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this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Europe
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Real talk, what makes protests in France so different than the US? At every protest I've seen or been to in the US, protesters are almost always at the mercy of the police. Of course there is often pushback, but it doesn't take much until police are beating, arresting, and less-than-lethaling everyone in sight until protesters are inevitably split up, whittled down, or otherwise herded to where they can be more easily rounded up by police. I've seen cops back down before but it's almost always only temporarily until they can get more reinforcements, and while I know on paper the people outnumber police, there always seems to be more police available.
When the system is threatened police are always the same . One of the worst was g8 protest in italy in 2001
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/17/italy.g8
fucking hell...It amazes me how they manage to find worst of the worst for police departments.
It's pretty logical to conclude that the kind of police officers who chose to become shock police (as in Europe they tend te be a separate part of the police who are trained to break up demonstrations) are the ones who, at best, are fine with beating people in exchange for they themselves getting paid more money than regular police, and at worst actually enjoy it.
They're a self-selected group of people from low empathy all the way up to violent psychopaths (the in Psychology called "functional", in that can control themselves enough to only act on their impulses when they can legally do it).
So, yeah, give such people not just de facto immunity for their actions (which extends even to killing people as long as it can be seen as accidental - as happened in the UK a few years ago) and even actual orders to harm people and they'll do it and then afterwards go back home and sleep like babies.
Where as I would agree, I still find it very scary that they can so easily cross the border between being brutal and enjoying torture
Well, Civilization is the only thing that stops those who enjoy torturing others from being brutal and, lo and behold, those holding power have de facto created various classes of people who have immunity to the mechanisms of civilization that stop them, one of said classes of people being police officers in certain countries, certain positions in the force and/or certain time periods when politicians in power suspect the rules for them.
That such is at all possible is all part of the overall problem that even in supposedly Democratic nations "civilization" is mainly talk and that whatever of it actually exists is a thin layer. In fact I would go as far as saying that at this moment in time even in some supposedly democratic countries the organised violence of the State is in practice less civilized than the ah-hoc retributive violence of the masses would be - in other words those who enjoy torture, as long as they occupy certain positions in the state apparatus have less to fear if they act such sick wishes than they would have in past times when the state did not have a monopoly on violence and the populous was free to themselves take care of retribution.
For all the messaging (especially in films) that the past was unjust and violent, in some countries the only real difference there is now a thick layer of bureaucracy disguising the de facto immunity of certain people from societal retribution and claiming it's "justice" when anybody trying to exercise retribution is fallen upon by the structures in power like a ton of bricks, whilst in the past it wasn't at all hidden that the minions of the powerful could do whatever the fuck they wanted and there was nothing that rest to could about it - in other words, what before was open that "some are not bound by the same rules as others", now there's a lot of sing and dance to disguse that "some are not bound by the same rules as others" and the violent suppression of any attempt at making it otherwise as being the very opposite - all part of a societal agreed system to do what's Just which "represents the common will" and is always right.
Why am i not surprised?
Territory size, is my guess. Both Russia and the US have relatively compliant populations, but also huge tracts of land. That makes it harder for relatively small communities to have "ownership" of their political masters. When the guy at the top can literally be at the other side of a continent, you can't threaten him with the guillotine. This prevents a sense of community and shared responsibility from being developed, both for the people and their leaders.
You have to team up with strangers in a far off place and ask them to fight on your behalf - and there is little guarantee you can offer the same favor in return. Thus, the leadership is insulated from consequences. So long as they have freedom of movement, leaders are free to do as they wish.
There are many forms of power, and we must limit them for our leaders if we want our peoples to have a better future. Movement, money, breadth and depth of influence, all must be limited for those who lead.
I'd say guns make the difference. When there's a chance that someone in the mob might pull out a gun, police are going to shut that down much more brutally. And protesters know this brutality as well, so they don't let it come that far either...
Judging by what the Black Panthers used to do, it's almost the opposite: when the other side pops up with guns (which in many places in the US is entirelly legal), the police suddenly loses the will to beat people up.
Well, I imagine, when it's an angry mob where you don't expect anyone to start shooting, but you don't know for sure, then you gotta do your job and try to avoid it escalating by shutting it down as hard as possible. But if you know that the group is willing to shoot, then you'd rather lose your job than your life, so abandon ship as quickly as possible...
I think the exact same thing applies as it did in Uvalde Highschool - the cops don't want to get shot so they come up with excuses not to intervene thus reducing the risk of getting shot.
In the case of a demonstration their "intervention" would actually be to hurt and even harm those demonstrating, hence them not intervening is a good thing for just about everybody, in the case of Uvalde their "intervention" would probably have saved lives so them not intervening resulted in more lives lost.
Either way, the individual police officers are just following "I only care about what best for me" logic and that can be used by demonstrators to influence the actions of the police, which what IMHO the Black Panthers did.
possibly more accountability