They've learned that Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King got sent to prison and then taken the most baffling lesson from it.

makes a lot of sense; their views of those figures are filtered through the same state propaganda apparatus that they're protesting. "After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it."

Nelson Mandela does violent acts in opposition to apartheid -> sent to prison -> case becomes famous around the world because his supporters support him due to his commitment to the cause including his willingness to engage in violence to achieve the end of apartheid -> is eventually released and apartheid ends -> western propaganda purposefully removes the history of violence that got them in prison from public consciousness -> people, now unaware of that violent past, think that merely going to prison is some revolutionary act which will rally the public in support of them -> nothing happens when they go to prison, nobody cares -> either repeat this because they don't know any better because, again, that violent history is still unknown to them, OR they experience disillusionment from politics and go grill (and probably become conservatives)

the history of western leftism is a long series of people becoming radicalized but still being alienated from their communities, learning that the only effective strategy for creating revolution is the difficult, painstaking, boring work of creating organizations, unions, etc inside their communities and linking up to form national networks which can challenge the capitalist state, then saying "nah, that shit sucks and sounds boring and scary, I don't wanna do that. can't I just do an adventurism and/or be sent to prison in a protest and/or become a martyr for the cause? if I'm in prison or dead then I don't have to do shit and I'm seen as inherently good within the Western Christian paradigm and I like that" the only people who have escaped this process are those who are essentially forced to do this hard and scary work due to their minority status, like the Black Panthers. if they give up, they can't just go grill like white (cis hetero neurotypical etc) people can, they'll still be living under acute oppression.