

It’s a classic cop tactic: raise the level of violence, then use the inevitable and justified matching rise in violence and defensive behaviour from protesters to justify more police violence.
French newspaper le Monde Diplomatique had an article some years back about this with a smoking gun type quote, from an unnamed former high ranking French police officer, along the lines of “it is us, the police institutions, that set the level of violence, and we perfectly know it” (the conclusion from this officer was that therefore police should refrain from any unnecessary violence and only use absolutely necessary violence).

Right? Like what about attacking another sovereign country’s capital and abducting the head of state?