Fucking Cops

[nihilistcat]

You have to keep in mind, even though these protests attract a lot of people, the state these police work for also represents the citizens who are not attending these protests.

Sometimes activists, especially in larger protests, get the false impression that "the people" support their cause (they confuse large attendance at a demonstration with public opinion more generally). Here in the US a "big" protest might garner two or three hundred thousand people (and protests that big only happen once or twice a year, at most). But this is a country of around 330 million people. So a quarter million people isn't even statistically significant (no matter how loud they are or how devoted they are).

There is also the reality that "the state" has grown into an independent organism (it is not, as many assume, merely an extension of the people). It does indeed work very hard to influence public opinion to advance its own agenda. So we can certainly argue that the state, through its suppression of protest activity, is manipulating public opinion (and since the opinions of those who oppose protests are corrupted by state manipulation, those opinions should be considered less legitimate).

But IMHO this approach (which very much seems to be the predominant attitude among activists, even though it may be something that happens inadvertently) alleviates the general public of any responsibility for their role in promoting this mess (through complacency and laziness), and it's also a really pretentious assumption. I've always thought that really effective activism should be about information dissemination, not confrontation with authorities under some presumption that activists have the moral imperative. Rather than getting a hundred thousand people to take a bus somewhere like Washington DC and hold a demonstration, it would be much better if they simply stayed in their communities and canvassed or held small events at their local park or schoolhouse or library (although I'm also very much aware of the fact that activism probably won't change anytime soon). Lawful demonstrations are okay to build awareness around an issue, but these confrontational protests under tenuous and pretentious assumptions, can be a problem IMO.

Not to mention, all of these really big protest movements over the past several years (Occupy, the Tea Party, etc.) have only left a vague impression in peoples minds, and while yes, more people are talking about wealth inequality and deficit spending, they're not any more motivated than they were before the appearance of these movements. In other words, these movements are not growing roots, they're more like a shooting start, here today, burn really bright for a brief moment in time, and then disappear. 

Personally, I'm no fan of the state (at least not the way things are today), but I'm also not so ideologically dogmatic that I feel like I have a right to value my own opinion over that of the general public, and behave as if the opinions of the general public are illegitimate or everyone on earth (besides me and my friends) are brainwashed, so their opinions don't count. I don't think it's that hard to figure out that the state manipulates public opinion, works to sustain (and expand) its own power, etc. etc. So I don't assume that the general public is unaware of this fact. I assume that most people like things the way they are, and if that's going to change, then activists need to make their case to the public through lawful means (of which there are many here in the US). Because that "law" (and the idea of law and order in general) is in fact supported by the vast majority of people. 

While I do understand that many groups have legitimate rage about how they're treated by our system, the fact is, the majority of people in those groups, keep voting for the same shit (it's not like past periods, when certain groups, racial minorities, women, etc., lacked the right to vote, no ... they can and do vote, and they keep voting for the same shit, so I blame the people, and I think we have a duty to inform ourselves, and thus, ignorance is no excuse). So IMO activists can legitimately exhort the people to take responsibility for their own society, but to supplant the will of the people with our own will, is just as coercive as anything else.