Actively following these sorts of events in real time on Twitter and other fast-paced social media before the relevant hashtags get astroturfed by chuds and corporate media have the time to concoct an "official" version of the story, and then seeing the distortions reported in the MSM, has been an eye-opening experience.
It's probably not a coincidence that Occupy blew up shortly after US-Americans saw online posts about and videos of the Arab Spring, mostly unfiltered. It's definitely not a coincidence that attitudes towards racist police violence changed significantly when white people and other unaffected groups started seeing more and more recorded examples of cops acting like assholes and violent thugs with little apparent justification, with ideology becoming the only remaining barrier to understanding. Anglos who can overcome the ideological hurdle through their lived experience of class oppression have a much much stronger understanding of what the hell has going on in the world than they did even 10 years ago, even if for many of them that understanding is still weak and plagued with some imperialist distortions.
Actively following these sorts of events in real time on Twitter and other fast-paced social media before the relevant hashtags get astroturfed by chuds and corporate media have the time to concoct an "official" version of the story, and then seeing the distortions reported in the MSM, has been an eye-opening experience.
It's probably not a coincidence that Occupy blew up shortly after US-Americans saw online posts about and videos of the Arab Spring, mostly unfiltered. It's definitely not a coincidence that attitudes towards racist police violence changed significantly when white people and other unaffected groups started seeing more and more recorded examples of cops acting like assholes and violent thugs with little apparent justification, with ideology becoming the only remaining barrier to understanding. Anglos who can overcome the ideological hurdle through their lived experience of class oppression have a much much stronger understanding of what the hell has going on in the world than they did even 10 years ago, even if for many of them that understanding is still weak and plagued with some imperialist distortions.