People generally do not like violence because it is not enjoyable to be around. Psypost.com recently noted that a new psychology study has found the obvious, which is that violent protests in favor of a particular movement tend to make people turn against the movement.
New research indicates that extreme protest tactics tend to undermine a movement’s popular support in the United States by alienating both neutral observers and supporters. The findings have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“I’m interested in social change and progress, and was curious what social movement strategies might be most effective at influencing popular opinion,” said Matthew Feinberg, the corresponding author of the new study and an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto.
The researchers conducted six experiments with 3,399 participants in total, in which they assessed how different types of protest behaviors influenced support for a variety of progressive and conservative social causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the anti-abortion movement. They found that more extreme behaviors — such as the use of inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and vandalism — consistently resulted in reduced support for social movements. (source)
One has to think about this in light of the current riots taking place, which have a lot of evidence around them suggesting direct ties to various political groups and agent provocateurs.
One can surmise any number of theories as to why the current patterns of looting and violence has been clearly allowed to happen, but as this study notes, and common sense suggests, that the protests are creating a counter-reaction that is being instigated by agitators on the right.
This was the essence of the Gladio project, and was used in Europe successfully- to promote left-wing terrorism orchestrated by right-wing groups in order to garner anti-communist support. Given that right-wing groups have been confirmed posing as “Antifa” groups, one can see a similar historical parallel here.
There is a lot going on right now, but what can be said is that these protests have too many hallmarks of a “action-reaction” type approach. Some sort of public manipulation is going on as we speak, and in such cases, often the best thing to do is not to take a position, but to stay out of the whole matter, since it is larger than the matter at hand and more is often done by saying less.