As a German, I often find the French protests inspiring. They seem enthusiastic and convinced that they can make a difference, whereas in Germany many people use their perceived insignificance as an excuse for why it’s pointless to even try.
Starts feeling pride
Remembers UK isnt EU
le shameface
What the US doesn’t do enough compared to Europe are General Strikes, rather than protesting.
Protests don’t really hit the Owner classe were it hurts them the most and can easilly be portrayed as a violent rabble or simply not talked about (both things which in countries were the entirety of the Press is captured, are the norm in terms of news coverage).
For all the feeling of release of righteous rage they give to protestors, Protests by themselves are just people walking and shouting (with at most small shops rather than big companies suffering) and thus are easy for the powerful to ignore.
General Strikes, on the other hand, have a way bigger impact on the money making of the people who have a disproportionate amount of power and there are even more impactfull options when the HQs of certain companies or the homes of very rich people are targetted.
Unless they’re properly inconveniences the powerful only pay attention to Protests when they’re a signal that there is insatisfaction amongst the general population which, if not addressed, will lead to things much worse than Protests, and in countries were things don’t actually go further than protesting like the US, the powerful can easilly not care about protests.
Oh so BLM didn’t happen huh?
In some cities people literally set fucking buildings on fire, and guess what? It didn’t change shit. Mindless fires, looting, and destruction of property doesn’t mean you’ll magically get the government to care. It gets all the local mom-and-pops to close and the grocery stores to leave, giving you mothing but a food desert.
I’m so fucking tired of all the EU people on Lemmy making fun of people for at least getting out there and showing others we should care. Senless violence will not solve all of our issues. Someone could shoot Trump tomorrow and sure, maybe we’d get Civil War (so fun am I right!), but that doesn’t mean his chain of succession won’t exist. Are we going to kill the entire fucking cabinet then?
Also isn’t the UK struggling with Isreal protest arrest right now? Where’s their mass violence and fires? Why don’t we care about them?
I’m getting fucking tired of coming onto this site to see endless outsiders eagerly jeering at us to risk our lives in a random blaze of glory that will lead nowhere without a true guide and rebellion. The gun fetishsts are not the ones who hate Trump. They fucking love him. Us normal people hate the idea of touching them. The only people willing to do a suicide mission are those who have nothing to lose, and most people aren’t there. Go be Luigi, and watch how you either die or get stuck in jail limbo for decades. What did shooting the CEO change? Absolutely nothing. Our healthcare system still sucks, because this isn’t a violence problem, it’s a legislation issue.
Should we make fun of HK protesters for being peacful? Iran got a dictator blown to bits and is still going to be in hell.
I genuinely will be curious to see how all of these armchair rebels react if there’s ever a case of mass government corruption in their country in a decade or so. I don’t want for anyone to be in a situation like this, but we’ll see if you keep that same attitude up when it’s your lives on the line.
We see how do you solve your problems which lead to nothing. Did you also asks us if we want to come in this website, and see endless posts about how you can’t solve your problem? tell me to block them, which I did. It’s not I don’t want to know, it’s too much, especially when the citizens of one country don’t understand the situation!
I guess you guys gonna wait for elections or something, and people around here will get more spam about USA and a war that no one wanted.
For how long you gonna wait until your current government kills more children, starve you to death, make your feature more miserable than it is with national debts?
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Sure, the OP for some weird reason didn’t use a modern picture, but he’s a video from 2 years ago:
Have people already forgotten the summers of 2016 and 2018? I can promise you Americans can riot with the best of them.
The difference is they have the capability to completely censor riots now.
It’s an inflammatory comment but it’s one worth repeating: a protest with a permission slip is a parade.
There is one obvious permission structure and one non obvious permission structure at play here. The first and most obvious permission structure at play here is the state, and what the state is willing to accept in the form of protest. The other, less obvious permission structure, is what we as a collective society are willing to accept and consider valid as a form of protest.
We often focus on the first without acknowledging the latter. There are some absolutely legitimate criticisms to be made of protests which seek permission from the state.
What we don’t often talk about is that protest, for it to be effective, also needs to make the other members of society around you uncomfortable. the discomfort is the point, and modern protests in the US are done in a way to reduce discomfort and inconvenience for all, both the government and the protesters, but also society. And if the discomfort created isn’t so bad, protest can and will be readily ignored.
The elephant in the room is that while peaceful protest worked, it was effective in a time where it was fairly novel and society didn’t have great ways of compartmentalizing it. The state and society adapted tools to be able to manage the inconveniences created from protest in such a way that protest is basically 100% ineffective in the US.
If a protest is safe, it can be safely ignored. If a protest doesn’t inconvenience people in a manner that causes them to change behavior, it has no teeth.
I think too many people are too self conscious to join a protest. I think they’re (protests) belittled too much to feel impactful, and a lot of that lies in the division falsely created by the media.
all by design. Notice how the No Kings protests happen on a Saturday? you know…when the majority of people have time off work. that’s the problem. When employment is tied to healthcare and the fact you can’t take time off from it to, like, take back your country combined with many states being at will employment states…yeah it’s all by design to prevent the mass populace from rebelling.
For these protests to REALLY be effective they need to jam up downtown cores at 8am on a weekday and last throughout the day. but they never will. and if they did the turn out would be minimal. My point is you CAN peacefully protest but when it’s on a weekend then no one cares. you’re not hindering anything.
Part of the reason why the protests in 2020 were so big and lasted so long was because if quarantine. A lot of people got laid off. They didn’t have jobs to go to, so there was nothing stopping them from protesting.
When the AI bubble bursts and the recession/depression goes full swing with mass layoffs, I think we’ll see more protests that last weeks or months at a time…
That right there is a big fucking part of why I feel such a deep sense of ennui about the likely outcome of any protests, and any impact it might have on our political system. So much money and effort and time has been exerted to convert the American economic system into a neofeudal serfdom that it’s going to take a genuine catastrophe for anything to change meaningfully - and by change meaningfully, I mean “reverse wealth disparity and rampant corporatism”.
…yet.
This is a weird statement coming less than 24 hours after the largest protest in the history of the country.
Cool. Now tell me what did that protest achieve?
Hell, can you even tell me what the actual aim of the protest was? What were the demands? What was the threat if they didn’t get their demands?
Because otherwise it was just a fan meetup for people that don’t like Trump to show each other their quippy signs.
I feel like the point is less about size and more about the methods. I think it aims at the issue highlighted by an other comment that this protest while good doesn’t really disrupt the system.
For real, the articles I’ve seen about it from the other side of the pond have looked almost dystopianly Hunger Games-esque. Almost like the media was giving them a gold star for all the pretty photo-ops they’d supplied them, where no property was damaged, no police showed up, and nobody got hurt. It was kinda sickening.
Even the most lackluster, neighborhood block protest in France or the UK captures the outrage of the people more potently. Going off what I’ve seen, Americans seem awfully comfortable right now.
Don’t mistake awareness for comfort. We catch a lot of heat for our ridiculous levels of gun violence, but living around that many guns, in a nation where cops, ICE, and counter-protestors armed with assault rifles are just looking for an excuse to unload, you learn how far to push without causing a situation where strays are flying into the crowd. At Defund the Police and Pride we’ve had jacked up pick-ups filled with armed red necks roll coal and brandish on us in full view of the cops; nothing happened. At BLM one of them popped a shot off to spook the crowd; caught, claimed he accidentally turned the safety off, no charges. How many videos are there of monster trucks plowing into crowds? Plus, the new tactic is to show up covered in cameras, incite a fight, play victim, get the protestor arrested. Our courts are theirs and our prison system is egregiously punitive. And don’t doubt that a lot of us protesting are legally carrying. You really don’t want to see an American protest turn into a shootout, and the closer it gets to becoming one the more cautious we are about setting it off without a safety plan.
Until the other issue highlighted in that comment - that the majority of people can’t afford to take the time off work to do something disruptive - is solved, I’m not sure how we get from here to there, unfortunately.
It’s a problem that will start to solve itself as the economy collapses 😕, though that’s when things start to get interesting.
I’m tired of living in interesting times.
I honestly barely heard a peep about it.
What protest? Apparently I live under a rock, didn’t see anything about it.
Just search for ‘no kings march 2026’ and you’ll get pages of results.
I see the propaganda is working, soon no one will remember Blair mountain or any labor history!
I’m just positive the blair mountain signs were some real zingers
IMO peaceful protests do have an impact; however, there is a point where those stop working and more direct action needs to be taken. Problem is people don’t want to out of fear of the police.
Unfortunately our lives need to become shit enough that being beat or shot is no longer a deterrent.
Yep, but if it does reach that tipping point, it’s going to get very ugly.
If?
MLK’s strategy only worked because the powers that be understood that Malcom X was the alternative.
MLKs strategies were effective because they were novel and the state hadn’t built up the tools to deal with them. They had been caught off guard.
The state long ago developed strategies to deal with protest including the use of media for narrative management, and the long term the socialization of “peaceful protest as the only acceptable form of protest” among left wing populations.
The state adapted and evolved to be able to safely ignore peaceful protest, and also ran a long term propaganda campaign that “peaceful protest” is the only form of protest acceptable, and even further, has propagandized to convince people it’s the only form of protest even possible or effective.
MLK was effective because the state hadn’t dealt with those strategies before. They adapted to deal with those strategies, then built funnels for grievances to focus exclusively on the tactics they had adapted to be able to ignore.
MLK’s strategy worked because he had a big legal team as part of his organistation. He could provoke an arrest (making for photo ops), and have his legal team ready to fight the case they had prepared in advance. His strategy always involved getting sued over something and then fight it in court.
looking around at things in 2026
Did it really work?
Problem is people don’t want to out of fear of the police
Is this not the point of the whole thing lol
That’s like saying in 1939 “I would resist harder if not for the Nazi officers… guess I’ll comply a few more years.”
Exactly. It’s the crux of the issue. Peaceful protests should work, and sometimes do; however, there is always the ability of the authorities to just… ignore because they have various police forces to maintain the status quo (maintain order).
Then what? What is the next course of action? Voting didn’t work, peaceful protests didn’t work… what next? If reforming the current system hasn’t worked for the last century and more, what is the alternative?
Peaceful protests only make an impact when they turn violent. And usually only when the Govt. initiates the violence. Right now the Govt. WANTS the violence because then they can declare martial law and stop the midterm elections.
Women got the right to vote through non-violence. This is completely untrue that nonviolence has done nothing. If the numbers get big enough, the government will begin to be afraid of us, again. The billionaires might be afraid again if we show up in the millions to their front door.
Ugh, look up the suffragettes - their was 100% violence
Imma leave this here from Wikipedia
Suffragette violence refers to the militant actions taken by members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in the early 20th century, including bombings and arson, aimed at gaining women’s suffrage in the UK. This campaign, which lasted from 1912 to 1914, resulted in casualties and was viewed by many as a form of terrorism, ultimately leading to a complex legacy regarding the suffrage movement’s effectiveness and public perception
This led directly to the US women’s right to vote movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage_in_the_United_States
Yeah I’m sure the suffragettes mail bombing campaign and assassination program had nothing to do with it.
not so much police, but the fact that leaked documents that are all but official government documents showed that they’re activiely planning for protests to turn violent so they can go full Stalin and start shooting, arresting, and executing people on the grounds of “fuck you that’s why”
Protests aren’t the only thing that activists in the US are doing. It’s not an either or situation.
Totally. US citizens are armed to the teeth and the best they can do is knit hats.
They still don’t have color photography in Europe?
We only don’t have it during protests because people keep burning the colors away with trash fires or Molotov cocktails. Unfortunately the Molotov - proof camera never materialized after Nokia went bankrupt long ago.
I laughed out loud because it’s true.
Too many people in the US keep pushing the idea that “violence never solves anything” when the opposite is absolutely true. If you want positive long lasting change, then you’re gonna have to get your hands dirty with more than just glue and paint.
