There's no doubt the government, in the face of a very likely second spike, scapegoat the protesters. I don't know how this is defended. It's an easy criticism to make and very good at deflecting from the relevant issue: systemic brutality. In truth the state has had years to address this, George Floyd wasn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, to die at the hands of racist capitalist police. Nor is the phenomenon isolated to the lunatic state of America with its endemic paranoia and violence.
They must not be allowed to deflect. The reality is that this systemic violence isn't the result of a 'few bad apples' or outliers. It is the product of state conditioning, in the form of training. It is the product of the fundamental role of the police. Even if one grants the most charitable reading - that they protect the status quo - they are not neutral arbiters of objective laws. They are willing agents of the ruling class: those with the power to make laws. You and I get no say in those laws. WE don't get to ratify them. The police prosecute those laws, that makes them entirely partisan. Claims that they are 'just doing their job' are telling. Of course they are. Their job is the problem because it is intrinsically against the interests of everyone else. The working class.
There is no neutral position. They stand protecting the status quo. You may think differently when they claim to be protecting property (ie capital). But genuine protest isn't about mere property destruction; it's about capital destruction. Smashing banks doesn't bother; smashing a cashpoint in a deprived community preventing working class from getting their cash does. That's the difference. It's lost on the police.
It gets worse; they don't just stand by defending. They agitate through infiltration and provocateurs (spycops?). They manipulate and ferment. They resort to violence and kettling. They employ liaison officers to pretend camaraderie, asking seemingly innocent questions, person to person. This is anything but; it's information gathering. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
Most importantly this is institutional. Do not be distracted by the attempt to focus on individual cops. The claim that so and so is a good cop, or that PC Plod joined for good reasons and, individually, just wants to help. No doubt that's true of many cops, btu they are swallowed up by the system they have signed up. That makes them at the very least complicit. Those cops accompanying George Floyd's murderer did nothing. Does that make them innocent? They stood by while their colleague committed cold blooded murder. That's the problem. They should have clapped him in irons. Ask yourself why they didn't. The recent footage of the old guy that gets knocked to the ground by another rentamob of riot goons sees the same thing.
In fact one guy stops to help him up and is pushed in by his comrades. Apparently the thug directly responsible was fired; his colleagues resigned in protest. That's how they stick together: with each other, not with the innocent guy they half killed (and may well end up doing if he doesn't make it). His crime was to step before a racially charged violent institution; know your place. All throughout this entire protest the cops have been behaving exactly the same, all the more highlighting their thuggery. They can't help themselves, which is why the institution of policing is beyond reform at this point.
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