“Violent protests” no they’re not. This is a lie. Every single fucking time, it’s a lie. Period, without exception. This is a heuristic I rely on.
The state has all the power. It has police with guns and armies with tanks. It has money and surveillance and legitimacy. When people turn out to protest with their bare bodies against the power of the state, they are exquisitely vulnerable. Agents of the state might beat them, handcuff them and kidnap them, spray them with high powered hoses, deploy chemical weapons like tear gas to torture them, or use increasingly exotic weapons involving sound or microwaves.
Or the state might just shoot them, or burn them, or drive over them with tanks.
There is nothing protesters can do that even remotely compares.
Without fail, if someone uses the phrase “violent protests,” they are lying. They don’t exist. Period.
Sometimes, when people are attacked by agents of the state, protesters defend themselves. They might throw stones, or kick tear gas canisters back at the cops, or shoot fireworks. They might even cobble together incendiaries like Molotov cocktails.
The violence belongs to the state and its suppression of protests, not the actual protest.