Kat Stevens said:
large scale riots are not random, there are always either professional or amateur agitators, usually at the back out of harms way, to whip a crowd into a frenzy then stand back to watch the "fun" they've created.
I had the opportunity, several years ago, to observe a
demonstration that went, very briefly, “bad” but which was, very quickly, “put right.”
This was in a friendly, democratic but very
foreign country.
The
demonstration began
cheerfully enough with a march, lots of horns and bells and lots of civilian riot police standing by – blocking access to a few streets. No problems. Then a few masked
agitators, quite visible, began to throw rocks and do damage to private property. A police
flying squad appeared and very quickly, very effectively and very (and very publicly)
brutally grabbed the
agitators, but only after some quite
heavy and again very visible baton work – heads and bones were broken. The
agitators were whisked away and the
demonstration returned to “normal.” Later that day a citizen – our hotel manager, if I recall – explained that while demonstrations were allowed, as a matter of
right, property damage and dangerous acts, like rock throwing, were
intolerable to all citizens, not just the police.
So, yes, there are
agitators who, as a matter of tactics,
want to provoke “police brutality” because they
believe that most of us
believe that property damage and rock throwing (which can endanger people) is some sort of
civil right.
To the extent that some of us do think rock throwing and property damage are part and parcel of
lawful assembly and
free speech then, to that exact same extent,
we they are fools.
