> “No movement of people, demonstration, meeting, gathering or sit-in will be allowed in the restricted zone,” Chief District Officer Chhabi Lal Rijal said in a notice.
This is what I'll never understand about neolib governments sliding towards authoritarianism: why push back so hard? Evacuate the parliamentary buildings, don't meet the protestors with police, and let them have the run of the place. Record every face on CCTV, and then spend the next couple months vanishing them. The USSR understood this and it's that kind of forward-thinking that lets the likes of Putin maintain authority all the way from his career as a KGB agent through to now.
These governments responding to protests with tear gas and batons fail not only at effective authoritarianism, but also at being good liberal democracies where people can safely protest - which is possible, Taiwan has had two record sized protests in my life and at neither of them did the police advance with batons and beat the shit out of people.
You and me both. On some level I'm happy that governments push back so hard because it makes protests "work" but it seems like it would be way more effective for a government to simply ignore the protesters. It would be the ultimate flex by a corrupt government—we're so far above you that you have nothing to shake your fist at.
In general (with some per-country variance), the batons and tear gas will only come out when the one critical threshold is reached: rich people start making less money. So you can get ten or 100 buddies out on the street shouting and waving flags, and they’ll ignore you because no stores are losing business. But the moment those people disrupt the flow of profits, the brute squads will hit the streets.
This is what I'll never understand about neolib governments sliding towards authoritarianism: why push back so hard? Evacuate the parliamentary buildings, don't meet the protestors with police, and let them have the run of the place. Record every face on CCTV, and then spend the next couple months vanishing them. The USSR understood this and it's that kind of forward-thinking that lets the likes of Putin maintain authority all the way from his career as a KGB agent through to now.
These governments responding to protests with tear gas and batons fail not only at effective authoritarianism, but also at being good liberal democracies where people can safely protest - which is possible, Taiwan has had two record sized protests in my life and at neither of them did the police advance with batons and beat the shit out of people.