court of public opinion until the movement loses all power
I recently heard a framing of this issue that really spoke to me: If power corrupts, and I don't want to be corrupt, I should be powerless. It cuts right to the heart of it. Do I want to "keep my...
I recently heard a framing of this issue that really spoke to me: If power corrupts, and I don't want to be corrupt, I should be powerless. It cuts right to the heart of it. Do I want to "keep my soul" and suffer and see the people around me suffer? Not really.
I've literally had arguments with people so entrenched in keeping their moral status, that they'll straight up admit that if Fascism successfully takes roots in America, that at least they kept their morals.
Definitely agree, though it seems like that is starting to change as well. As far as the second half of your comment...my buddies dad spent the first 20 years of his life in communist...
I feel like a lot of left leaning politicians are afraid to play dirty on the same level as the Right due to the moral appearance of it, and as a result allows the Right to gain ground.
Definitely agree, though it seems like that is starting to change as well.
As far as the second half of your comment...my buddies dad spent the first 20 years of his life in communist Czechoslovakia. He is very much anti republican (much to the chagrin of his sons trumper inlaws) and is also very much salty about the left leaning moral high ground.
When I was a kid my brother talked me out of my belief in pacifism in about 2 seconds by saying "what about WWII?" There's a level of evil, I think, for which the abolishment of it is so necessary...
When I approach these topics, a lot of my solutions tend to lean towards "The ends justifies the means"
When I was a kid my brother talked me out of my belief in pacifism in about 2 seconds by saying "what about WWII?"
There's a level of evil, I think, for which the abolishment of it is so necessary that most people will admit violence and "playing dirty" is justified. The key may be to help people determine not if it's ever justified, but when it's justified. Getting a person to draw that line in the sand (and even better yet, record it) is progress, because people's apathy allows that line to shift further and further away if left unchecked.
To be honest I think the real reason left-leaning Americans fail to "fight dirty" as I put it is because that means putting yourself at risk. On the right, the January 6th insurrectionists risked jail time and one even got shot and killed for fighting for what she believed in, however stupid that belief was.
On the other hand, our beliefs on the left are not stupid, but no one is ready to put their own ass on the line. A doctor who performs an illegal abortion risks a whole lot, so even though they know an abortion may save a woman's life, they simply do not have it in them to take those risks. I get it-- doctors signed up to practice medicine, not to be political activists. But the point is that until a critical mass of people on the left are willing to risk their own asses for the betterment of society, we're not going to win any battles let alone the war.
In regards to reddit, I've seen this trend for quite some time now, way over a year at least. I think reddit has been a tool for radicalisation for years now and the left gets radicalised the same...
In regards to reddit, I've seen this trend for quite some time now, way over a year at least. I think reddit has been a tool for radicalisation for years now and the left gets radicalised the same as the right. It's so systematical and persistent that I always got the impression it isn't organic at all.
I would be wary off any second level comments on reddit that is visible from the top.
I mean, yes, since this is a forced trend, it's likely that people will follow it in bigger numbers from day to day, but the comments are placed and the votes fabricated until it becomes a critical mass. It's astro turfing par excellence and has been since spez is the boss.
You're absolutely right. It's way more effective to radicalise generally hateful people that share a common ground, and that have a figure that acts as a cult leader. The methods on social media...
You're absolutely right. It's way more effective to radicalise generally hateful people that share a common ground, and that have a figure that acts as a cult leader.
The methods on social media are the same, but the left is harder to catch and get to rally behind the same message.
I think I wasn't particularly about the far right extremists, but more of the "Berny or bust" and anti Hillary crowd, and the methods used to make them rally behind Trump, where only some of them ended on the far right extremist battleground afterwards.
But the initial methods of radicalisation to catch them first seem very similar to me. I'm no analist, I just spent more time on reddit than could be considered healthy, so I noticed some stuff and methologies that I can't even describe properly.
The left has to feel very desperate to end up in a similar spot. They aren't there, but someone is definitely working on it.
I know where they were coming from. But the movement to make them vote for trump against their own interests was definitely not grassroots but Astro turfing with great effect. They definitely had...
I know where they were coming from. But the movement to make them vote for trump against their own interests was definitely not grassroots but Astro turfing with great effect.
They definitely had it easy because they were anti establiment, but the people that pushed the idea onto them were the same that yelled "what about her emails" or printed and placed "Lock her up" stickers against Angela Merkel to place them everywhere in Germany.
I'm not talking about the people that got duped but about the platforms that were created for them and that pushed them into that direction.
For all the talk about tildes being a place for facts based discourse - which I don't disagree with on the whole ftr - for some reason there is a small contingent of people who are still talking...
For all the talk about tildes being a place for facts based discourse - which I don't disagree with on the whole ftr - for some reason there is a small contingent of people who are still talking about Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein circa 2016.. seven years later....
Don't really know why this is tolerated when beyond just missing the point (candidates that people actually want to vote for have annoying online supporters, very true) if you spend time relitigating the nuances of the 2016 election online you're doing about as much political activism or discussion as someone arguing about the holodomor does for the discussion of ethnic cleansing through history.
Just please, genuinely, I'm pleading with you, if you're someone who still complains about Bernie bros in 2023 can you do yourself and everyone else a favor and put that energy towards something more positive?
I think that the SCOTUS cases have brought it to the fore a little bit again. Roe v Wade, affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, all would've been saved by Hilary winning, things that (I'm...
I think that the SCOTUS cases have brought it to the fore a little bit again. Roe v Wade, affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, all would've been saved by Hilary winning, things that (I'm assuming) Bernie supporters were in favour of.
Of course, the amount of Bernie supporters that actually went from a socialist to a fascist is actually miniscule, but they're an easy target because of their oversized online presence.
Yeah, this sort of thing is why I stopped talking about politics in public spaces entirely years ago. Once a space gets big enough, the people that are not being genuine and the people who engage...
Yeah, this sort of thing is why I stopped talking about politics in public spaces entirely years ago. Once a space gets big enough, the people that are not being genuine and the people who engage with them anyway become a larger and larger part of the conversation, eventually pushing out any genuine discussion.
Not saying that's happening in this thread, but it seems to me like the original OP is used to dealing with just those people - in this case, fascist former Bernie supporters - despite this group basically being a rounding error, because their mere existence drives engagement.
It's the political version of goatse, or of those videos of puppies getting tortured. Humans latch onto negative emotions more easily, so it makes sense, but I still think it's important to remind people that the topic is a distraction.
Yeah, in real life I know people like that. The thing is, they're not actually Bernie (or Trump) supporters in a way that matters. They don't go to caucuses, canvas or even vote. They're just...
Yeah, in real life I know people like that. The thing is, they're not actually Bernie (or Trump) supporters in a way that matters. They don't go to caucuses, canvas or even vote. They're just noise. I'm sure they're online somewhere, and I'm sure someone out there is wasting their time arguing with them.
It's not a group with any actual meaning in the vote totals, beyond just the general phenomenon of American apathy and the collapse in trust of the political system. Which are topics delving into on their own merits, but as you said, there's no actual coherent group of politically aware Bernie supporters that became Trump supporters. People are arguing with the wind.
You misunderstand, I'm agreeing with you. I'm using your post as a jumping off point to remind people that even though you and I both think that the Bernie/far right connection is tenuous at best,...
You misunderstand, I'm agreeing with you. I'm using your post as a jumping off point to remind people that even though you and I both think that the Bernie/far right connection is tenuous at best, that it is an immense waste of time to litigate and relitigate things that ultimately don't matter now.
Our energy is limited, and while I commend you for being willing to spend the energy on pushing back against vibes-based political gunslinging, I'm just asking whether it's worth it to engage at all, versus maybe redirecting the conversation to solutions to the root problem (disinfo online) rather than the intricacies of this particular context.
No worries! It's been a really long time since I've been able to be genuine in a public forum too so I feel that. I agree that we can't simply fall in line or we get uselessness. I'll still...
No worries! It's been a really long time since I've been able to be genuine in a public forum too so I feel that.
I agree that we can't simply fall in line or we get uselessness. I'll still basically always vote blue just because the alternative is red, but that also means that I'm going to complain a lot about the blue guys when they don't do their job and come up with some new ridiculous excuse why.
If I might share some experience from Puerto Rico: do I vote for the current governor who's caught in a corruption scandal, or do I vote for the opposition candidate, who is the son of the most...
If I might share some experience from Puerto Rico: do I vote for the current governor who's caught in a corruption scandal, or do I vote for the opposition candidate, who is the son of the most corrupt governor in the history of the country? One of these two is going to win for sure.
The latter guy won, and he was so awful that he had to flee to Florida midterm and resign. But I sympathise with feeling that you've lost the ability to punish a party because the alternative is monstrous.
It's getting late and I have to leave and doing research on this is messy. I'm willing to admit that I might've duped myself with the impression, even when I said only a few completely switched,...
It's getting late and I have to leave and doing research on this is messy. I'm willing to admit that I might've duped myself with the impression, even when I said only a few completely switched, but I realise now they might've been pretending to be Bernie supporters from the get go.
But one question is still there, are there Bernie supporters that voted for trump over Biden? Do you think they're more far right than anti establishment?
I apologise, I never intended to claim that Bernie supporters were in any way right wing or shifted to the right in any meaningful numbers. I'm aware that only 10% of Bernie voters went for trump...
I apologise, I never intended to claim that Bernie supporters were in any way right wing or shifted to the right in any meaningful numbers. I'm aware that only 10% of Bernie voters went for trump and already said they got duped in my initial comment.
I was mainly talking about the mechanics and people that pushed the "Bernie or Bust" narrative online. It wasn't Bernie supporters, but they caught quite a few of them.
Bernie is the best US politician I've ever seen. Sadly he didn't stand a chance because he went against the people that finance the two big parties.
That makes more sense now! Yeah I totally agree that the disinfo that led to that is seriously concerning and I worry about similar things next year. I'm very worried that our media apparatus is...
That makes more sense now! Yeah I totally agree that the disinfo that led to that is seriously concerning and I worry about similar things next year. I'm very worried that our media apparatus is just going to knowingly platform a fascist without a second thought in the pursuit of profit. I hope they've learned their lesson, but they don't exactly have a great track record..
Respectfully, the phrase "against their own interests" raises a red flag for me. It's often used as an easy way to dismiss a complex set of values that another human holds that the speaker may not...
I know where they were coming from. [...] to make them vote for trump against their own interests
Respectfully, the phrase "against their own interests" raises a red flag for me. It's often used as an easy way to dismiss a complex set of values that another human holds that the speaker may not fully understand or appreciate (or obviously agree with). There are a lot of reasons to vote for either Trump or Bernie that are fully inline with a person's own interests, despite that the two are viewed on different "sides" of the political spectrum. (The concept of sides is itself at best inaccurate, anyway.) As a polite challenge: perhaps you don't know where they're coming from as much as you think and consuming more media from the "other" side will help in that understanding.
I don't understand why you would attack me like that and claim I'm only looking at one spectrum of politics when making my decisions. I'm surprised you would compare Bernie to Trump like that....
I don't understand why you would attack me like that and claim I'm only looking at one spectrum of politics when making my decisions.
I'm surprised you would compare Bernie to Trump like that. Bernie is an established politician with great ideas and a standard he has always lived his entire life. He's a fantastic politician with values that align with my own more than any other American politician I've encountered.
Trump was always a populist walking catchphrase. He had no depth and no concept of politics. He was a walking red flag, and it was obvious that you were always voting against your own interest no matter where you were coming from. Yes, I can acknowledge that populism dupes people over and over again, but a Bernie supporter is in no way comparable to a Trump supporter.
Don't forget that this whole Bernie or bust discussion is about 10% of Bernie voters that voted for trump. It's not the same crowd.
I certainly didn't mean that as an "attack" and I sincerely hope we're engaging in a calm, good-faith discussion. I do think you're overly dismissive of Trump voters and the tone of your replies...
I certainly didn't mean that as an "attack" and I sincerely hope we're engaging in a calm, good-faith discussion. I do think you're overly dismissive of Trump voters and the tone of your replies does make me wonder if you have anyone in your life that voted for him that you can engage with in deep conversation. I didn't vote for Tump but I know smart, articulate people that have thoughtful justifications for having done so. My primary concern is the political pendulum is swinging farther and farther to extremes every year. We need to start bringing things back toward the center.
I had many discussions with Trump supporters. I also had way too many intelligent and coherent discussions with actual Neo-Nazis. It always sounds reasonable on the surface, but when you scratch...
I had many discussions with Trump supporters. I also had way too many intelligent and coherent discussions with actual Neo-Nazis.
It always sounds reasonable on the surface, but when you scratch deeper it boils down to emotions most of the times. I'm in no way religious, but the part about the deadly sins boils it down pretty well why it's easy to trap intelligent people like that.
The powerful and the go-along-to-get-alongers have always smeared any efforts to change things. Look at feminism. It is always smeared as "the last generation wasn't so bad, but they're taking it...
The powerful and the go-along-to-get-alongers have always smeared any efforts to change things.
Look at feminism. It is always smeared as "the last generation wasn't so bad, but they're taking it too far now".
Look at the struggle for workers' rights. Even outlawing child labour was opposed by many families that relied on the income. What need did the kids have for making their work illegal? It's not like they could afford more food or sending them to school as it was, let alone with less income in the family.
This is always the narrative. Years go by and this "but right now is too much, the past wasn't so extreme" is always the story.
Change is often unwanted and tiring, even for those that would benefit from it. Then there are those that are very concious about wanting things to stay the same.
This has never actually slowed things down. Those that protest still do. They might tire, but new ones start once they reach the point of exasperation, desperation or motivation that fuels them. This has always been the case.
Don't let the oppressors influence your view on your own passion or engagement. And don't think "it didn't matter" is anything but the opressors' voice.
Yes, a few agent provocateurs that throw in windows and push people to loot stores and the protests are painted in a bad light. Making them more violent won't help. Identifying bad faith actors...
Yes, a few agent provocateurs that throw in windows and push people to loot stores and the protests are painted in a bad light.
Making them more violent won't help. Identifying bad faith actors and pushing them out and distance immediately might be more effective.
Bots spreading misinformation to make the protestors look bad?
I know here in the states protestors are routinely painted in a far worse light than what is actually in reality...it's one of the reasons protesting doesn't really work in the states
I don't think these posts are aimed to make them look bad. The reactions on social media are all in favour of the violent protests and that they wish people would protest with the same energy in the USA.
Something needs to change in the states because it seems like ever since OWS that anytime anyone protests something that isn't "status quo" they get smeared in the court of public opinion until the movement loses all power
OWS=Occupy Wall Street
I recently heard a framing of this issue that really spoke to me: If power corrupts, and I don't want to be corrupt, I should be powerless. It cuts right to the heart of it. Do I want to "keep my soul" and suffer and see the people around me suffer? Not really.
This is straight up insanity
Definitely agree, though it seems like that is starting to change as well.
As far as the second half of your comment...my buddies dad spent the first 20 years of his life in communist Czechoslovakia. He is very much anti republican (much to the chagrin of his sons trumper inlaws) and is also very much salty about the left leaning moral high ground.
When I was a kid my brother talked me out of my belief in pacifism in about 2 seconds by saying "what about WWII?"
There's a level of evil, I think, for which the abolishment of it is so necessary that most people will admit violence and "playing dirty" is justified. The key may be to help people determine not if it's ever justified, but when it's justified. Getting a person to draw that line in the sand (and even better yet, record it) is progress, because people's apathy allows that line to shift further and further away if left unchecked.
To be honest I think the real reason left-leaning Americans fail to "fight dirty" as I put it is because that means putting yourself at risk. On the right, the January 6th insurrectionists risked jail time and one even got shot and killed for fighting for what she believed in, however stupid that belief was.
On the other hand, our beliefs on the left are not stupid, but no one is ready to put their own ass on the line. A doctor who performs an illegal abortion risks a whole lot, so even though they know an abortion may save a woman's life, they simply do not have it in them to take those risks. I get it-- doctors signed up to practice medicine, not to be political activists. But the point is that until a critical mass of people on the left are willing to risk their own asses for the betterment of society, we're not going to win any battles let alone the war.
In regards to reddit, I've seen this trend for quite some time now, way over a year at least. I think reddit has been a tool for radicalisation for years now and the left gets radicalised the same as the right. It's so systematical and persistent that I always got the impression it isn't organic at all.
I would be wary off any second level comments on reddit that is visible from the top.
I mean, yes, since this is a forced trend, it's likely that people will follow it in bigger numbers from day to day, but the comments are placed and the votes fabricated until it becomes a critical mass. It's astro turfing par excellence and has been since spez is the boss.
And it works.
You're absolutely right. It's way more effective to radicalise generally hateful people that share a common ground, and that have a figure that acts as a cult leader.
The methods on social media are the same, but the left is harder to catch and get to rally behind the same message.
I think I wasn't particularly about the far right extremists, but more of the "Berny or bust" and anti Hillary crowd, and the methods used to make them rally behind Trump, where only some of them ended on the far right extremist battleground afterwards.
But the initial methods of radicalisation to catch them first seem very similar to me. I'm no analist, I just spent more time on reddit than could be considered healthy, so I noticed some stuff and methologies that I can't even describe properly.
The left has to feel very desperate to end up in a similar spot. They aren't there, but someone is definitely working on it.
I know where they were coming from. But the movement to make them vote for trump against their own interests was definitely not grassroots but Astro turfing with great effect.
They definitely had it easy because they were anti establiment, but the people that pushed the idea onto them were the same that yelled "what about her emails" or printed and placed "Lock her up" stickers against Angela Merkel to place them everywhere in Germany.
I'm not talking about the people that got duped but about the platforms that were created for them and that pushed them into that direction.
For all the talk about tildes being a place for facts based discourse - which I don't disagree with on the whole ftr - for some reason there is a small contingent of people who are still talking about Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein circa 2016.. seven years later....
Don't really know why this is tolerated when beyond just missing the point (candidates that people actually want to vote for have annoying online supporters, very true) if you spend time relitigating the nuances of the 2016 election online you're doing about as much political activism or discussion as someone arguing about the holodomor does for the discussion of ethnic cleansing through history.
Just please, genuinely, I'm pleading with you, if you're someone who still complains about Bernie bros in 2023 can you do yourself and everyone else a favor and put that energy towards something more positive?
I think that the SCOTUS cases have brought it to the fore a little bit again. Roe v Wade, affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, all would've been saved by Hilary winning, things that (I'm assuming) Bernie supporters were in favour of.
Of course, the amount of Bernie supporters that actually went from a socialist to a fascist is actually miniscule, but they're an easy target because of their oversized online presence.
Yeah, this sort of thing is why I stopped talking about politics in public spaces entirely years ago. Once a space gets big enough, the people that are not being genuine and the people who engage with them anyway become a larger and larger part of the conversation, eventually pushing out any genuine discussion.
Not saying that's happening in this thread, but it seems to me like the original OP is used to dealing with just those people - in this case, fascist former Bernie supporters - despite this group basically being a rounding error, because their mere existence drives engagement.
It's the political version of goatse, or of those videos of puppies getting tortured. Humans latch onto negative emotions more easily, so it makes sense, but I still think it's important to remind people that the topic is a distraction.
Yeah, in real life I know people like that. The thing is, they're not actually Bernie (or Trump) supporters in a way that matters. They don't go to caucuses, canvas or even vote. They're just noise. I'm sure they're online somewhere, and I'm sure someone out there is wasting their time arguing with them.
It's not a group with any actual meaning in the vote totals, beyond just the general phenomenon of American apathy and the collapse in trust of the political system. Which are topics delving into on their own merits, but as you said, there's no actual coherent group of politically aware Bernie supporters that became Trump supporters. People are arguing with the wind.
You misunderstand, I'm agreeing with you. I'm using your post as a jumping off point to remind people that even though you and I both think that the Bernie/far right connection is tenuous at best, that it is an immense waste of time to litigate and relitigate things that ultimately don't matter now.
Our energy is limited, and while I commend you for being willing to spend the energy on pushing back against vibes-based political gunslinging, I'm just asking whether it's worth it to engage at all, versus maybe redirecting the conversation to solutions to the root problem (disinfo online) rather than the intricacies of this particular context.
No worries! It's been a really long time since I've been able to be genuine in a public forum too so I feel that.
I agree that we can't simply fall in line or we get uselessness. I'll still basically always vote blue just because the alternative is red, but that also means that I'm going to complain a lot about the blue guys when they don't do their job and come up with some new ridiculous excuse why.
If I might share some experience from Puerto Rico: do I vote for the current governor who's caught in a corruption scandal, or do I vote for the opposition candidate, who is the son of the most corrupt governor in the history of the country? One of these two is going to win for sure.
The latter guy won, and he was so awful that he had to flee to Florida midterm and resign. But I sympathise with feeling that you've lost the ability to punish a party because the alternative is monstrous.
It's getting late and I have to leave and doing research on this is messy. I'm willing to admit that I might've duped myself with the impression, even when I said only a few completely switched, but I realise now they might've been pretending to be Bernie supporters from the get go.
But one question is still there, are there Bernie supporters that voted for trump over Biden? Do you think they're more far right than anti establishment?
I apologise, I never intended to claim that Bernie supporters were in any way right wing or shifted to the right in any meaningful numbers. I'm aware that only 10% of Bernie voters went for trump and already said they got duped in my initial comment.
I was mainly talking about the mechanics and people that pushed the "Bernie or Bust" narrative online. It wasn't Bernie supporters, but they caught quite a few of them.
Bernie is the best US politician I've ever seen. Sadly he didn't stand a chance because he went against the people that finance the two big parties.
That makes more sense now! Yeah I totally agree that the disinfo that led to that is seriously concerning and I worry about similar things next year. I'm very worried that our media apparatus is just going to knowingly platform a fascist without a second thought in the pursuit of profit. I hope they've learned their lesson, but they don't exactly have a great track record..
Respectfully, the phrase "against their own interests" raises a red flag for me. It's often used as an easy way to dismiss a complex set of values that another human holds that the speaker may not fully understand or appreciate (or obviously agree with). There are a lot of reasons to vote for either Trump or Bernie that are fully inline with a person's own interests, despite that the two are viewed on different "sides" of the political spectrum. (The concept of sides is itself at best inaccurate, anyway.) As a polite challenge: perhaps you don't know where they're coming from as much as you think and consuming more media from the "other" side will help in that understanding.
I don't understand why you would attack me like that and claim I'm only looking at one spectrum of politics when making my decisions.
I'm surprised you would compare Bernie to Trump like that. Bernie is an established politician with great ideas and a standard he has always lived his entire life. He's a fantastic politician with values that align with my own more than any other American politician I've encountered.
Trump was always a populist walking catchphrase. He had no depth and no concept of politics. He was a walking red flag, and it was obvious that you were always voting against your own interest no matter where you were coming from. Yes, I can acknowledge that populism dupes people over and over again, but a Bernie supporter is in no way comparable to a Trump supporter.
Don't forget that this whole Bernie or bust discussion is about 10% of Bernie voters that voted for trump. It's not the same crowd.
I certainly didn't mean that as an "attack" and I sincerely hope we're engaging in a calm, good-faith discussion. I do think you're overly dismissive of Trump voters and the tone of your replies does make me wonder if you have anyone in your life that voted for him that you can engage with in deep conversation. I didn't vote for Tump but I know smart, articulate people that have thoughtful justifications for having done so. My primary concern is the political pendulum is swinging farther and farther to extremes every year. We need to start bringing things back toward the center.
I had many discussions with Trump supporters. I also had way too many intelligent and coherent discussions with actual Neo-Nazis.
It always sounds reasonable on the surface, but when you scratch deeper it boils down to emotions most of the times. I'm in no way religious, but the part about the deadly sins boils it down pretty well why it's easy to trap intelligent people like that.
Good for you. I hope you made them feel heard as that's a truly effective way to change minds.
Here's a good video describing this phenomenon: https://youtu.be/MAbab8aP4_A
The powerful and the go-along-to-get-alongers have always smeared any efforts to change things.
Look at feminism. It is always smeared as "the last generation wasn't so bad, but they're taking it too far now".
Look at the struggle for workers' rights. Even outlawing child labour was opposed by many families that relied on the income. What need did the kids have for making their work illegal? It's not like they could afford more food or sending them to school as it was, let alone with less income in the family.
This is always the narrative. Years go by and this "but right now is too much, the past wasn't so extreme" is always the story.
Change is often unwanted and tiring, even for those that would benefit from it. Then there are those that are very concious about wanting things to stay the same.
This has never actually slowed things down. Those that protest still do. They might tire, but new ones start once they reach the point of exasperation, desperation or motivation that fuels them. This has always been the case.
Don't let the oppressors influence your view on your own passion or engagement. And don't think "it didn't matter" is anything but the opressors' voice.
Yes, a few agent provocateurs that throw in windows and push people to loot stores and the protests are painted in a bad light.
Making them more violent won't help. Identifying bad faith actors and pushing them out and distance immediately might be more effective.
I concur
I really don't like these misleading headlines tryng to project there are no riots in France.