These people don’t care about children - they are anachists

[MyHeartyCoralSnail]

AIBU that finally people are seeing that the far left are just, if not more, dangerous than the far right. Finally the police are acting against the anarchists, those intent on disrupting our society, our rule of law. The attempts to usurp our institutions. Nearly 900 people arrested now - these people were not there because they care about children going hungry - children are starving around the world - there aren’t the same matches. War is happening round the world, there aren’t the same marches.. these people are disrupters, they are anarchists. https://news.sky.com/story/890-people-arrested-at-palestine-action-protest-yesterday-including-17-on-suspicion-of-assaulting-police-officers-13413938

Anarchists can care about children you know

They can also hijack a situation for their own ends. If they cared about children they wouldn’t be diverting so many of the government’s resources - they would work with them. They would find more constructive ways of helping children. Anarchy and chaos are never the friends of children

I think there are a certain type of people who are just attracted to a fight - on the far right you get racist thugs and on the far left you get anti-establishment thugs. You can get peaceful anarchists (generally anarcho-greens) - I guess maybe you can get peaceful racists..

Since the crackdown on football hooliganism basically protests and demos is where these people go to find a ruck. Maybe we should just give them all some wasteland - send them there every Saturday and leave them to it.

I heard a really interesting BBC podcast on football hooliganism it seems they mainly eventually grow out of it

i think we certainly need to accept that both the Left and Right have people deeply embedded who have motives far beyond the superficial cause they appear to be backing. We need to be just as suspicious of the motives of certain elements of the Left as the right.

And this has always been the case. What might start as a reasonable protest gets hijacked by rabble rousers and people of ill will.

The French Revolution started as a fight for social justice and ended up as a reign of terror with thousands fed to the guillotine and neighbours denouncing each other to ‘the authorities’. Once these mass movements get going they’re hard to control and it never ends well.

And o think this has been the problem. We’ve started out in the middle raising valid concerns on both sides of an argument. Then both sides of the argument have been hijacked, the Left by the anarchy/communist/disrupter faction determined to destabilise society for various reasons the Right by the far right, determined to push their largely small elite (mainly white men agenda. The unsuspecting are dragged into the extremes and the middle ground of reasonableness where differing arguments should exist becomes a silent void as the screaming on the extremes overshadows all other positions

Do you know the people who are getting arrested, and why they're doing it? Because I know some people who are getting arrested, and they care very deeply about what is happening in Gaza, and have done for years. People are also very concerned about the restrictions on our freedom to protest. The people getting arrested now are pensioners, clergy, a former senior armed forces officer - not anarchists, but people who care about democracy. They are protesting the proscription of Palestine Action, which feels like government overreach. It's a planned action to show that this is wrong and unworkable.

I hear about Sudan on the radio and wish there was the same outcry about starvation and death and children suffering there. I wish we were doing more to help girls in Afghanistan.

However, I think people feel that the British government has a responsibility to hold the Israeli government accountable because of their support for them. And because Israel is a democratic nation so should be more susceptible to influence. And because Israel relies on weapons and support from Western countries. So it feels more like something could be done. I think Israel also feels more relatable - we know their history, and they've been included in Eurovision.

I don't think all the reasons why people prioritise this injustice over others are good, but I'm glad they're trying to do something. Writing them off as anarchists who just want a fight seems simplistic to me.

This is a really good point

Yes, there are people of bad faith who exploit genuine causes in order to destabilise society. When I was at university long at in the late 70s there was a hardcore of ne’er do well students who spent their time smoking pot and waiting for the next opportunity to join some kind of protest (any!) and have a go at the cops, pull up kerbstones, throw bottles etc. I knew this because they’d sit boasting about it in the bar afterwards. They were aggressive, intolerant, intimidating and frankly ignorant men(all men).

They didn’t have any genuine beliefs or principles - they were just angry and spoiling for a fight, but they claimed to be anarchists. I thought Jeremy Paxman put it well when he accused an anarchist of wanting to “bash everything up and sit smoking weed in theruins”.

Anarchist is a very specific and unreasonable word to choose there.

OP, given that you can get arrested simply for holding a placard suggests that your premise is deeply flawed. The arrests are a problem because of the ongoing erosion (started by the previous government) of our right to peaceful protest. Nothing else. Direct your ire accordingly.

Meanwhile, people are allowed to stand outside hotels housing asylum seekers, drinking and shouting out racist crap, and pissing all over the street. But that apparently is fine.

A number of the arrests have been linked to asssulys on police do not really that flawed, oh and lists of arrests on the other side too

Given one of the stated aims is to overwhelm the justice system, I would say it’s very apt.

17 out of 890 people arrested. Not exactly a large proportion.

Think you’re clutching at straws sorry

The far left and far right are identical in the way they arrogantly go about their business. Both scaremonger, both are ‘my way or the highway, both weaponise fear.

Thanks for that little lecture OP. Do you know anything at all about history? Care to provide any evidence?

I find it curious that someone can be so indifferent to a genocide being committed against two million people that they are incapable of imagining that other people genuinely care

Come on OP do you really think it’s a good thing that people can be arrested for silently holding placards?

This time you don’t agree with their cause but this could just as easily happen to right-wing protesters, which I expect you’d be angry about.

In fact as a similar example, that woman who tweeted about the asylum hotels should never have gone to prison for it. I see how worrying it is that she did, even though I don’t agree with her politics.

17 out of 890. That's 1.9% of the total number of those arrested, meaning that the % of people arrested for violence against the police out of all those demonstrating will be at least an order of magnitude, if not more, less than that.

Yep, that's certainly conclusive proof that these protestors are a mass movement of violent anarchists who should be curbed. As opposed to the lovely, law-abiding demonstrators outside asylum hotels, 40% of whome have convictions for domestic violence. You certainly have your priorities right and I salute you.

It’s anaRchist.

Lucy Connolly pleaded guilty, which meant she was sentenced in accordance with sentencing guidelines.

She was also not just sentenced for one tweet - she posted a range of racist tweets in the two months leading up to the riots. This is called 'form' and it can legitimately be used in deciding sentence.

If she didn't want to go to jail, she shouldn't have broken the law. Most of us manage not to.

I've never been to an antifa protest but in literally every single video I've watched they appear to be a bunch of loons.

I want to see far far fewer people going to prison so I’m afraid twitter racists would never meet that standard for me

You couldn't have said it better my friend x