There could be other explanations for the tear gas / anti-protest bills though. Maybe the pigs are sadists who enjoy being in a battlefield type situation where they are perfectly safe and can assault whoever they want without consequences. Maybe the pols want to clear the protests for a more venial reason: they represent an inconvenience but not a significant challenge.

This logic reminds me of people saying "If voting didn't matter, they wouldn't try so hard to do voter suppression!" idk where I land on the value of protests but I don't think the violent repression is necessarily proof of their effectiveness.