- 22 days
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.
- 21 days
And agent provocateurs sent to stir shit to discredit the movement and give the police an excuse to crack skulls.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
One guy working alone found the United healthcare CEO. Imagine if 1000 worked together like they did to loot a small shop.
- 21 days
One guy with connections and the cash on hand to put together a plan and carry it out.
It’s not impossible. But even then, most CEOs aren’t billionaires. That one wasn’t. The people sitting on the board of directors and majority shareholders are the billionaires.
- 22 days
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
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
Yes I’m glad you both understand and are ok with state sanctioned killing and regular murder, vary good.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
And those are just the white people lol. A ton of others have been executed but they were too brown for mass media coverage
- 21 days
He’s not a friend, he’s fucking scum and deserving of being treated like it.
- BooBees@fedinsfw.appEnglish22 days
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.
22 daysCuckservatives support billionaire pedophiles because that’s what they aspire to be.
- 21 days
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
- 21 days
A coworker says that all the problems in Paris is because Hillary has sent Antifa to cause chaos…
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
Yep France will have a Nazi for president next year. These riots swayed many centrist voters. Like during the riots someone burned down historic buildings. One thing the French have in common is that they love their historic architecture. Though good chance some agent provacteur from Israel, US or Russia instigated it all.
- 20 days
You just so badly want places to end up like america so you can feel better about your own inaction, pathetic.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
And nothing changed? The pedo is still ordering his goons to kill citizens, they’re trying to deport a member of Congress, and they’re perpetuating the war in the middle east (and a myriad of other stuff).
Where’s the line? When will the Americans do anything about it?
- 20 days
No Kings is run by the same Liberal organizations that support the Democratic party. They might as well be party sponsored events. Nothing will change when the Market liberal donkeys are in charge, besides the visibility of ICE.
- Wataba@sh.itjust.worksEnglish21 days
Because Americans literally do nothing as their form of protest. They allow the steamrolling to happen to protect their own vapid moral integrity.
Canadians might be worse in terms of doing nothing. The average Canadian in my experience can’t even imagine politics left of the NDP (our social democrats).
The slow slide to the right that’s just beginning here feels like it’s just a boring fact and not a struggle.
- 20 days
Yah but at least we don’t vote in obvious fascists or separate under obvious foreign lobbying, your just fingerprinting to avoid facing the reality the left in America is getting walked all over.
- 21 days
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.)
- Leviathan@fedinsfw.appEnglish21 days
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.
- 21 days
It doesn’t matter who, the fact is the division and chaos is being amplified from outside.
- 20 days
That is objectively a good thing when we’re talking about the country that can’t stop itself from starting illegal wars of aggression and doing genocides across the world.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
On paper both are small business owners.
Most truckers are, too.One sixth of truckers are, too.- 21 days
They’re not. They’re not at all. What do you think a small business owner even is?
- 21 days
Someone that owns their own income generating property. I.e., a business. Which is small. Local definitions put that at either <500 employees or <7.5m operating revenue.
I was wrong though, only ~16% of truckers are small business owners. They’re the ones called “owner operators”. Because they own their own truck.
Technically, anyone filling out form 1099 come tax time is a small business owner.
- 20 days
If you own 100 pieces of residential real estate, you’re aren’t a small business, lmao.
Edit: also, uber drivers aren’t small businesses
- 21 days
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.
- 21 days
The business have insurances, and actually don’t loose at being attacked. Many even benefit of the insurance to renew their shop in a more modern way ; it is at the point police sometimes even doubt the shop owner may have asked to be a target. It can also be a good time to burn accountancy documents when some were a problem, and destroy those stock of merchandises they knew they could not sell (so insurance pay for them).
Yet for some it is a real moral pain to see their shop looted, of course…
- 21 days
That’s why all the small business owners are chiming in to cheer when their shops are torn to pieces and burned down!
Do you even hear yourself XD
- 21 days
Most of the times they find it boring, yes. Yet do you know one that has really lost something after the death of Nahel? In my town most burnt shops reopened fast, renewed, and more attractive than before.
And I can’t remember any casualties for shop owners, beside those who got caught trying to hide the bankruptie of their company as a riot burning (for insurance). Do you know some that had real (unsolved) problems because of riots?
- 21 days
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.
Won’t speak for you, but I’m not getting close enough to toss a Molotov cocktail at a man in an elevated position with a long gun. 😬 (Seriously, reread your comment and think out how that would work IRL.)
- 20 days
In a city envorment with tons of cover? see your clearly not thinking past your fear responce.
pretend i have the digital image editing skills to combine these please:
spoliered because holy fuck that took up a lot of my screen
- Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish21 days
What makes anybody think an American who condemns the looting in France approves of everything that’s wrong in America?
