LA unrest mirrors global protests: Government response under scrutiny

NZ Herald

a day ago

A strong government response to demonstrations that initially start peacefully, they say, often produces increasingly violent confrontations.
In some instances, they add, leaders have used the prospect of civil unrest to use heavy-handed tactics or create pretexts to expand their grip on power.
Here are three lessons from international protests, which experts say can help make sense of what is unfolding in Los Angeles.
1. Crackdowns shape optics, and optics shape uprisings.
When states crack down on demonstrators, the images circulated online and in the news media of the resulting clashes shape the public's understanding of what is happening.
Such optics, experts said, play a critical role in either bolstering or undermining the actions of a Government amid unrest.
Harsh crackdowns may generate sympathy for protesters, said Omar Wasow, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley who studies protest movements.
The 'spectacle of violence and repression,' he said, can frame states as 'bullies' unjustly squashing expression.
But those images can also act like a 'double-edged sword,' Wasow said.
When residents engage violently with the authorities, viral images – of burning cars or vandalised property, for example – can instead generate sympathy for the state.
Because most people are not at the protests, the public's idea of the demonstrators can be coloured by the images of violence that gain the most traction, even if the events are largely peaceful.
'It's all about narrative,' said Laura Gamboa, an assistant professor of democracy and global affairs at the University of Notre Dame.
To control their image in the face of state crackdown, movements need strong internal organisation, she added. But spontaneous uprisings often lack such organisation.
Gamboa pointed to Honduras, where protests broke out after a disputed election in 2017.
When peaceful protests turned violent, the movement struggled to 'overcome the narrative and gain the international support they needed'.
Police officers control a crowd as people protest against the detention of migrants by federal law enforcement in downtown Los Angeles, June 9. Photo / Sinna Nasseri, The New York Times
2. Heavy-handed responses can lead to more violent protests.
State repression inspires violence and increases the size of protests in general, said Gamboa, turning issue-based demonstrations into mass movements.
'You're being repressed; gas is thrown at you,' she said. 'It's your natural instinct to protect yourself by fighting back.'
Beyond an immediate need to respond to violence, crackdowns inflame protests by broadening the cause to fight.
What began, for instance, as opposition to the Colombian Government's tax overhaul in 2021 transformed into a much bigger campaign against police violence and the role of state force after a bloody crackdown on demonstrators.
Aggressive state responses to protests led to as many as 300 deaths in Mozambique last year and hundreds of arrests in India in 2019 protests over a citizenship law.
Sacramento police officers make an arrest during a protest against ICE raids in downtown Sacramento, California, on Monday, June 9. Photo / Andri Tambunan, The New York Times
3. Crackdowns can be stepping stones to wider power grabs.
A Government's decision to exercise force, the experts said, can be an opening for authoritarians to erode democratic checks.
Governments can violate norms to project power, said Andrew O'Donohue, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace who studies democratic backsliding.
They can then use the 'pushback to justify further crackdowns on institutions and protests', he added.
After protesters and police continually pushed the limits of what had been accepted tactics during a year of protests in Hong Kong, the mainland Government ended the cycle of increasing violence in 2020 by stripping the semi-autonomous territory of many of its rights.
The Government in Beijing justified the passage that year of the National Security Law, which handed the mainland Government broad powers to crack down on political activities, effectively outlawing pro-democracy parties and limiting free speech.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Pranav Baskar
Photographs by: Mark Abramson, Sinna Nasseri, Andri Tambunan
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES