Free will is questionably a thing. If you are trapped, hungry, thirsty, threatened, and you see your neighbors beaten for minor infractions, then some kind of "mayhem" is not an unreasonable choice. Or would you rather they quietly took the abuse and had their next-of-kin file a complaint that will be summarily ignored?

BTW these are all things that protesters experience, as the police as trained in "crowd control" techniques which involve kettling and provoking masses of people so they can exert force to teach them a lesson.