Comment by paganel
5 years ago
I've done my own share of protesting (living in Eastern Europe forces you to do that sometimes) and we never resorted to looting. If we had done so I would have expected the powers that be to take some counter-measures that would have involved more than strong verbal reprimands, yes.
If by 'we' you're referring to the entirety of Eastern Europe, Russia has a well known history of employing agent provocateurs in order to affect protests or other movements. This isn't isolated to just Eastern Europe either, considering Italy has a history of this as well.
Needless to say there's also been some reporting and concerns of provocateurs among the protesters here as well using it as an excuse to inflame riots or start looting.
I live in Romania, not Russia, and you're correct, the powers that we protested against also employed agent provocateurs. They were easy to spot though (youngish, like 17-18, looked like they belonged to some football ultra movements) and the other protesters took almost immediate action against them (isolating them, mostly).
You may find this thread interesting, as it concerns the allegation that the property destruction taking place yesterday (edit: Wednesday - I just remembered it's already Friday) was initiated by a police officer. https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1266196890649088000
The looting in Minneapolis is a) rather ancillary to the larger protests against the police, b) an American tradition going back to colonial times, and c) a mix of opportunism and antipathy to US hypercapitalism. A few small stores have been damaged but the destruction has mainly been targeted against corporate retail outlets.
Different places have different forms of political outcry. Protest by destruction of commercial property was a well-known component of American colonial resistance to Britain. (Consider the Boston Tea Party, for example.)
Personally I have never been part of a riotous protest, but in an academic sense I believe that destruction of commercial property does more to force a change in police activity than destruction of police cars and other public property (things that ultimately belong to the people themselves).
You can bet that there are more powerful people in the business community there, than on the police force.
I don't believe this is actively in the mind of most rioters, but I think it is part of the reason that rioting has a major impact on American politics.