Don't want to put this fellow on blast, but I do want to talk about this perspective, because I think it is mostly wrong. Because of course in practice a government has access to a lot more 'guys,' if - and only if - the political will to mobilize them exists. Imposing friction has hard limits. 1/ - ThreadSky

bretdevereaux.bsky.social • 7 days ago

Don't want to put this fellow on blast, but I do want to talk about this perspective, because I think it is mostly wrong.

Because of course in practice a government has access to a lot more 'guys,' if - and only if - the political will to mobilize them exists.

Imposing friction has hard limits. 1/

Reposted from Peter Moore

I'm not sure this is entirely true though when the movement is seeking to obstruct actual actions by the state. If a movement is unpopular but able to significantly raise the cost of doing something - like forcing ICE raids to be done by 200 guys - then this is also success.

Comments

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

The actual 'play' here is using protest and civil disobedience to bait the administration into unleashing violence on sympathetic protestors, shifting public opinion.

The classic 'how the Civil Rights Movement won' story.

You can impose a bit of friction there, but it isn't your goal. 2/

thomaskilmer.bsky.social•7 days ago

That's literally what happened though. Protest and civil disobedience resulted in the administration unleashing violence on protesters.

If people aren't finding the results of that sympathetic, that's not the protesters' fault!

greenclock.bsky.social•7 days ago

They will need to impose enough friction to actually make them use force.
For the civil right protesters this was somewhat easy because the plethora of racist laws gave them plenty illegal things to do the police felt like it needed to stop. You need to find an activity they cant just ignore.

greenclock.bsky.social•7 days ago

Which means in the given case, interfereing with their ability to Arrest people. If their detention and Deportation machine runs smoothly they have no reason the beat down Protests.

paringpro.bsky.social•7 days ago

I think this woman is sympathetic enough and support what she supports
https://bsky.app/profile/lesbrains.bsky.social/post/3lr4jufnqms25

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

Yeah, I should say, I'm talking general principles here but right now the LA protests seem to be doing a pretty decent job threading this needle. I'd like to see a more American flags, fewer Mexican flags, and it was unfortunate that one (1) car got burned, but overall, not a catastrophe.

thomaskilmer.bsky.social•7 days ago

If symbols of foreign roots are viewed as un-American, I'm sorry to tell you but that is the viewpoint of the fascists snatching people right now.

The whole thing being fought, is the idea that foreign roots are un-American. So it's not helping to tell people to leave those roots at home.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

I mean, when you can get the LAPD, of all organizations, to say directly, 'this was peaceful, it wasn't a riot,' you've got to be doing a pretty good job being peaceful, because the LAPD is not a friendly audience most of the time.

fantasticalkate.bsky.social•7 days ago

As a small caveat, the car burning happened in Compton which is its own jurisdiction and outside the City of Los Angeles, so the LAPD does not have jurisdiction there. I think the distinction between LA City and LA County is making things confusing.

paringpro.bsky.social•7 days ago

Compton is LASD (county PD) which seems to be in agreement with LAPD. Idk I'm not from there

https://www.coloradoboulevard.net/la-county-sheriffs-department-reaffirms-commitment-to-public-safety/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton_Police_Department

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

Also, I should note, I am saying that in this circumstance forbearance is *effective* which isn't the same as saying it is fair or necessarily just. It is the shortest road to a just outcome, but true justice will need to involve some accountability for many of these ICE goons.

paringpro.bsky.social•7 days ago

Sure. But the LAPD's flexibility and cross-pressures here are exactly why "forbearance" might be more flexible than we expect. They know there's stuff to nitpick, and maybe on Day 60 they will. But right now it's the feds who look bad and can't count on their support for expanding the confrontation

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

The reason friction cannot be an end unto itself is the current political configuration gives the administration access to enough force to overcome your friction and doing so gives them the political excuse needed to extinguish your political movement without popular backlash.

That's losing. 3/

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

What this comes down to is you need to decide at the outset if you are running a political movement or an insurgency.

If you are primarily imposing friction, you are running an insurgency and should be stockpiling rifles, grenades and IEDs, not signs.

(Don't do that, it won't work). 4/

petejmoore.bsky.social•7 days ago

I would disagree strongly with this and point out that in the history of the UK where I now live the most successful mass movements have sought to impose 'friction' and done so without IEDs.

petejmoore.bsky.social•7 days ago

There is enormous global experience of protest and mass politics of people taking a stand against state action falling between the poles of Selma and Sadr City. This road may be fresh for America, but lots of oppositions have had to grapple with this and come up with successful strategies inbetween

petejmoore.bsky.social•7 days ago

You say that friction can't be an end unto itself even as the local authorities in Los Angeles say they won't step in to assist federal authorities. No doubt federal authorities can mobilise the "guys" to have their way in LA, but can they do it across the US?

hegeliangrant.bsky.social•7 days ago

and it has fallen completely by the wayside that one of the events that got national attention on Selma was when Annie Lee Cooper knocked down and beat the shit out of Sheriff Clark on the steps of the courthouse

was a massive escalation beyond anything we’ve seen in decades from “violent” protests

sesquipedalian.bsky.social•7 days ago

Which mass movements in the UK have been successful by imposing friction on government action rather than by changing public opinion?

petejmoore.bsky.social•7 days ago

The anti-Poll Tax campaign is the most obvious example but the fuel protests 25 years ago are a good example, the road protest camps in the 90s too, and broadly the history of union activity, the most disruptive examples being the miners strikes of the 70s.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

Trying to run a political movement while *cosplaying* as an insurgency is a recipe for backlash and failure. Yes, sometimes political movements have 'armed wings,' but if anyone calls it your movement's 'armed wing' that's losing - those folks are supposed to be deniable for optics' sake. 5/

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

And I know to a certain sort of person choosing to be a political movement over an insurgency feels like weakness and half-measures, but it isn't. 'We need to save people.'

But that emotionally unsatisfying political movement strategy is actually how you save the most people. 6/

greenclock.bsky.social•7 days ago

This is predicated on the idea that it will work. That there are infact enough people in the us who care enough about Immigrants that there is a level of force seen as illegitimate.

And the counter, of course, as you noted in a big picture sense in one earlier post, is that resisting these kinds..

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

The Civil Rights Movement (1954-'68) won, they defeated the segregationist American political establishment with, depending on how you count, anywhere from dozens to a few hundred deaths.

The Iraqi insurgency (2003-'11), by contrast, lost 25,000 insurgents losing to the same government. 7/

whatusername.bsky.social•7 days ago

And if you disagree, you can ask Gerry Adams if he was ever part of the IRA.

menger-spongebob.bsky.social•6 days ago

Was umKhonto plausibly-deniable?

eafirstlast.bsky.social•7 days ago

This isn't the choice though. The democrats simply do not allow the left to become a movement.

tjradcliffe.bsky.social•7 days ago

Friction does not necessarily lead to violent insurgency. See James Scott's "Weapons of the Weak". And politics does not have a great track record against autocracies, which the civil rights movement did not face, and you plausiblity do face today. So friction may be the right thing to do right now

nooneofcons.bsky.social•7 days ago

These are less protests, and more trying to rescue people from being sent to El Salvador’s hell prisons, which I gotta think people would accept them getting more physical

asazernik.bsky.social•7 days ago

Does it, though? Federal law enforcement manpower is sharply limited!

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

If you ever actually inflicted enough friction to stop the function of federal law enforcement, that would be sufficient pretext under the law to actually invoke the insurrection act and employ the national guard in a law enforcement role.

asazernik.bsky.social•7 days ago

Which makes the optics worse for strategy 2!

ie I think the strategy of friction and the strategy of provoking bad-looking repression are in harmony here. Imposing friction in telegenic ways helps bait that untelegenic repression.

https://bsky.app/profile/bretdevereaux.bsky.social/post/3lr4egwprh22b

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•7 days ago

But note that friction is not your end, it is merely a means to your actual goal, which is provoking an over-response which galvanizes public support.

So an action which increases friction but alienates the public is counterproductive. That's the key difference.

sarachim.bsky.social•7 days ago

If the plan is to bait the government into doing violence, you will have to actually obstruct something the government is trying to do (even if it is just clearing your group off the street), or else they’ll ignore you and so will the press.

dissenterbedamned.bsky.social•6 days ago

Ask the black panthers for advice before you advocate for people to do nothing please.

mach01-1.bsky.social•7 days ago

i think the key thing is that this doesn't require renouncing confrontation or even (low levels of) violence, it just means thinking about how justifiable those things are.

does throwing that brick mean fewer people will protest tomorrow? does it mean the public will turn against you?

mach01-1.bsky.social•7 days ago

there is room for barricades and paving stones and things of that sort, but only if the general public thinks that they're acceptable as a response to prior violence or escalation

even if you're on the 'violence' side of the non-violence vs violence debate, your job is still to get teargassed on TV

eafirstlast.bsky.social•7 days ago

Also it is really kinda telling when someone who is not out there protesting personally goes "You need to bait them into violence without responding"

You are, of course, telling people they should let themselves be hurt of killed without your own well being on the line

eafirstlast.bsky.social•7 days ago

I want to remind everyone that the government tried to smear mlk’s protests as violent and disruptive too and that they were not perfect kumbaya circles. Shit got smashed when mlk marched. Ignore the myth of the perfect innocent protester

bazhko.bsky.social•7 days ago

I don't think it's that black and white. Obviously a protest can't stop the National Guard if the National Guard really wants to come through, but there are all kinds of ways to increase the man hours required to deport someone and the administration was REALLY struggling with that even before this.

irredeemablebunny.bsky.social•7 days ago

Yes, and all of them can be counteracted by the State. Thing is, they cannot counteract without breaking some principles and processes that observers have stakes on. And when that happens, you want to look to those observers as the least unsympathetic of the movements they may blame for that.

irredeemablebunny.bsky.social•7 days ago

So, basically, what @bretdevereaux.bsky.social is saying is: you can't create enough friction to grind the gears of a modern state, let alone the US (latest example: Serbia vs Vucic). But you can create enough friction they overreact.

irredeemablebunny.bsky.social•7 days ago

And when that happens, if you have managed to become unsympathetic to the public, you'll get their indifference. So your priority should be exactly the opposite. Then you get to the government (he says through elections). Then you Nuremberg the shit out of them.

irredeemablebunny.bsky.social•7 days ago

(This, by the way, is not even controversial I think. This is very much Effective Protesting in Borderline Democratic Regimes 101.)

omnomtom.bsky.social•7 days ago

And making them overreact to the friction is part of the strategy of winning over public opinion. Forcing them to use hundreds of agents backed up by local riot cops for every arrest makes it much more visible, and masked feds raiding workplaces to disappear people isn't popular.

bazhko.bsky.social•7 days ago

Yes, exactly.

Also with anything like this there is no overall coordinated strategy, because there is never an overall coordinated strategy to spontaneous protests.

That doesn't mean that spontaneous protests can't be effective.

grimalex.bsky.social•7 days ago

I disagree, but let's say that you are right. What are the concrete steps to do that? As far as I know, this is pretty loosely organized and in reaction to an immediate event. It's more like Stonewall or White Nights than the March on Washington. How do you turn one into the other right now?

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