This activist maneuver is called "wound collecting." The game is to act badly (here, blocking traffic, chasing someone down who tried to avoid them, harassing them in a terrifying way, etc.) until a reaction happens and then weaponize the reaction as more injury to them. https://twitter.com/Jsc_35/status/1287229573659320322

"Wound collecting" is so integral to the Woke activism game that it could almost be defining. It's been known under other names as well, "crybullying" and "outrage farming." It's a feature of "victimhood cultures" that doesn't exist in any other moral sociological context.

Another key example of "wound collecting" right now is "the Trump trap." The riots and "protests" in cities like Portland, Seattle, etc., are designed to stay out of hand until the National Guard or feds intervene, and then once they do, the wound is collected: "TYRANNY!"

The lower level of this trap is played out with police to escalate it to the higher levels, until we get to the highest authority of force to restore public order. If police intervene, they're fascists, dangerous, hurting people, going after "peaceful protesters," suppressing.

Again, wound collecting works very simply, so you have to learn to spot it and stop falling for it:
1) Act badly to provoke a reaction
2) Use reaction of proof of oppression, harm, how dangerous it is, tyranny, etc.

It operates on a blatant double standard of wrongdoing.

The truly totalitarian part of the double standard of wrongdoing here is forcing bystanders, like us, to swallow the lie and defend the double standard. "They're just protesters! Most are peaceful! People can protest! Trump's a tyrant!"

The game is played by having convinced many people that "oppression" is real and severe, and honestly willful, so violence is needed, and that only revolutionary violence and not reactionary violence is justified. This was Herbert Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" (1965).

If you're defending people who are not peacefully protesting and using any of that kind of rhetoric, then taking their side against applications of law enforcement to protect citizens and restore basic order, you're getting played by people who don't have your interests in mind.