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This is what happens when you outlaw peaceful protest
The banning of peaceful protest from Egypt to Spain is increasingly leaving citizens with no other way to express their opposition but through violence.Snip...
Last night’s clashes in Madrid are only the latest in a long line of actions and reactions, uprisings and crackdowns, rebellions and repressions. All around the world, a nefarious process is afoot. In many of the countries that experienced dramatic social mobilizations from 2011 onward, terrified elites are now drawing up laws banning the type of street demonstrations that kick-started the Age of the Protester, desperately trying to institutionalize their Thermidorian counter-revolution now that the movements appear to be on the retreat. But everywhere these type of anti-protest legislations are being passed, the attempted closure is only drawing people back into the streets.
In Egypt, when the revolutionary movement suddenly resurfaced last month, the military-controlled government moved swiftly to implement a new law that would effectively ban all unauthorized gatherings of over 10 people. The day after the law was passed activists took to the streets of Cairo to denounce it and the regime responded by attacking and arresting the protesters, subjecting them to torture and sexual assault before dumping a number of them in the desert. Still, activists in Cairo warned that “we will not protest at the whim and convenience of a counter-revolutionary regime,” declaring that “the January 25 Revolution has returned to the streets.”
Apart from Egypt and Spain, similar anti-protest laws have been drafted up elsewhere as well. During the student uprising in Québec last year, politicians tried to deal with the outburst of popular indignation by pushing through emergency legislation banning the demonstrations. In Japan, the government is trying to do the same following the massive anti-nuclear demos after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. And wherever protest has not yet been made illegal by law, police forces are trying to do everything within their power to treat it as such — just take a look at the way cops treat students in the UK, or the coordinated fashion in which the federal government cracked down on the Occupy movement in the US.
The worldwide repression of popular protest should be seen as part of a general evolution in the nature of the capitalist state: away from a modicum of democratic accountability under the Keynesian social welfare state towards an ever more authoritarian neoliberal form. In this respect, the protest bans are indicative of a contradictory rearrangement of power relations. On the one hand, the movements have clearly left an impression: apparently the massive street demonstrations of recent years have terrified governments so much that they now consider such draconian measures necessary to maintain their grip on power. This reveals something about the ideological fragility of the dominant order, whose legitimacy was shaken to its very core by the uprisings of 2011-’13.
Middle 4 of 9 paragraphs from: http://roarmag.org/2013/12/spain-egypt-law-ban-protest/In Egypt, when the revolutionary movement suddenly resurfaced last month, the military-controlled government moved swiftly to implement a new law that would effectively ban all unauthorized gatherings of over 10 people. The day after the law was passed activists took to the streets of Cairo to denounce it and the regime responded by attacking and arresting the protesters, subjecting them to torture and sexual assault before dumping a number of them in the desert. Still, activists in Cairo warned that “we will not protest at the whim and convenience of a counter-revolutionary regime,” declaring that “the January 25 Revolution has returned to the streets.”
Apart from Egypt and Spain, similar anti-protest laws have been drafted up elsewhere as well. During the student uprising in Québec last year, politicians tried to deal with the outburst of popular indignation by pushing through emergency legislation banning the demonstrations. In Japan, the government is trying to do the same following the massive anti-nuclear demos after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. And wherever protest has not yet been made illegal by law, police forces are trying to do everything within their power to treat it as such — just take a look at the way cops treat students in the UK, or the coordinated fashion in which the federal government cracked down on the Occupy movement in the US.
The worldwide repression of popular protest should be seen as part of a general evolution in the nature of the capitalist state: away from a modicum of democratic accountability under the Keynesian social welfare state towards an ever more authoritarian neoliberal form. In this respect, the protest bans are indicative of a contradictory rearrangement of power relations. On the one hand, the movements have clearly left an impression: apparently the massive street demonstrations of recent years have terrified governments so much that they now consider such draconian measures necessary to maintain their grip on power. This reveals something about the ideological fragility of the dominant order, whose legitimacy was shaken to its very core by the uprisings of 2011-’13.
12 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
though most of the citizens here haven't realized it yet.
Peaceful Protest in the USA died when 1st Amendment Zones were implemented by the agents of our Government.
NOW, we are ALLOWED to protest only at the pleasure of our government.
If we offend the government with our Peaceful Protests,
or IF the government suspect that a Peaceful Protest is becoming effective,
then the protests are violently crushed by agents of our government.
[font size=4]
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."[/font]
----John F. Kennedy
[/font]
''The worldwide repression of popular protest should be seen as part of a general evolution in the nature of the capitalist state:''
Actually, I see the repression attempts as the exact opposite -- as a devolution. TPTB see the handwriting on the wall. The gig is up. The money game was a LIE from the jump, and the truth of that is now so obvious that they're trying to cast it as the norm. They tell us that it's normal to give banks money when they lose their gambling bets. And that's its even more okay to make ''we the people'' (and their great-great-grandchildren) pay for it. They're the Masters of the Universe, remember?
''Evolution'' discards or modifies what no longer serves, but capitalism tries to maintain stasis since that is what is to their advantage. That is why, for example, no advances in non-polluting energy has been allowed to see the light of day. Because the TPTB are entrenched into this existing system of fossil hell-on-earth and seek to keep us entrench along with them. Even if it kills us.
And as with all thing in nature, the domination by a single species is the usually death-knell of all species within that environment eventually. These mastodons of our robber baron past have become a societal cancer that is metastasizing and threatens to kill everyone close to it.
What we're seeing NOW is their reaction to the obvious signs all over the world that the system is coming apart. And we know it. They have been gilding their lilies with bonuses, they have been securing their possessions in underground vaults and bunkers, and they have been hiring mercenaries and thugs to oversee us. They are scared and their fears are symbolized in these repressive acts they've been enacting in the hopes that they can somehow staunch the flow in which we are all going. It won't.
The minorities and the poor of this country have long-felt the heels and the backhands of the cops, now Middle-America is feeling it and its shocking to behold. And it will only get worse unless we act to stop it. That's why the cops are now beating us and tasering us with impunity. To keep us in-line. To keep us afraid. But the TRUTH is, they are the ones who are afraid. We out number them hugely. They are but a speck. All it takes to change everything overnight is for us to collectively say:
[font size=10] IT'S OVER![/font]
- And they know this too.
''The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.''
~Dresden James
Actually, I see the repression attempts as the exact opposite -- as a devolution. TPTB see the handwriting on the wall. The gig is up. The money game was a LIE from the jump, and the truth of that is now so obvious that they're trying to cast it as the norm. They tell us that it's normal to give banks money when they lose their gambling bets. And that's its even more okay to make ''we the people'' (and their great-great-grandchildren) pay for it. They're the Masters of the Universe, remember?
''Evolution'' discards or modifies what no longer serves, but capitalism tries to maintain stasis since that is what is to their advantage. That is why, for example, no advances in non-polluting energy has been allowed to see the light of day. Because the TPTB are entrenched into this existing system of fossil hell-on-earth and seek to keep us entrench along with them. Even if it kills us.
And as with all thing in nature, the domination by a single species is the usually death-knell of all species within that environment eventually. These mastodons of our robber baron past have become a societal cancer that is metastasizing and threatens to kill everyone close to it.
What we're seeing NOW is their reaction to the obvious signs all over the world that the system is coming apart. And we know it. They have been gilding their lilies with bonuses, they have been securing their possessions in underground vaults and bunkers, and they have been hiring mercenaries and thugs to oversee us. They are scared and their fears are symbolized in these repressive acts they've been enacting in the hopes that they can somehow staunch the flow in which we are all going. It won't.
The minorities and the poor of this country have long-felt the heels and the backhands of the cops, now Middle-America is feeling it and its shocking to behold. And it will only get worse unless we act to stop it. That's why the cops are now beating us and tasering us with impunity. To keep us in-line. To keep us afraid. But the TRUTH is, they are the ones who are afraid. We out number them hugely. They are but a speck. All it takes to change everything overnight is for us to collectively say:
[font size=10] IT'S OVER![/font]
- And they know this too.
''The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.''
~Dresden James
It's easy to cow anyone who is too afraid to open their eyes. It's another thing when their eyes are looking back at you.
- 7,000,000,000 pairs of eyes.......