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Old 2nd February 2017, 05:08 AM   #31
uke2se
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Originally Posted by Delphic Oracle View Post
C/P of my thoughts shared elsewhere:

Who needs agents provocateur when we provide our own for free?

Way to hand them the exact narrative they wanted. So instead of Milo talking to a half empty room and selling a dozen books, he got to upgrade the venue to prime time news networks and make his case to millions of people that we're the intolerant ones.

Think of civil unrest like a highly specialized trade craft or art form. It takes years to learn the hows and whys.

I only know of two valid reasons to set fires as part of a protest:

1) Area denial: to prevent being flanked and kettled if you are aware of an imminent attempt to do so. It can also be used during a retreat to delay attempts to engage in pursuit.

2) Decontamination: to create a heat hall to raise tear gas up and over the crowd so that medics can provide treatment to affected people. This one comes courtesy of veterans, having witnessed such occur from the other perspective.

What conceivable purpose is this giant and recklessly dangerous blaze going to accomplish? How are we any closer to our goals of equality and freedom because of this fire?

Does anyone think that a person (not already on board with the ideals described) sitting at home watching this on the news is suddenly thinking to themselves "Well, I wasn't convinced before, but now I want to join the cause!"

Morons. I'm not joking when I say people like this are only a razor thin margin less of a threat to the struggle we're about to get into than the actual enemies we have. If we don't have the backing of the public, we will not win. At some philosophical level if we don't have the backing of the public, we probably SHOULDN'T win.
Agreed. Progressive politicians need to reach out to these misguided individuals and harness their rage for the struggle to come. Properly deployed, these kinds of actions can do wonders for a resistance movement.
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