You have an internal sense of justice and fairness. Whenever someone treats you violently when you think you didn’t deserve it, it violates that sense of justice. And your human instinct is to be violent in retaliation.
You are a citizen, you live in an apartment, your three year old daughter lives with you, your wife lives with you. The state knocks on your door at 3 AM, your asleep, your not fast enough, they kick in your door, they put a gun in your face. Your family is cuffed, brought outside, interrogated. Your wife is cold, your daughter is crying and shivering. You didn’t do anything wrong to bring this on. Your family is separated children go in one car, you in the other. You are asked for ID, it’s not on you, they ask for name, DOB, and if you have warrants. You comply, You don’t have warrants. After a few hours the state lets you go after checking the system.
Are you not radicalized by the interaction? More prone to join a protest?
You join a protest to show your displeasure in being woken up at 3 AM and treated like a criminal for no reason. Others at the protest don’t have the same story as you, they were in the apartment too, they are your neighbors. You know them, they know you. Your kids play together on the playground behind the apartment. Their husband was taken that night, they haven’t been able to get any information since. You’re both outside the ICE office. The crowd has grown since when it started at 4:30pm it’s now 9:00pm. Some have left but others have taken there place. It’s rowdy. A police line comes from the ICE office in crowd control gear, dressed in black and shields. They line up against your protest line, they are walking toward you in unison. You still haven’t done anything illegal. Your heart picks up, someone on a loudspeaker declares this an illegal gathering. You’re blocked in on either side anyway, but you don’t want to leave just because they tell you to. You want accountability, they treated you wrong, you didn’t deserve the treatment. After declaring it illegal three times the police line makes contact pushing humans on top of each other with shields. You fall on someone else, another falls on you. You scramble up and back away and human nature takes over. The police line approaches again, you try to stand your ground, you push back. Adrenaline and anger and the feeling of injustice fills you. The police line comes again you are ready, this time you catch pepper spray.
Legally staying past the third call to disband and being told it was an illegal assembly puts you in the position of this force being applied to you. But you didn’t actually do anything, you’ve been standing in the same place all day. You haven’t done anything wrong. Maybe members of the crowd did maybe it’s a gray line. But you didn’t. This is the second time the state has used force on a group. Some in the group deserved it, perhaps they were violent, perhaps you told them to cut it out yourself. But again the force is being applied to you all the same. Your feeling of injustice is greater. You call your friends they come to the next protest, they are treated the same way as you. Your friend gets a lot of pepper spray in their eyes. They scream in pain and kick on the ground.
Are you more radicalized than you started, sleeping in your apartment before they kicked in your door?
Law enforcement action will generate false positives, crowd control will generate false positives. The heavier the hand the greater the measure of injustice felt and the more radicalized people become. Eventually a rock is thrown at a car it’s not you but someone does. Again and again. Until your tribalism fully kicks in it’s us vs them. We have shared water, and held together when the police lines came. They have used each excuse they could to shut us up, including violence. Eventually you do what comes naturally.
I’m not saying you would make all these same choices but I can see how state enforcement on a group will catch up people that did nothing to deserve it, and it grows from there. That’s why protests everywhere always grow as the enforcement gets harder. It brings people off the sidelines. And it’s the purpose of the protest in many cases to illicit a response to get the normies radicalized to join the cause.
Until something truly horrific happens or the state is able to change their tactics to reduce the interventions of this kind of heavy handed crowd control.
Trump wanted in Chicago weeks ago, we just happen to find ourselves on the brink of the insurrection act being used and national guard being pulled in? I’m not at all surprised. They were trolled and baited.