So far, a lot of the protests have been peaceful with some riots. The riots themselves don’t seem to be on the level of Watts '65. I’m wondering if they’ll go the same way as the Northern Irish riots of the '70s.
Police seem to be too eager to use force which reinforces the grievances of the protesters. How much are police going to step up the use of force? Is there going to be another Kent State/Bloody Sunday? Some white supremacist police officers might overuse force with the goal of triggering the race war they’ve been going on about for decades.
Will protesters step it up too, e.g.: with bricks and molotov cocktails? I’m surprised no protesters have used guns against police so far. It would only take a very small percentage of very angry protesters to get the shooting going.
Now that National Guard are out to augment local and state police, and seem all too willing to unleash a hail of rubber bullets and CS gas on any and all gatherings they deem unacceptable, I’m guessing the disturbances will peter out over the next 2-3 days. Of the various wild cards that may make this guess wrong, the one I am most worried about is armed, mostly right-wing groups freelancing, with or without the tacit approval of the authorities. If this occurs on a wide scale, all bets are off.
In a way, racist individuals freelancing to kill blacks is what the Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery incidents were about. There might be more of that as more whites become anxious/paranoid about black people in their neighborhood.
If white supremacists hold counter-protests with their guns, that could also turn ugly.
Those guys are total cowards, all hat and no cattle. Look, what better thing for those militia idiots to do than get out in their mismatched camos and their AK47s and defend against looters? :rolleyes:Instead they are cowering in their homes.
The violence is being caused by the Black Block anarchists.
I can’t verify the provenance of this clip: - YouTube
But it is really disturbing. White guy “umbrella man” obviously covering his identity, deliberately takes a hammer to all the front windows of the Autozone and then walks off. He’s recorded, some people confront him, and he walks off. I would really like to see more footage.
Clearly this person was out to start something. Deliberately paid to target that Autozone, random act to incite something, paid agent, anarchist taking advantage of the situation? It certainly was not a spontaneous act, nor someone in the crowd of protesters.
He is very likely a black block anarchist. They wear gas masks, wear black, and are privileged white guys. They have been turning peaceful protests violent for about a decade. They have infiltrated Antifa also.
Bellevue Washington is now under curfew. Bellevue is a suburb of Seattle, a huge high tech hub, very wealthy town of about 150,000 residents. Evidently there was a small protest with criminal gangs that then targeted 3 upscale malls for looting.
I am skeptical of serious violence breaking out in any significant fashion. I understand it’s scary for the people living close to it, but I personally don’t generally fear for the personal safety of the average citizen in areas where demonstrations are taking place.
Not for personal safety, but it’s pretty obvious some people were out to loot the malls (there are 3 close together) under cover of “protesting.”
I’ve just watched a couple of hours of the current protest. This is Bellevue. Looks like a bunch of millenials out for a “protest” (I don’t mean that in a bad way, but these are clearly not looters or agent provocateurs).
Now showing footage of another mall (South Center Mall, and now even the Tukwilla Mall and in Renton) near the airport has been having looting. Christ, it’s pretty obvious to me that some folks are just out to loot. Doesn’t seem to be the scenario of anarchists breaking windows that then sets of the crowd. Seems to be groups in with the protesters for the specific purpose of leading a looting.
This one isn’t violent per se but just sad, a homeless guy had his few possessions lit on fire, I don’t know that these are actual antifa members however as the link states:
It’s sad that people are dying over some bull between two bouncer thugs. I just hope I can put a little perspective on why this incident is not a worthy fight.
There isn’t an organization in the USA called “Antifa.” It is literally not a thing. It’s basically a symbol that people act like they’re a part of to seem cool on campus. It has fewer actual members than the Spin Doctors Fan Club.
This “Antifa is behind all this” stuff is pure, 100% bullshit made up by Republicans to scare you.
All of its true and all is irrelevant. If sufficient people believe that Antifa exists then there is going to be sufficient support for Government action against whatever is deemed to be Antifa.
The USG just spent a lot of effort on “signature” strikes, against “Al Qaeda”. Attacking people who were deemed to have done things that made them likely “militants”. Nothing is stopping them from doing the same here,
I’d never heard of Black Bloc. Google has hits (without your extraneous ‘K’) that are years old
What is your evidence that the rioting is being provoked by “Black Bloc anarchists”? Some news reports imply that white supremacists have been accused/arrested for inciting riots. Your Black Bloc hypothesis MIGHT be true, but given that it is precisely the sort of LIE that Trumpists would love to embrace, until we see evidence it seems best to treat it as Fake News.
None of those links, to me, are at the Watts / Kent State / Bloody Sunday levels asked about by the OP, though. Do you think they’re indicative of violence rising to those levels in the future?