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Notes -
I don't think we have sufficient data to conclude that the brutality and the filming actually directionally increased support, not having access to the counterfactual (what should the counterfactual even be? No brutality but similar media coverage? No brutality but similar volume of media coverage? No brutality and the expected attendant lower volume of media coverage?). Assuming it did, though, two theories would jump out at me:
taking the "this is what decolonization looks like" tweets seriously: in the context of BLM, genuine radicalization on the left has increased and inched closer to the Overton window. If you want armed revolution at home and understand what armed revolution actually looks like, it's not hard to see this as armed revolution as narrated from the perspective of the old regime.
media savvy: however savage the attacks were, the media is remarkably crude and shameless in deploying the entire gamut of tricks to milk them in defense of IL's cause (Russell-conjugating any belligerent action, human interest sob stories, contrived clipping of historical context, social attacks against those who would merely fail to fall in line with these narrative techniques). Especially leftist activists by now would have extensive experience with deploying the same techniques for their own causes, often doing so with much greater finesse; they would recognise that and how they are being played and if they were already tending pro-Palestine this would probably make them bristle as much as a ChatGPT-polished essay about the intersectional oppressions of inceldom and Appalachian origin would.
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