Police Have Always Over-Reacted To Demonstrators... & Always Will
On Friday, a Russian military court in Khabarovsk in Siberia sentenced anti-war activist Angel Nikolayev to 15 years in prison for, among other crimes against the state, splashing red paint on flags atop the graves of Russian soldiers killed during the invasion of Ukraine. It could have been worse; the prosecutor asked for 18 years. “Over 20,000 people have been detained in Russia for expressing anti-war views since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to Russian rights group OVD-Info. That figure includes those arrested for non-violent offences, such as posting negative opinions about the Russian army online or giving interviews to journalists about the war.”
That’s 10 times more than have been arrested in anti-war protests in the U.S. in the last few weeks. But, of course, they’ve been at it for years not weeks. And if the U.S. keeps supplying Israel weapons for its genocide against Palestinians, the protests in the U.S.— and across the world— will continue and, no doubt so will the arrests. Anti-genocide student encampments on campuses popped up in France, the U.K., Australia and Ireland this past weekend. That list will grow too. And so will police brutality, especially in the U.S., where recruitment for police nets mostly brutal, reactionary job-seekers.
“[T]he level of force with which some of these law enforcement agencies have responded to protests,” reported Lois Beckett, “which in the overwhelming majority of cases have been peaceful, has shocked some observers— and even some of the people arrested. ‘It is a level of repression of campuses in the United States that I have not seen in my lifetime,’ said Annelise Orleck, a 65-year-old Dartmouth labor historian who was arrested on Wednesday as she attempted to protect her students from lines of heavily armed riot police. Orleck, a former head of Dartmouth’s Jewish studies department, was grabbed by police, thrown to the ground and then dragged along the grass after she demanded that a police officer give her back her phone, which she had been using to record arrests. A video of the incident, which showed officers manhandling the white-haired older woman, went viral. For Orleck, who was teaching a US politics class on the civil rights movement hours before she became one of 90 people arrested at Dartmouth, the degree of violence that has accompanied the campus arrests has been shocking. ‘They’re sending a message to American students,’ she said. When Orleck was brought to a van after her arrest, she said, she found the other people arrested alongside her included a second grade teacher, a preschool teacher and two Dartmouth student journalists, both of them with their press credentials clearly displayed. ‘They were just stunned,’ she said.”
A cop is a cop, in Siberia or New York City— it’s just a matter of how much the authorities let them get away with. And with NYC Mayor Eric Adams… the sky’s the limit. As the Columbia student newspaper recounted, “The NYPD arrested 109 protesters, both inside and outside Hamilton Hall, on Tuesday. Outside of the admissions office entrance to the building, officers pushed protesters to the ground and slammed them with metal barricades. Outside Hamilton’s front doors, an officer threw a protester down the stairs, according to videos reviewed by Spectator. Officers used stun grenades as they breached the barricades to enter the building. In a Wednesday morning press conference, the day after the arrests, Adams praised the operation’s ‘precision’ and made no mention of the firearm discharge. University President Minouche Shafik thanked the NYPD for their ‘incredible professionalism’ in her Wednesday statement to the Columbia community following the sweep.” Shafik is a filthy English baroness and should be sent packing back to the House of Lords.
Habib Badawi reported that “The defiant student protests erupting across American universities over U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza represent something far beyond a cyclical wave of campus activism. These scenes symbolize a profound political crisis that has laid bare the fractures within the Democratic Party and its faltering grip on a disaffected younger generation. As the Biden administration persists in providing military aid and diplomatic imprimatur for Israel’s bombardment of the densely populated Palestinian territory, the human suffering in Gaza has become a tragic staging ground for global outrage. On the ivy-covered quads from Columbia to Stanford, a new frontline in moral resistance has formed, pitting an emboldened youth-led movement of conviction against authorities desperately seeking to preserve an indefensible status quo through escalating brutality and repression.”
This academic examination will contextualize how the current student uprising over Gaza encapsulates both an ideological reckoning within the Democratic Party over issues of justice, human rights, and militarism abroad, as well as an existential threat to the party’s future electoral viability if it cannot regain trust among disillusioned youth voters. Drawing from empirical data, contemporary reporting, and expert analysis across the political spectrum, it will situate the present crisis within the rich tradition of historic student activism and the Democratic Party’s troubling legacy of fealty to the military-industrial complex. Ultimately, it will be argued that rather than an isolated incident, the 2023 Gaza protests epitomize the Democratic establishment’s inexorable drift away from its professed progressive foundations towards an abyss of moral compromise and detachment from its theoretical base.
…Nearly five decades later, haunting echoes of Vietnam’s generational battle lines now reverberate amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the specific contours differ, the underlying ethical dimensions share striking commonalities: a marginalized civilian population facing asymmetric warfare from a militarily superior adversary, credible accusations of human rights violations, and a geopolitical powder keg fueled by unconditional U.S. military aid and diplomatic support for the dominant party.
…[T]he Gaza uprisings have laid bare and exacerbated longstanding fissures within the Democratic Party itself over issues of interventionism and human rights. While Democratic leaders have long paid lip service to ideals of social justice, the institutional reality has often been one of profound hypocrisy— a willing subservience of purported principles to the dictates of moneyed special interests.
…For younger Americans in particular, there is a widespread perception that the Democratic establishment has permanently forfeited its moral high ground through its abject deference to a foreign policy status quo of perpetual violence and extrajudicial killing in service of militarized neoliberal hegemony. The courageous student solidarity activism around Gaza, therefore, represents both a generational denunciation of political malpractice and a defiant demand to reclaim the Democratic Party’s legitimacy as a human rights vanguard.
The fissures over Gaza have provoked vicious public infighting that has laid bare the existential stakes. While establishment stalwarts like Adam Schiff have decried the student protests as “antisemitic harassment,” progressive leaders such as Greg Casar have uplifted them as noble embodiments of the historic tradition of youth-led justice movements from Vietnam to Iraq. Scorching denunciations from hardliners like Jared Moskowitz deriding the “denial of anti-Semitism” among left-wing Democrats have been met with forceful rejoinders from Jerry Nadler affirming protesters’ free speech rights while condemning all forms of bigotry.
At its core, the Gaza uprising represents an ideological litmus test over whether the Democratic Party will continue abdicating its vaunted moral leadership to perpetuate the same military-industrial savagery that has squandered so many previous galvanizing moments for progressives, from Vietnam to Iraq. Young people have made it resoundingly clear that such profound ethical bankruptcy is unacceptable and a recipe for total disillusionment from a party they see as representing little more than naked power preservation devoid of values.
Indeed, the existential threat the Gaza backlash poses to Democrats is starkly quantified in the latest polling on youth voter sentiments. A staggering 81% of Americans under 34 have registered opposition to Biden’s policies greenlighting Israel’s assault, with disaffection within the party’s ranks reaching 53%. This wholesale repudiation portends ominously for Democrats’ future electoral fortunes and ability to court a voting bloc that has largely abandoned them over this issue.
…Ultimately, the present fissures over Gaza represent the culmination of multiple strands that have been unraveling the Democratic Party’s progressive coalition for decades. The fundamental contradiction appears to stem from the party’s enthusiastic embrace of neoliberal interventionism and subservience to corporate behemoths like the military-industrial complex, even as its base has grown opposed to those value systems.
For the younger generation of activists on the front lines, the moral clarity and deeply felt convictions emanating from the Gaza solidarity protests have laid bare what they perceive as a grotesque rot at the Democratic core. Whether or not these uprisings prove sustainable or impactful in the immediate term, they have already inflicted permanent reputational damage on the party’s human rights branding that will prove extraordinarily difficult to rehabilitate.
The universal ideals of human dignity, freedom, and equality that purportedly lie at the heart of the progressive movement appear utterly incompatible with the brutal realpolitik of unchecked militarism, corporate hegemony, and callous utilitarianism towards suffering civilian populations. Through their impassioned acts of moral resistance, the Gaza protesters have issued a defiant gauntlet to the Democratic establishment— one that represents nothing less than an existential battle for the party’s very progressive soul.
In the years ahead, Democratic leaders will face a stark bifurcation: radically readjusting their policy priorities and ethical foundations towards a new internationalist, humanist framework of demilitarization and global social justice, or else permanently alienating generations of progressive activists whose faith has already been shattered beyond repair. The decisions they make and the degree to which they are held accountable by reinvigorated grassroots will indelibly shape the Democratic Party’s legitimacy— and indeed, its very viability— as a force for positive transformation for decades to come. The battle lines have been drawn, and the progressive movement’s future now hinges on whether its standard-bearers arise to meet the moral challenge of the moment.
Tim Dees is a retired policeman and a criminal justice professor. He wrote that “There are several types of personalities drawn to policing, and just enough outliers to make it confusing as to whether there is a set ‘police personality’ or not. Here are some common types I've seen:
The adrenaline junkie: he lives for excitement. This is the person more likely to try for SWAT, narcotics, undercover assignments, etc., because it feeds his need for constant stimulation. These guys can grow disaffected when they have to endure the inevitable periods of being a patrol grunt, answering calls and taking reports (although patrol can be an exciting job, too). In the high-profile assignments, they tend to be overeager and impatient. All of those jobs involve a lot of waiting around, and often standing down without doing anything because the situation was resolved without the excitement.
The bully: he likes to have power over people. These folks lack empathy. They make life difficult for other cops because they'll take every opportunity to mess with someone just because they can. These guys often get into management, where they pull the same game on subordinate cops. Few people like them at any level.
The inferiority complex: he's wanted to be important all his life, but couldn't get there on his own merits. Now he gets a badge and people have to respect him (or so he thinks). These guys are blowhards, trying to talk tough and having little to back it up with. Unless they get off the street quickly (again, often going into management), they get hurt or have to bailed out frequently, because they'll bite off more than they can chew. They are also the butt of endless pranks laid by their co-workers. Their lives are generally pretty miserable.
The Boy Scout: altruistic, thinks he can help everyone and wants to. These guys can make great cops if they can survive the culture shock that comes when they realize that some people hate them for no particular reason other than they're cops. They hate being lied to, and they get lied to constantly, on the street and in the police station. They believe the police department should be a meritocracy, which it very seldom is. Burnout is very common here.
That last category takes in more than all the others combined, although the working personality can change over time as disillusionment sets in. They're the cops you most want to recruit and retain, but they often get chewed up and spit out by the other types. As they said in The Pirates of Penzance, ‘a policeman's lot is not a happy one.’”