Building off this, people have to look at more than just the protests. “Radicals” shape the Overton Window, think Malcom X.

In a world where nobody protests and nobody is participating in radical activism, nothing changes. In a world where there are protests but still no radical activism, there is usually no change, though the media and capitalists will feign care and “listen to the issues”. When the protesters become the moderates, the ruling class finally cedes some power to stop social revolution.

In a world where there are only radical activists, no moderate protesters or passive bystanders, there would be social revolution, monumental change. This has happened before, and it’s why the ruling class concedes changes as the overton window becomes more radical.

To a lot of people this looks like “protests work!” but it’s not the protests primarily, it’s the threat of social revolution, led by the radicals and supported by the new moderate position of protesting against the status quo.

That’s a pretty idealist take in the grand scheme of things. We have hard data that public opinion has virtually no influence on what the law is.

https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba

If it’s something capitalists really want, it’ll get put into law. In this case, it’s possible they actually don’t care to give the government the ability to surveil the public better, so it might be one of the very few things where public backlash could stop it (would actually need data to support this, not just some anecdotes).

Trying to apply this to the broader sociopolitical climate and saying “your voices do matter” is just too reductive. If it’s the public vs. the capitalist class in American “democracy”, the capitalist class wins every time.

"For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. "

Israel has been in violation of the GCIV since 2007, it’s been a globally recognized humanitarian crisis, and an extremely successful genocide/ethnic cleansing.

Israel has killed over 10x as many Palestinians compared to all pro-Palestinian groups combined (not just Hamas) since the year 2000. Since (and including) October 7th, Israel has killed 18,000 people (8000 children) Palestinians. Hamas has killed around 1200 people.

Maybe you think, like the Israeli defense minister that the killing of thousands of innocent children is justified because we’re dealing with “human animals”. The goal being to objectify Palestinians the same way we objectify non-human animals, so they can be slaughtered just as ruthlessly and effectively.

The formation of the genocidal state of Israel, which happened so recently that our current president was alive, involved the forceful removal and ethnic cleansing of almost a million native Palestinians.

We’re far enough removed from the ethnic cleansing of native Americans in the U.S that most people recognize it was wrong for Europeans to invade, colonize, and genocide the native population, but when we see the exact same thing happening in our lifetimes, people like yourself happily back settler colonialism. It’s genuinely fucking astounding.