Hong Kong, Portland and the Moral Low Ground

[FunkyDexter]

Gonna be a long one, here goes.

Where did you come up with this concept? Sounds like something Trump would say

I feel like your “both sides” arguments are much closer to Trump’s position than I am but, OK, I’ll expand.


All protest is violent because all protest is couched as violence by the targets of that protest. This was true of Martin Luther King and the American authorities, it was true of Ghandi and the British Empire, heck, it was true of Jesus and the Romans. The targets of the protest always perceive the protest as an attack, express their outrage in terms of violence and position themselves as victims of that violence. If they’re not talking about people being physically attacked, they’re talking about property damage. If they’re not talking about property damage, they’re talking about the cost to the tax payer. And always in terms of the damage and violence the protesters are enacting on the fabric of society. This was even true of last year’s extinction rebellion change protesters who were portrayed as anarchists bent on tearing society down for gluing themselves to trains so some commuters got to work late. Honestly, you will struggle to find a single protest in history which did not meet with this response from the targets of that protest.

From this we can conclude that “violence” in this discussion is actually a proxy for “disruption”. Except it’s worse than that. I used Kaepernick as an example in my previous post. His protest involved zero disruption and yet was still received in the same terms by the targets of his protest. It was an attack on American values, an attack on the flag, an attack on veterans… violence, violence, violence. So, actually, “violence” in this context is a proxy for the very act of making a statement, for the very act of engaging in protest. Merely calling out an injustice inherent in the status quo is violence. The nature of the protest is irrelevant, the act itself will be defined as “violence”.

And it’s worse than that too. Because having defined the mere act of protesting in terms of violence, the targets of that protest will meet it with a genuinely violent response. Don’t believe me? Ask Martin Luther King. Ask Jesus. Want a more recent example? Ask Heather Heyer.


So why does this make it problematic when you condemn the looting and rioting that’s spilling out of the current protests? I don’t believe you’re trying to excuse state sanctioned murder and I understand that your definition of violence extends only to direct property damage. I fully believe your intent is merely to challenge a thing you see as wrong rather than to condone what led to this. So why are you wrong to do that?

Because the arguments you’re using are exactly the same arguments that the perpetrators of that injustice use to justify perpetuating that injustice. The exact same arguments they will and are using to justify their genuinely violent response. Those protesters wouldn’t have been shot if they weren’t out after curfew. Wouldn’t have been shot if they weren’t rioting. Kyle Rittenhouse was in Kenosha to protect business owners from property damage... right?

Those arguments are a lie. These people do not need a “violent” protest to act as a call to arms. Jason Kessler and the Proudboys weren’t in Charlottesville in response to a protest, they went there to cause a protest which they could then react violently to. Black men repeatedly get murdered by police regardless of whether they engage in crime or not. The injustices in our society will be perpetuated with violence whether people protest against them or not and whether those protests are peaceful or not.

But lie or not, when you use those arguments, the people who are deliberately perpetuating societal injustices will receive it as endorsement of their position. Indeed, the public at large receive it as an endorsement of that position because you are using their argument. By saying “shootings are bad but looting’s bad too” you are not just removing your support from those people who would like to end injustice, you are, in effect if not in intent, gifting it to those who would violently perpetuate injustice. Particularly as, by doing it now, within a week of Jacob Blake's shooting, you give the appearance of equating property damage to attempted murder and you remove the focus from the fact that the property damage is in response to that murder, it is not spontaneous.

There is an appropriate time to condemn rioting in response to police officers repeatedly murdering black men but this is not it. The appropriate time will be when police officers are no longer repeatedly murdering black people. If people continue to riot, that will be the time to condemn them for it.



edit>Here's an interesting video I'd recommend. It's an examination of political violence throughout American history. The American Revolution was, of course, a violent protest... so there's that.