But what LLM wrote this?

Also protecting you from the East Wing of the White House.

Do you think an organized group of people physically protecting a Grandma from state violence is any less effective in radicalizing people?

Yes. As soon as ICE blood starts spilling onto the streets, you lose the normies real quick. And then the bad guys have justification (in the eyes of some) in hitting back even harder.

Do you think people want to go out and protest when they are surrounded by other people that will stand by and do nothing when they get grabbed?

Ehh I never said do nothing. There’s quite a large gulf between “de-arrest” / “put cones over pepper bombs” and “shooting people”. I do think most people don’t want to go out and protest if it’s really “go out and engage in armed conflict with the state.”

Do you think people want to go out and protest when they are surrounded by other people that will stand by and do nothing when they get grabbed?

You’re conflating violence with resistance. The two are not the same. One could argue one is a subset of the other.

Standing by and doing nothing

Again, that’s not what I’m advocating.

Showing people what organized physical resistance actually looks like gives people that are already on the streets hope and solidarity. I know. I’ve experienced it.

I’m curious. If you don’t mind sharing, where/how did you experience this? What was the resistance?

When ICE commits violence against the unarmed grandma in the chicken suit, they radicalize ten more grandmas—and solidify the position of the normies against ICE.

And anyone who shows up to a protest is making their own risk assessment. Some protests are the strollers and marches type, and that’s a pretty low risk level. Some protests are spicier, and they tend to draw a different crowd with a different risk tolerance.

And yes, I’m saying we should remain non-violent in the face of ICE’s atrocities, because that is the best tactic for gaining and retaining the wide-spread support necessary to defeat them.

I think the part you’re missing is what that support gets us. When there’s wide-spread support for those opposing ICE, that gives us more of an ability (and the people power) to attack the pillars of support that prop up the authoritarian regime.

Notice I said nothing about what is just or unjust. I’m strictly talking tactics. And at this moment in the Trump regime’s authoritarian breakthrough, non-violence is still our best bet. History of these sorts of breakthroughs shows that authoritarian regimes are best countered by broad-based public resistance. And yes, that means from normies.

As soon as you start shooting back, you yield the upper hand to ICE and the regime’s goons. They know how to deal with violence… It is their language. What they don’t know how to deal with is a pissed-off grandma in a chicken costume with the full moral backing of 70% of the population.

The point of non-violence isn’t to sway the opinions of ICE or the Trump regime. The purpose of non-violence is to gain and maintain the support of the general public while dismantling the pillars of support for authoritarianism.

As soon as you start mercing people, you lose public support from the normies, and the bad guys get a justification to meet force with even more force. It’s not a winning strategy.