It’s funny because it becomes more and more transparent every day that these people aren’t “anti-destructive protest” they’re just anti-protest, period.
When people riot they point to them and them alone as examples of what “protesting is like”.
You ask them what a good alternative would be, and they say “non-violent protesting.”
Then a peaceful protest that closes maybe one or two roads in a city happens.
Then when you ask them what their idea is of a “good” protest is, they say “one that isn’t disruptive.”
Then a protest that doesn’t bother anyone at all but still makes a statement happens, and you know what they do?
They mock it and call it “slacktivism”.
This thing you are describing is not a demonstration of of hypocritical idiocy. It is a totally plausible, coherent position. It is, in fact, my position. Because most of the time it is basically correct.
The vast majority of protests are worthless. If they involve riots and violence, as they too often do, then they involve incurring huge social costs for the sake of doing nothing worthwhile, and so are very bad. If they result in street closures or other disruptions, then they involve incurring smallish social costs for the sake of doing nothing worthwhile, and so are kinda bad. If they result in no disruption at all, then they are just wastes of time for the people engaging in them, and so are probably a bit risible.
In brief:
There are, overall, two effective ways for activists to wreak change upon the world. (Three, if you count violent revolution, but I assume that we’re not going there right now.) They can (1) influence the government and powerful institutions directly, causing their favored policies to be put into place; or they can (2) spread their message in an effective way, changing hearts-and-minds on a large scale and laying the foundation for political and/or cultural change.
Most actual effective non-“slack” activism takes tack (1). This is the hard slow work of engaging with elected officials (especially at sub-national levels in the US!), organizing unions at workplaces, creating and supporting primary challengers, etc. If you are a normal person who wants to do good in the world in an activist-y kind of way, the odds are like 95%+ that this is the kind of thing about which you should be thinking, and it looks nothing like protest.
Tack (2) can light fireworks when it works, but it’s very very very hard to make it work, because it’s very very very hard to make an idea go viral…especially when it’s not an idea that people are already predisposed to share.
Protesting works, when it works at all, because it causes a bunch of people to see that (i) there is an issue about which they weren’t really aware, that (ii) sounds sympathetic, and (iii) a bunch of other people already care about passionately. That is what it does. That is the only story that explains how it gets results*.
If you are protesting about something already firmly embedded in the social consciousness, it is worthless.
If you are protesting in such a way that you will attract as much hate as love from the people who notice it, it is worthless.
If you are protesting in way that makes it look like you are part of the crowd of hobbyist / semi-pro activists who will be forever holding protests regardless of the circumstances, it is worthless.
I am aware of maybe one protest, within my lifetime, that did not fall into at least one of those categories.
Protests often piggyback on other change vectors – people do a lot of activist yelling when something is about to happen, and then take credit – but don’t be fooled. Try something more efficacious.
* OK, there’s also the story that says “the protest turns out to be the spark of a violent revolution,” but, uh, not better.