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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31249 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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If the police are so popular across the political spectrum in the Netherlands is there actually much that needs reforming?

Yes. The first is an old issue: the Dutch police is fully within its rights to detain anyone and hold them for several hours without any charges being placed. This is one reason peaceful protests are rare here, since the police can break them up at will. Just detain everyone and release them a couple hours later. Don't need a reason, don't need charges, don't need anything, just pick them up and kick 'em out. Whether you are protesting for more housing or against the monarchy or for education reform, the police will gleefully do that.

A more recent scandal is one in which the police local to where I lived assaulted a garage owner(with one arm in a cast no less), literally fucking headbutted him, and falsified their report out of whole cloth. The garage owner later filed charges, to which the judge politely asked why he did it so late, and the response was that the police had indeed taken the video footage and stuffed it away to cover up their wrongdoings. None of the people involved were fired - they got off with a fine worth 250 euros and naught else.

Finally there is the idea that the majority of fellow citizens and members of government would be persuaded to adopt the protestors’ views but somehow they have not had the chance to hear them explained properly. In a non-democracy like China or Russia this claim has a lot of plausibility. In those countries not only is factual knowledge about key political issues deliberately suppressed (as a state secret), but also even knowledge about the extent to which other people support the rulers and believe their lies. The only way to find out what one’s fellow citizens really believe may be to take the bold action of walking along the street with a piece of white paper. Thus, in a non-democracy, protest can indeed be a democratic act – an attempt to return politics to the people.

However, actual democracies aren’t like this. [...]

And this is the weak point of the argument. Where does the border between democracies and non-democracies lie? Who defined it? Governments of both groups of countries claim to be democratic and representing the will of the populace. All of them have groups the government or the people at large would prefer to pointedly ignore, be they racists, gays, nationalist separatists, people asking where the money went or smokers. The government has a lot of tools at its disposal to manufacture consent, not all of them democratic even in the most demic and cratic of democracies. A public protest is a way to bypass these tools and force the public to discuss your issue again, a relatively safe, quasi-anonymous way.

granting undue weight upon characteristics not necessarily parallel with, and sometimes directly opposed to, what makes someone worth hearing

The wealthiest person we have here in the Netherlands is the heiress to the Heineken business. She could, if she so preferred, flood the nation with political ads or even just set up a new TV channel/website/what have you to make herself heard. Big-time football players could do it just for being listened to 'cos they're good at sports. Tolkien quote goes here: many who can make themselves heard, deserve silence. Many of those who are silenced, deserve a place to speak.

I don't have a particularly strong opinion about how good or bad for democracy peaceful protests might be. There definitely are many things that are in the same ballpark, however, and not a single uniformed soul will do anything about that. It's a stark difference.

Even peaceful protests harm democracy by making the reach of ones voice dependant and granting undue weight upon characteristics not necessarily parallel with, and sometimes directly opposed to, what makes someone worth hearing.

I would actually agree to this.

To which I would also add: If technology makes protests easier, any politician who does respond to the protests should discount their response by the ease of protest. The size of the protest indicates how much support there is for the cause. If you use the newest technology to coordinate huge protests, transport people to protests to make it easier, etc., you are Goodharting protest size by increasing it in ways unrelated to the size of the underlying support.

To be fair, if a headbutting that didn’t cause any injuries ranks among the top injustices I can see why police reform is a low priority. I don’t think I would really expect more punishment than a fine for such a thing either

They proceeded to arrest him, too. And then lied about it. And then covered up their own lies. And this information only came out recently because the victim's abode had cameras. And this is only the incident we know of, because anyone else who suffered this got hung out to dry - no cameras, no case.

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