Richard Barnard is accused of expressing support for Hamas and has been charged with two counts of criminal damage
  • Justice@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    23·
    2 months ago

    Seems similar to what Georgia/Atlanta cops were (probably still are…) doing to the protestors and activists against “cop city.” Cops will try or just lie and form a connection between organizers and funders and people who are doing direct action. Destroying equipment used to make weapons, sleeping in a tent to prevent advancing heavy vehicles, it’s all the same to the hogs.

    The message sent is always the same: “Chant your words at us all you like. But the second you organize and, god forbid!, do anything meaningful, even the slightest thing like inconvenience property owners (the worst crime of course), you and everyone we can tie you to is at the least getting swept up and some will face serious charges and years in prison. We recommend you all just stfu now! Thank you!”

    And like it or not, this type of draconian application of state violence makes people stop doing anything at all from protesting (the mostly ineffective kind that we see all the time) because cops might grab their face and find literally anything to tie them to a grander “terror plot” case, to donating to organizations that range from direct action, to bail funds (GA was insanely going after bail fund funders…), to even totally good state-supported things because media like this goes out, people will just think “oh Palestinian just means terrorism… and guy went to jail for that. I should avoid that.” Pretty straightforward logic chain of cause and effect with these laws and their enforcement. Obviously all by design and working the way they exactly intended them to work. Go yell at a building every Saturday. Do not attempt to hold anyone or even corporations even slightly accountable or your life and future will be erased. This is how they shut down all the environmental people in the 90s. Called them all terrorists, any association meant serious penalties, people ran the fuck away from it. Which is understandable. No one wants to be the ant getting stomped and if you live in a nice comfy first world lifestyle… well, you have the luxury of not giving a shit in the end. Or the luxury of inaction anyway.

    This is also why when assbags like Tom Cotton and many others call protesters against genocide terrorists the media frankly has an obligation to spend like a week blasting his ass publicly. A responsible, not capital-captive media would anyway… Because his accusations are all that’s needed really to sweep up any protestors at any moment for anything or nothing. “Suspicion of terrorism” whatever they wanna call it just means all your “rights” go away at a whim, you’re blackbagged, all your shit is searched absolutely illegally but “we will make it legal style”, and you’re detained and interrogated for an extended period.

    I think everyone here understands this reality already. The groundwork was laid decades ago, and it’s been done in the past anyway (many of the first socialists or generic anti capitalists got the exact same treatment involving ropes and nooses in the end). It will happen again before long. It’s already happening. Just now it’s more of a warning shot situation. Kinda like “here’s the line beyond which we fuck your life. Don’t be this guy.” Obviously these suppression techniques can only work for so long before people snap, but, we aren’t even into the heavy-handed stuff yet, so…

    Very depressing, as usual