Imo this is what happened once protests became a “right”. I know most people here won’t agree with the Canada trucker protest, but I remember when it happened, people were saying “ok, you’ve had your protest and exercised your rights, you’ve been heard, you can go home now” - framing it just like that, as a rally to show an opinion rather than a threat. It felt to me like “the establishment” just treats them as peformative, because as you say they usually are, and then doesn’t know what to do when it’s actually something they have to react to.