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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31491 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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Whining about it strikes me as pathetic LARPing to some extent.

I'll give you to some extent, but non/semi-violent resistance as a strategy only works because the repression looks much worse in the public eye than the original resistance (see why American riot police don't use water cannons unlike plenty of other Western countries). I'm not sure I fault political actors for trying to bring attention to such, but often it does feel like things are magnified hugely out of proportion ("Help, I'm being repressed!"). In this case someone died, and I'm not really inclined to call that "out of proportion" specifically, but I will point to the incentives here in that tangible repression was certainly being sought by at least some parties involved (the protest movement as a whole, for example).

see why American riot police don't use water cannons

They did at Standing Rock, and it's not clear to me why that was the odd exception, unless whoever was in charge of the police thought it was funny (one can imagine: "they want the water? We'll give them the water, alright!")

Bad associated optics. Historically, the use of water cannons were used on MLK's protest march through Alabama, and it became viral at the time because of it.

...so, yes, sad to say, Leftists could claim that water cannons are racist with a straight face.

Governor Wallace was a retarded dumbfuck.

see why American riot police don't use water cannons unlike plenty of other Western countries

They should. You could even put a positive spin on it as "replacing less less-than-lethal riot suppression mechanisms with more less-than-lethal ones".

In order to put a positive spin on it, you have to have the media on your side.

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