It feels like these protests are going to shape how the governments of the world will respond to mass unrest in the future.
Or in other words - those in charge want the common person to be disempowered, to frame a peaceful protest as an act of terrorism so they can be more aggressive in future.
Hopefully no one on either side does anything stupid.
These reactions by the US to a student protest are nothing new and the fact they haven’t sent in the army and killed anyone yet shows it’s not even as bad as it historically has been.
Not everything a shithole like America does dictates what the rest of the world does.
Ask any student population in the past who were shot, beaten, tasered, hosed down with water cannons, and jailed what they thought would happen to future protesters.
The shape of silencing unrest, especially anti-war or liberal unrest, hasn’t changed at all. And it will look just the same a decade from now.
From Wiki, sadly: "President Richard Nixon, who is criticized in the song, won a landslide reelection in 1972, which included winning the 1972 United States presidential election in Ohio by a margin of over 21%."
It would totally be nice. That's why it's enshrined in the first amendment that you have the right to petition your representatives for the redress of grievances. Sadly, they do not act on those petitions (Professor Lessig has studies, and crabby calls and letters to your Senator have a net zero effect) which how protests escalate to civil disobedience (to sabotage and eventually civil war).
But it's interesting how quickly police are turning to anti-riot responses, and our government officials are supporting them. It's noted in COIN (counter insurgency) that brutality against protests only increases public sympathy and support for the movement (which has been consistent with incidents in the past decade, the US unrest and protests after the killing of George Floyd in 2020 being a run of examples.) I suspect it's less 4D chess and more like Trump being angry and wishing to assert his authority.
But our officials, the plutocrats they serve and law enforcement all regard the US Public as the enemy, and have been consistent about it since the 9/11 attacks. It's one of the factors that's been driving us towards civil war, or the end of our democratic features and one-party autocracy.
You can always count on a demented righty, often an off-duty cop, to show up dressed as a lefty to light a fire, break a window, or shoot someone. That's why they're always using that exact accusation against leftists, because they're actually doing it.