This also belongs in the police interactions thread or maybe the thread about the campus protests but I think maybe this one because it's discussing the trend toward a police state from somebody who lived in one before they left Turkey pre-9/11. She documents the drift toward ever-increasing police actions and acceptance of it by many in the public, leading to excessive force being taken as a good thing in the recent protests against US military support for Israel as it does what it is doing in Gaza.
I Was Once a Student Protester. The Old Hyperbole Is Now Reality.
What protests in Texas once looked like:
Two police cars idled across the street from the protest rally I was attending in front of the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, their red and blue lights flashing but their sirens silent. The police seemed more bored than annoyed. It was the early 2000s, and I had recently moved from Turkey to study at the University of Texas.
My fellow protesters were outraged. “This is what a police state looks like!” they started chanting. I turned around, bewildered. Turkey was still emerging from the long shadow of the 1980 coup.
What it now looks like
At the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, state police officers in riot gear carrying M4 carbines — the kind of weapons used in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan — and chemical-gas launchers were called in to disperse what many onlookers described as a small, peaceful group with a handful of tents. “None of these folks showed up when I lived on campus and white supremacists with tikki torches yelling ‘Jews will not replace us’ marched through campus as I hid my three kids,” Chad Wellmon, an associate professor at the university, wrote on social media.
At Dartmouth, police officers in riot gear were called in within hours after an encampment formed; in the ensuing confrontation they grabbed Annelise Orleck, the 65-year-old historian and former chair of Jewish studies, slammed her to the ground and arrested her. Until the Dartmouth community howled its objection, she was briefly banned from the campus where she had been teaching for 34 years. She still faces charges of criminal trespass.
At the University of Texas at Austin, officers in riot gear marched into campus on horses like the cavalry heading into war. At Indiana University, state police snipers were positioned on the roofs of campus buildings. Campus after campus is hosting similar scenes, including many pre-dawn raids on sleeping students. At Columbia University, an officer fired a gun. The N.Y.P.D. said it was an accident, and luckily nobody got hurt, but it’s not a comforting development.
So, that's the main point of this post. The crackdowns on campuses all in the name of protecting Jewish people and property is not justified. The extreme actions by police and in the case of UCLA, right wing radical thugs, are (IMO) deliberate acts that are fuel on the flames and not the acts of peace officers.
A second point/observation from this is:
A site that I listen to,
https://www.thebulwark.com/listen
They see Trump as a threat alright but they are emphasizing the horrible "antisemitism" they see present in these protests as justification for police brutality. These are Never-Trumpers who are doing good work to try to convince conservatives to vote against their tribe because they see Trump as a threat to democracy. Their leaders are Romney, Liz Cheney, others who got us into the war on Iraq and still think GW Bush was a good president. What they don't see is that they aren't all that removed from Trump as they say MAGA Trumpers are. These are the "moderate conservatives" who sit to the right but are not the radical right that MAGA is. And not a threat to democracy. That is how they perceive themselves but are they really that? They are the ones who brought us these police and armed them. They are supporting their actions using the fake claims that fascist propaganda has drummed up regarding threats to the safety of students and overblown reports of property damage.
An enemy of my enemy is my friend and so I'm glad they are helping to get Trump out power. But really, the if Republican Party returns to it's pre-MAGA roots, it will just create another fascist leader. Because, that's what they are, whether they see themselves as that or not.