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Is it wrong that I think the American public would side with the police even if they started openly gunning down protestors? (hexbear.net)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"What do you mean 'started'?"

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I want to clarify that I'm talking about open mass-killings in the vein of Sharpeville or Bloody Sunday.

Reading and seeing the public's reactions to things like the gassings and beatings at pro-Palestine encampments, BLM protestors getting run over, Kyle Rittenhouse's victims, etc. it seems like the American people take an open and ghoulish delight in protestors getting brutalized, maimed, and killed. Go to any video or article about these things happening, and the comments section is an endless parade of the worst people imaginable cheering and hollering for it with extremely little or no pushback. It's depressingly consistent.

It just gives me this horrible feeling that one day the police are going to unload into a crowd of protestors and leave a mass of bodies in their wake, the American people will hoot and clap and cheer about how the victims got what they deserved, and that'll become the new MO. The only reason they aren't already doing this is fear it might make them look bad, and if it doesn't end up making them look bad in the eyes of the public, then there isn't a single thing stopping them.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

When you say "the American public" it could mean a lot of things. The most represented slice of the population, in politics and media, are the billionaires, second to them are the petty privileged white people. Other parts of the US public are deliberately made invisible, but in terms of raw numbers they might be the majority. This numeral majority will only remain invisible if not organised. When cops will start massacring protestors, we won't be evaluating the opinion of the public, but its level of organising