That's an easy one, no need to get philosophical or long-winded about it: because most riots target the businesses and homes of random citizens/companies. If anti-police riots solely targeted police stations, city offices, and other related government buildings and infrastructure then a much larger percentage of the populace would see them as just/justified. Samsung TVs on sale at 100% off at your local Target doesn't have the same moral weight to it.
> Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights.
Also, throughout its history, many US agencies astroturf “fake” riots to discredit their targets. The CIA did it in Iran in 1953 for example. Many LEO plants were identified in 2020, smashing glass, planting bricks, etc.
Wow, that MLK quote cuts deep. It should also come with context as to what MLK was doing. He wasn't apologizing, rationalizing it, or supporting it. He was explaining why it happens. He continually called for non-violence and civil disobedience, not rioting. In many ways, he was calling to the black community to stop doing these things and up-level protests to effective means from ineffective means.
Sorry, from my perspective he's talking utter shite. I knew people in northern Ireland who rioted. They were young angry stupid men who didn't give a fuck who's lives they were making a misery. It was a form of collective punishment on people whose only crime was having a business or a car that idiots enjoyed smashing up
"Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights."
It's about shocking society more than it is about the property and who it belongs to.
When you say “it’s about”, it’s like you’re assuming rioters need to have a rational explanation for what they do. It could very well just be the unleashing of some inner raw-animal destructiveness for no reason other than the opportunity presented itself. Post-hoc rationalizations need not have any connection to the rioters themselves.
>> a form of collective punishment on people whose only crime was having a business or a car that idiots enjoyed smashing up
So people without property were punishing people who had property? Sounds very standard to me. Extend that a bit further and you get something like the French revolution where poor people executed rich people for the crime of simply being rich.
Correction: the crime of being rich while many starved.
I'm currently reading 'The Dawn of Everything,' and it is FASCINATING. The case made at the beginning of the book is that notions of equality and individual freedom basically came into being in Europe because of contact with indigenous Americans. Suddenly there was a flood of observations and conversations with societies that made sure no one went hungry.
And then when people started starving with the knowledge that another world was possible, things got violent. Incidentally, many-to-most violent uprisings have started with food shortages. Typically people have to be extremely uncomfortable before they start breaking out the guillotines, and hunger is extremely uncomfortable... And one of the still-active remnants of the French revolution is a government regulation ensuring that baguettes are cheap and readily available.
> The case made at the beginning of the book is that notions of equality and individual freedom basically came into being in Europe because of contact with indigenous Americans.
The biggest problem with that theory is that indigenous Americans generally did not hold notions of equality and individual freedom.
It falls under the "noble savage" concept, the thought that native Americans were somehow innocents living in the garden as god once intended. The concept is far more telling of the European religious mindset than anything of actual native Americans.
I read a great book a few years back about the lives of African slaves owned by native Americans, native Americans who took said slaves with them when they were exiled by white settlers. The fact that I had not known of such things is a remnant of the noble savage concept. I was taught little in school about native american views on class.
The book talks a lot about this, and is worth reading.
Note that nothing you've pointed to is exclusive; Mayan society was very different from the societies of New France. Indigenous America is not a cartoon, but a large collection of societies with different organisation.
Another interesting point in the book is that there are many instances of enlightenment thinkers explicitly pointing to indigenous Americans as the source of their ideas... Which has tended to just be ignored or glossed over, in favor of the great man theory where these ideas spring from pure European genius.
There's a lot of ground between "these ideas spring from pure European genius" and "[these ideas] basically came into being in Europe because of contact with indigenous Americans." It would be much more interesting to acknowledge the specific ways in which contact with indigenous society contributed to the European Enlightenment than to dismiss Europeans' contribution entirely.
And describing indigenous people as "societies that made sure no one went hungry" without mentioning warfare, torture, and slavery does appear to be restating the classic myth of the noble savage. These practices were not limited to the Mayans, but were widespread across the Americas, including New France, as the additional links I added above describe.
Sounds like you'll enjoy the book (which is long) more than my comments (which are short). Getting into the specifics of how these ideas originated and travelled is exactly what it sets out to do.
Were the indigenous Americans the source of the ideas, or did the mere existence of indigenous Americans foster these ideas? The discovery of people, any people, outside the existing understanding of european/asian culture would bring forward new ideas. Were they the source, or were they simply the canvas onto which European thinkers painted stories?
The book makes the argument that the ideas originated especially from debates between Jesuits and the Wendat tribe, and was then over a hundred years or so internalized into the enlightenment debate.
I read your Canadian article. I don't see anything that contradicts the idea that indigenous Americans valued (or invented) individual freedom and equality. Unless you mean that they fought wars against other tribes.
The recent violence in kazakhstan came after the possible rise in gas and electricity prices (which in turn is tied to crypo mining). The Terror started with food shortages but I think the next violent revolution will be triggered by energy prices, be it gas or electricity.
As for breaking out the guillotines, that doesn't take much. A gallows made an appearance on January 6th. Those people looked very well-fed. I'm not sure they were joking.
that is a good take on it, i would also say happiness, if you see your parents and grandparents falling in love and starting a life together but you are pushing 40 with nothing to show for it because of unstable environment conditions, poor schooling and unfair labor wages which are all have to do with equality then people will look for a representation of their struggle.
the blm movement was not just about blm, a lot of it was used as a starter to talk about a related issue. which is equality in general, you can see this by how many socialist supporters came out. in reality mlk supported fair wages for all working class people and that is the “conspiracy” theory of why he got shot, but obviously if people can’t eat, or if they feel very they are being massively mistreated, they will riot.
A divided population , a minority that sees itself as a victim of oppression, rioting and other violence. Yes, the people doing the rioting don't have similar excuses at all.
Edit infact in school I was taught Catholic civil right protestors drew inspiration from the black civil rights movement
Violence, or the threat of violence, against a civilian population with the intended aim of effecting political change is the actual definition of terrorism, special or not.
I think what you may be missing is that this paper juxtaposes "Just Riots" with "Just Wars."[0]
In modern warfare, massive numbers of civilians are often killed -- for example, the most deadly bomb attack of World War II was the Allied firebombing of Tokyo, which killed over 100,000 people, almost all of whom were civilians.[1]
Surely this is "violence, against a civilian population, with the intended aim of effecting political change". Indeed, harming morale was an explicit goal of attacks like those against Tokyo and Dresden during WWII.[2] The idea was that the population would be cowed by these attacks and (somehow) get their governments to surrender to the Allies.
So the question is: If we have a theory of "Just War," that includes wars where the "just" side can claim to morally kill tens of thousands of civilians at once, then should there also be a theory of "Just Riots," even if riots can scare civilians sometimes hurt or kill them?
There's a really big difference between civilian targets being collateral damage, and civilian targets being attacked intentionally. It's not like the rioters thought they were looting a police station but accidentally ended up in Target; they intentionally chose to loot Target.
The mass killing of civilians in Tokyo and Dresden was absolutely deliberate. Same with Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the atom bombs used in those attacks were dropped on the center of those cities, even though the factories we were ostensibly targeting were located on the outskirts.
Having said that: If indeed the Allies targeted civilians intentionally in World War II, would you say that the war was unjust? Or that the Allies committed war crimes? If not, then you might consider that there is such a thing as just riots.
Terror is historically the name of a form of draconic government. Your definition is prescriptive and the way I understand it you changed a perceived thread into an intended thread.
I'd argue that an act of desperation is rather aimless, frustation rather apolitical and anger not even well defined and well unintentional. You'd have to assume that a riot is concerted or agitated and that rioters were used, by a government against civilians. That's a real possibility, but it would also include kinda civil wars.
The current understanding as formed by extensive definitions does not capture mass hysteria though. It's simply terrible, a real riot.
> Often the Negro does not even want what he takes
Riiiiight. I guess that’s why it’s mostly big box consumer stores being looted and not, say, an industrial supply company like a Grainger or even a hardware store like Home Depot.
Reads a lot like a motivated rationalization of inexcusable criminality.
> Reads a lot like a motivated rationalization of inexcusable criminality.
To MLK ? Really ???
> Riiiiight. I guess that’s why it’s mostly big box consumer stores being looted and not, say, an industrial supply company like a Grainger or even a hardware store like Home Depot.
My guy I'm sure they're just going to their nearest / most frequented shops. If a Home Depot was in the neighborhood, I'm sure they would rob it.
I think that was meant to the quoter of MLK, MLK lived 50 years ago so he has no understanding of the events happening today. So it is the person bringing up the quote who stands by its validity for todays events.
> Riiiiight. I guess that’s why it’s mostly big box consumer stores being looted and not, say, an industrial supply company like a Grainger or even a hardware store like Home Depot.
In addition to the point made in a sibling comment, are you sure it is mostly big box stores? It seems just as reasonable to me that the big ticket items are what you hear about because someone stealing a bunch of 50c plumbing supplies just doesn't produce the same headlines. Certainly we've heard of things like 7/11s being hit, which frankly don't have as many "big ticket" items as Home Depot or Grainger.
That's a strange position to pivot off of - there's no normative claim in that entire passage, just an analytical deconstruction of a societal manifestation.
"Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights."
Maybe times have changed, but this is excusing and not at all accurately characterizing the people I saw looting Nike, Best Buy, and Walmart. It was naked theft under the cover of "equity." I want to know whether MLK was principled, or a politician making excuses. I'll do more research.
Interesting...you seem to have a superpower... you can look at someone and read their exact psychological state... you know their wants and intentions from a glance...
How do you sleep with such a burden?
> The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions.
This sentence is particularly egregious.
To see MLK just come straight out and say black people don't target institutions because they don't care about changing them kind of defeats any legitimate argument for rioting.
The problem with the MLK quote is that he is just confirming what every racist white person thinks, institutional racism isn't a thing black people just want free shit and are willing to resort to violence to get it.
The topic being discussed is whether there is a legitimate defense of rioting and plenty of people feel like it is. For example if the police abuse their powers its just for citizens to riot against the police smashing police cars and throwing bricks at police stations / cameras. Its very easy to justify the legitimacy of this as you are directly disrupting the ability for the police to operate freely.
Looting another citizen is much harder to justify the legitimacy of, disguising looting as rioting makes it easier to do so.
Not sure why you got downvoted for thinking aloud. It’s very much worth reading in depth about how the activists of the 1960s formulated their views. MLK wasn’t a born messiah, he refined his philosophy over the course of his life and only came to adopt a non-violent strategy after others influenced him. It’s quite easy to cherry pick a quote from a younger MLK that an older one wouldn’t agree with.
It sounds like you're assessing his ideas based on whether they harmonize with your current ideology, ergo thinking about it in terms of "favorability" like how you might vote for a politician. This is not the right way to read a persuasive essay.
I am assuming your comment was in good faith, although it's odd for an HN user to ask a question that could be answered by a simple google search.
I also note your highly loaded language of "race wars" which is not the same thing as a what everyone else is talking about in this thread.
The term "race wars" is a term that is frequently used by online right-wing agitators in order to derail discussions and push people's buttons. I'm not saying you're doing that, I am saying that it's not possible to distinguish your post from a post written by a ultra-right troll.
How do I know this? Because in college I was trained by right-wing activist to use exactly that type of language in order derail conversations.
I agree 100%. It was so disappointing to see all the damage done to private businesses during the summer of 2020. Why not go after government buildings? Isn't that who funds all the things that were being protested? How does destroying a target store help anything??
I agree with you that no one should ever like seeing damage to a community. Two things come to mind in response to your comment:
1. it is important to differentiate between violence done towards individuals and damage caused to private property. i am not accusing you of conflating the two but i just feel it necessary to be explicit in these discussions because people often try to slyly discuss one as if it was the other.
2. I think a compelling argument in defense of the demonstrators in 2020, target isn't a part of the community. It pays minimum wage, makes it difficult for small business owned by the community to compete, and most importantly extracts the wealth and moves it away from the community. I am not saying there weren't better targets. I'm not saying we shouldn't (necessarily) go after government buildings if those are you grievances. I'm just saying that there is reasoning behind this even if its blunt.
(Also worth noting i read an interview with a restaurant owner near the target whos restaurant was burned down that effectivly said "yeah this really really sucks, but at the same time i understand the wider context." That's what happens when you're actually a member of the community and get caught up the fallout from these things.)
This is an incredibly rosey take on what happened. One guy was okay with his restaurant burned down, probably because he had insurance.
Many of the businesses affected (thinking lake street in minneapolis and kenosha) were POC owned small businesses. Many were permanently closed because the owners lost everything and didn't have insurance to cover it.
> it is important to differentiate between violence done towards individuals and damage caused to private property
Tell that to the people who put blood, sweat and tears into getting where they are. You think the emotional, mental and financial pain didnt do any damage?
> target isn't a part of the community
What about the cub foods that was totally trashed? Empty shelves, aisles flooded with broken containers. The community didn't deserve that. Nobody benefitted from it. Nobody saw that and thought to themselves "Yeah, go protesters!" It took 8 months to reopen after all of the damage and unrest.
Absolutely fair argument. I don't live there so im not gonna comment to deeply here, but one thing i know to be true is that by and large the people who were participating in the demonstration were also members of the community. This doesn't necessarily justify harm done but it makes their view just as relevant as someone who is more successful than they are. (Though notably it wasn't just the poor demonstrating.)
Mobs are hard to control. Negative elements tend to take over and the crowd often follows the flow.
Ofyen times thieves, corrupt politicians, bad businesses, etc., are part of a community. A community includes all. Good and bad. Saying “but they were part of the community does not speak at all to their intentions.
Even in families, when someone is irrationally upset they may do things they regret later on. Even the self can do irrationally negative things to itself.
We should still be able to revisit events and determine what was bad and could be prevented and how we can provide tools for people to prevent a recurrence. Also highlight the good that might have come out.
Usually the term "demonstration" refers to something like a march, sit-in, or some other form of non-violent protest. We're not talking about that, we're talking about people destroying private property.
> by and large the people who were participating in the demonstration were also members of the community
Does that make it okay? Just because someone lives close to a business doesn't give them the right to destroy it. It seems that you would be ok with it happening to your business, but I bet 99% of small business owners would not.
The supposition that demonstration doesn’t include obstructing or destroying property is relatively new. When I say demonstration I mean it to include everything from drum circles in zucotti park to the 60s civil rights demonstrations which locked down cities and towns to the events which triggered the Bolshevik and Cultural revolutions and the de-colonization of India.
To think that change happens without damage to property or obstruction of daily life is historically inaccurate and myopic.
If you destroy someone's livelihood and make them and theirs go hungry, are you not committing violence against them? If you destroy cars people need to reach work and earn their keep, are you not doing violence against them? If you burn down a church, are you not stripping someone else of their civil rights?
Many leftists will argue that sanctions are inherently violent and murderous because they often push people on the precipice over the edge and kill them from malnutrition or lack of medical access. Yet when rioters do essentially the same, destroy property in already precarious communities, this argument is made that it's not violence, it is a noble political demonstration. I for one do not buy it and find it hard to believe that your anecdotal business owner is representative of the wider economic and individual impact riots have.
The truth of the matter is that riots are a symptom. There is nothing noble about a riot and they are inherently violent, even if only property is destroyed. In the same way that those capital rioters deserve prison, so too do other rioters. That does not mean the conditions that caused the riots are just or proper but neither are the rioters righteous.
Leftists will also correctly say that when the state murders you extrajudicially there is only one way to respond. What you're saying is that unless you can somehow guarantee that property wont be damaged you can never attack those who are doing violence to you. Unfortunately, the position that many poor people are in doesn't afford them the luxury of being concerned with other peoples private property and, personally, i am of the mind that they shouldn't have to be.
>What you're saying is that unless you can somehow guarantee that property wont be damaged you can never attack those who are doing violence to you.
Nonsense. If rioters burned down a police station and the fire spread to some neighboring buildings it would be unfortunate (and would probably hurt public opinion about the riot to some extent). But it's not even remotely comparable to a riot that doesn't even try to target the sources of its grievances and directly and intentionally harms civilians instead
Well, many rioters did target police stations. The issue is that any sufficiently large riot is necessarily disorganized, composed of different people with different motivations. For that reason, I think private property being targeted by rioters is actually not too different from your example of fire spreading to buildings. It seems an impossible standard for any riot / rebellion on a large scale to meet.
If that is a natural element just like fire spreading, then it is also natural to put down riots just as if they were fires. When a fire burns down a building you stop it, so the same should go for riots.
So basically you made the case for "there are no just riots, they are all mindless violence". If they could behave then they could be just, but if you argue that they can't behave then they can't be just and should be stopped.
Note there are many examples of protests being violent in targeted ways that don't harm innocents, so I disagree with you here. There are just riots, but what we saw in USA wasn't that. Its just that when that happens it isn't called a riot, its just called a violent protest or something like that.
On the other hand, one can argue that the voters are ultimately the source of the policies that result in the grievances in the first place. When it comes to systemic societal issues, it is not very clear where one can draw the line on fault.
> What you're saying is that unless you can somehow guarantee that property wont be damaged you can never attack those who are doing violence to you.
No, I'm not saying that. My worldview is not poisoned blind by my moral views on rioting. I don't think people can only react one way because they clearly react many ways to injustice, societal change, etc, one of those ways being rioting. I will not argue that they should not do these things because it's the same as arguing that rain should not fall. I do believe that actions have consequences and, in a society of rule of law, rioters do not get a pass to burn down buildings and destroy cars for the sake of their cause. They deserve prison, in those cases, even if they don't always face justice. It's interesting that you feel they shouldn't have to face consequences but your worldview does not mesh with how greater society operates. Criminals that are caught go to prison.
You're framing the issue as if the mob meant to attack a police station but accidentally started robbing Targets and grocery stores instead. That's ridiculous.
> Unfortunately, the position that many poor people are in doesn't afford them the luxury of being concerned with other peoples private property
There is a huge difference between being concerned about other's property, and intentional wanton destruction of other people's property.
Also, don't just concede to him that the characterization of the rioters as "poor" or "members of the community" is accepted. Nobody has done any kind of survey of who the rioters are, and from what little we do know, many of those arrested in the larger riots were out of state travelers.
He's painting the most optimistic possible scenario and it's still stomach turning. It's complete moral depravity through and through.
I mentioned target because it was a very visible event; I think a lot of people saw that one picture of the self checkout machine being smashed with a hammer. What people don't seem to know or remember is that a lot of small, local businesses were also damaged. Even black owned ones!
It's just really hard to reconcile all this damage/looting with the notion that all of it was in protest. To me it seems like a lot of people just wanted some free stuff.
Many would argue that the destruction of their livelihood does much more long-lasting harm than suffering physical violence. Many a small business owner would rather catch a beating than see their business burnt to the ground.
When, on the flip side, the violence is administered by the State, this comes close to the argument of In Defense of Flogging. Like, "just give me a spanking and get it over with".
(Though, that book is also about the cruelty and dysfunction of the "justice" system.)
This also shows up in personal relationships. If you had the choice between transitory physical abuse, and permanent wage garnishment, which would you choose? Only one of these is considered legitimate, and yet if people could freely choose I think they'd accept beatings a lot of the time.
In a way, this is what everyone who chooses a physically dangerous or even painful job is doing: "Pain ends. Money, and thus private property, I get to keep."
The question is how much permanent injury you suffer.
Many of the destroyed businesses weren't insured, they were POC owned small businesses that were part of the community and barely afloat. Many did not return.
If you think there are no long lasting health effects from that kind of emotional and financial stress, think again.
Even for those who were insured, having to file claims for this sort of destruction is a good way to make your premiums --and those of nearby businesses that may have been spared direct damage--skyrocket to unaffordability.
I tried pretty hard to specify this bit in my comment: violence towards people IS NOT damage to property. Hard thing for people to engage with earnestly though :( I think its because to them, damage to private property makes life to varying degrees more difficult for the owner of the property. I know from growing up in the middle class suburbs that it is difficult for many people to tell the difference between that difficulty and violence done directly or indirectly to you by a power structure.
Have you considered it's because you've grown up in a middle class suburb, isolated from all the depravity and violence that goes on in these inner city neighborhoods, that you can afford to daydream about "power structures" and dismiss these losses as mere property damage? Do you know how many of these businesses are owned by poor minority and/or immigrant families, who have taken out loans and spent every last penny they had to open up shop?
The enshrinement and protection of private property rights is one of the core principles that separate developed nations from third-world banana republics. If property is worth that little to you, perhaps you should start by offering up your own, and move to one of these places.
This is a wild overreach. It seems to presume that because I grew up there that I was middle class. I am now but believe me I was not always. I still do now own where I live and it’ll take me to the end of my thirties before I can, reasonably.
If you consider analysis of power structures “daydreaming” I’m not sure what to say. There is a manifest difference between two random people slapping each other in an argument and a cop slapping a civilian.
Every single interaction which has ever occurred between humans has a power dynamic. It’s the furthest thing from “academic” “philosophical” or “theoretical.”
This is a pretty big overreaction to a statement no-one should have any issue with accepting. It's manifestly obvious that property damage is not the same as violence against humans. It's something which is reflected in our laws. You can believe that property damage is bad and still accept this as clearly true.
Yes, they're clearly not the same thing, which is why we have different words for them. I would however disagree that any violence is worse than all property damage, which is what seems to be implied. Would you rather be slapped in the face or have your house burnt down?
A lot of people depend on corporations for employment and the services they provide. So if a large store gets burned down and doesn't reopen that will likely just lead to decay and harm the community, especially if it's in a low-income area where sources of fresh food are already generally rare.
>Also worth noting i read an interview with a restaurant owner near the target whos restaurant was burned down that effectivly said "yeah this really really sucks, but at the same time i understand the wider context." That's what happens when you're actually a member of the community and get caught up the fallout from these things
No, what this means is that this owner is privileged enough that this isn't life ruining to them. A lot of small business owners in poor areas have partial coverage at best and will never recover, having their store burned down is having their livelihood burned down.
> it is important to differentiate between violence done towards individuals and damage caused to private property.
It’s important to note that when your property is being looted, you can’t actually know for sure whether the mob is going to turn violent. In this case, fleeing to safety and leaving your home or business burned to the ground may be the only legally safe response. (ie, it is usually not
To be clear, I would never sympathize with the political cause of those who would violently destroy the interests of my friends and neighbors. I also don’t believe that violence against people is acceptable simply because they can be considered separate from a community.
I don't think going after government buildings would have been justified either; those buildings are all of our buildings. We paid (and pay) for them, and they provide services to the community.
I am all for widespread recognition of the horrible state of American policing, including the fact that a lot of (but not all, and I do not think I am prepared to say "most" either) of the people who go into it are clearly bad people. I am also into significantly modifying or abolishing qualified immunity, a move which I think most Americans, of all political persuasions, would favor if they read some of the caselaw and came to understand how much police officers have gotten away with under current law.
In addition to having an obvious direct negative impact on our economy and the victims of such riots, lawless, destructive riots only damage both of those causes.
I just want to put a pitch in here that I am related to several LEOs, and I can assure you that the number of "bad people," are a tiny minority. And I am also STRONGLY opposed to this idea that it's OK to attack government buildings, and I don't think I'm alone. If 2020 riots happen again, I think you can expect all out war.
> Samsung TVs on sale at 100% off at your local Target doesn't have the same moral weight to it
I kinda disagree with this. If it were a local retailer run by your neighbors, you’d be absolutely correct. But if you’re talking about Target, you’re now in the territory of a system of economic oppression where money is siphoned out of local communities by large multinational corporations and the actual residents have no ownership over anything. During the 2020 riots, there were definitely some people trying to make the point, “we have no ownership of our own neighborhoods.”
I can see many people, especially black Americans, feeling all but imprisoned by the fact that they can’t afford to own property, can’t run the businesses that serve their community and are at the mercy of white people who move in and gentrify the neighborhoods forcing them to find new, less desirable places to live. The police who are the immediate focus of protests become merely the jailers in a systemic prison of which Target and other large retailers play a huge part.
I'm probably going too far from the original point since Target was only cited as a hypothetical example, but Target has some of the country's largest and most capable crime labs. I mention this as an example of how large corporate entities can be enthusiastic participants in the police state.
> But if you’re talking about Target, you’re now in the territory of a system of economic oppression where money is siphoned out of local communities by large multinational corporations and the actual residents have no ownership over anything.
Wow, are you using loaded language.
Say the Target wasn't there. The people of the neighborhood are still going to want to buy things. Without the Target, there might be locally-owned mom-and-pop businesses. Target takes the profits out of the neighborhood. All that is true.
But Target drove those businesses out by selling stuff for less money. So your solution is that the people of the neighborhood have to spend more in order that some people of the neighborhood can have the profits. And you call Target a system of economic oppression and a money siphon. Yeah, I'm not buying it.
I'm not sure it's as black and white as you make it out to be. Many things are cheaper from various other countries, yet we are encouraged to "buy American" because it's generally understood that keeping that money in the country is better for everyone in than long run than sending it to some 3rd world country where labor goes for pennies. We are also often encouraged to "buy local" rather than go out of State, town, etc for similar reasons.
The idea that keeping that money in the community might benefit the community, including the purchaser, more in the long run than saving a few bucks doesn't seem that crazy to me.
> During the 2020 riots, there were definitely some people trying to make the point, “we have no ownership of our own neighborhoods.”
Another reason why riots are not helpful is that it's impossible to know whether someone is breaking a window to make a statement about police violence, institutional racism, capitalist oppression, or because nobody can stop them from breaking a window right now. It's not an eloquent means of expression, and the message will never be received as the author intended.
Riots are indiscriminate almost by definition. Has there ever been a riot whose targeted damage outpaced its collateral damage? We can imagine such a thing, but if it's not practically likely to ever occur I don't know what the point would be of developing theories about it.
On the other hand it's very straightforward to locate some justified wars in history. In fact I would say that most wars have a side that has a just cause, which is typically the defender.
You used two different standards for riots and wars. For riots you judged damage. For war you judged motivation.
Most wars fail your targeted vs collateral damage test. Maybe the US drone war from 2001 to present as an exception. Although we don’t really have the full picture to say.
Hrm, neither of motivation nor damage are sufficient alone. It's something like the product of the two. For an action to be justified it must both have a just motivation and a reasonably predicted just outcome proportional to the motivation. If either of those two requirements are not met, then the action is not just. Happy to go into examples if it would help clarify what I'm thinking. Feel free to ask if you want me to, but I think you might already understand my pov from what I've said above.
To be clear, I am not arguing that my point of view is or should be universal. I'm only sharing my own thoughts on the issue.
> I don't know what the point would be of developing theories about it.
Easy, the same reason most contrarian theories are developed: grant money and academic prestige. Most theories like this are woefully at odds with what the majority of society believes. If you asked most Americans whether or not they wanted a riot, just or not, in their neighborhood, you know what they would answer.
Riots are sort of like protests that have lost control. We have just protests.
If we compare it to war, would a riot be like a certain subset of war that's lost control, like a slaughter, though that name doesn't perfectly fit and my vocabulary may be lacking a term for what I'm thinking of? Are there any theories to call such a war that's lost control just, or would the loss of control preclude it from the theories you mentioned?
I'm not convinced there is no theory of a just riot, at least inasmuch as the majority of riots in history seem to have non-participating academic types willing to explain explaining why the anger was in this case justified. (Some of it's pretty ad hoc rationalisation, but lots of "just war" claims are too). Plenty of theory about how much rioting is too much rioting too.
It's just that most people who believe a cause justifies a riot (whether that's police killings, blasphemy, a candidate not winning an election or high taxes) want the riot to go beyond a riot and into some sort of actual change. A war is justified as a means to an end; a riot is usually only a small part of that means.
Also, a lot of just war theory boils down to asking religious figures or bodies like the UN for permission, which isn't really practical for your average riot.
In that case, the "Capitol Riot" was probably the most justified riot of 2021 in the US, yet the media (state-sponsored and affiliated) would disagree. Operation Mockingbird [1], anyone?
> If anti-police riots solely targeted police stations, city offices, and other related government buildings
Rioters/protestors burned down the third precinct police station in Minneapolis. Also in May, protesters smashed a window and defaced the Veterans Affairs headquarters building, and smashed the doors and windows at the National Treasury Employees Union headquarters. The National Park Service reported vandalized monuments on the National Mall.
You managed to confuse an entire comment tree by ignoring the article and presenting fallacious, anti-American rhetoric.
Congrats.
Minority groups have been dealing with systemic and deliberate murder as part of their daily lives for 400 years and you're worried about... a reconcilable loss of an inanimate object?
Oddisee and Shabazz Palaces can say it better than I can.
> I got a cuz that’ll be your doctor after a test that I hope he’ll pass
Isn’t that what you fear most? But fear don’t trump your needs
Our pros do trump our cons though. And cons don’t trump your greed
And monsters’ what you make of us and we make you succeed
And that’s what makes this country great, it’s built by those who bleed
It’s built by those who came on boats, it’s built by those who flee
And you forgot your family tree and we’re just all your leaves
So if you just try to chop us down you only hurt your knees
Really? I don't know of a single war off the top of my head that didn't have many high-profile incidents of militaries targeting civilian infrastructure (with people inside).
Yeah, I know the 'rule'. The least messy war that comes to mind is the first gulf war, and that had loads of direct targeting of civilians[0]. Most wars (second gulf, various israeli wars, etc) are way worse. I cannot in fact think of a single example of the rule being followed, can you?
If you consider a really bloody war, like the korean war, they killed a fifth of the population of north korea, and destroyed basically every single piece of civilian infrastructure.
Often it's not a specific agency or policy that's being protested. They're involved, sure, but the protest is about the brokenness of the social contract more generally--which means that working towards fixing it is everybody's problem. A targeted strike on a police station wouldn't do much to engage anybody who is neither police nor protestor.
There are obviously better ways to drive change than destroying whatever's around you, but much like you'd protest a too-low speed limit by speeding, it's not insane to protest a broken social contract than violating it at scale.
There are plenty of theories that justify collateral damage in war. There are even theories that justify war crimes (e.g. have to break a few eggs to make an omelette). The main difference here is between state actors and non-state actors.
And it's bizarre to say that you don't need to get "philosophical or long-winded" about it, when it's a link to the British Academy Brian Barry Price essay. I mean "philosophical and long-winded" is exactly what their looking for here.
BTW, I agree with your normative assessment I am just saying your comment makes no sense in the context of this article.
The righteousness of a riot (or 'civil protest') is as described by the storyteller.
If the media decides it's a 'mostly peaceful' protest, then acts of violence are not emphasized. Participation is not demonized.
But if the describer calls it 'an insurrection' or 'riot', then acts of violence are magnified. Being present, even without participation, is demonized.
The real truth is that no act of violence is acceptable.
The article talks about riots across history, not the American experience. I doubt it means looting to the exclusion of civil unrest, upheaval. Inter Arma Sine Legis, ergo looting is a probable side effect.
The US had a riot on Jan 6th 2021 and it’s been portrayed as a crisis on the scale of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. Millions of Americans think it was an insurrection. I don’t know if your theory holds up.
> The US had a riot on Jan 6th 2021 and it’s been portrayed as a crisis on the scale of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. Millions of Americans think it was an insurrection. I don’t know if your theory holds up.
The vast majority of Jan 6 charges were riot-related, but that there are any insurrection-related charges at all is what's branding the event as an attempted insurrection against the United States Government.
Only, the "riot" coincided with the counting of electoral votes, they erected gallows and chanted "Hang Mike Pence" because he wasn't playing along with Trump's fraudulent attempt to replace electors, as the crowd attempted to force their way into the legislative session. The crowd may have failed, but the attempt was made. After they bloodied dozens of cops, what do you suppose would have happened if they made it into the chamber full of senators?
That's dishonest. Anyone looking even only perfunctory at the lead up to and events of the day knows that this was provoked by Trump and the sycophants around him. They falsely claim the election was stolen from them, and January 6th was their last chance at a coup. Riled up protesters stormed government buildings and tried to kill multiple government officials who were in the process of ratifying a valid election.
Rightfully, there's a much higher threshold of evidence in court, and this of course takes time to gather. Rats like Trump and the people around them also have plenty of experience skirting the line of illegality, and them being often high-ranking government officials gives them a certain degree of immunity.
"Insurrection" is harder to prove than "riot" or "breaking and entering". They don't want to charge a bunch of people and lose in court; they want the charges to stick. That takes time to get right.
> To be more clear, no charges of sedition were filed until nearly a year after the "riot" had been branded an "insurrection". The branding of the riot to insurrection occured about 45 minutes after someone sat in Pelosi's chair.
Investigations are a thing that take place, and exceptional charges tend to be distant followers of actual events, especially when cases need to be airtight.
There's no conspiracy with the way the charges were handled; there's simply evidence-gathering.
I think location has to do with it. Riots in DC government buildings are taken more seriously than riots affecting civilian housing and businesses. You can argue that's a double standard, but many people just feel differently when they see rioting in the capital building(vs rioting on Main Street)
So any one individual could corrupt a just riot by targeting a citizen or home. Seems this theory is severely lacking, then, if it basically means no real sporadic action can take place unless every single individual involved must be on the same page and avoid committing any mistakes.
In war where every soldier is trained on rules of combat, when some break the rules and do unjust things they are seen simply as "lone wolves breaking the rules". In riots, people rarely offer the same reasoning that those who commit crimes against citizens are simply "lone wolves breaking the rules" detracting from the larger movement. The lone wolves actions are taken to represent the entire movement as a whole. There is a huge unexplained distance between those two. Why is it that state powers can make mistakes but sporadic grassroots movements cannot?
No, it just means we don’t have to make excuses for riots, and the protestors could leave the area where riots are happening, to make their intentions clear.
If riots are a “mistake”, then protestors should be admitting that, rather than attempting to excuse them.
>and the protestors could leave the area where riots are happening, to make their intentions clear.
Since when are protectors a monolithic entity that can sense when a single individual is doing something unjust? I can show up to a riot and break into a house, and the other rioters will continue doing what they were doing totally unaware of my actions.
But this also means if people are justly rioting all it takes is a single bad actor to throw a brick through a window in order to force everyone else to leave. Otherwise it would mean everyone else is being unjust. Again, a single cop beating protesters is seen as doing wrong, and a single soldier raping a foreign citizen is seen as a lone violator. Seems like a double standard.
With this standard, America's founding was closer to terrorism than revolution. People threw hot tar and feathers on innocent tax collectors. Rather than apologize, they armed themselves. America couldn't exist if the world followed these ridiculous rules
> Since when are protectors a monolithic entity that can sense when a single individual is doing something unjust?
It’s not hard to see when people are looting and move away. It’s also not hard to say “hey there is looting happening here, let’s move the protest away”.
Anyone can do this. No monolithic entity required. The reason it doesn’t happen is because the protesters don’t in fact have a problem with the riots.
> But this also means if people are justly rioting all it takes is a single bad actor to throw a brick through a window in order to force everyone else to leave.
Leave, no. Move away from the vandalism, yes. If protesters did this instead of giving cover, the rioting would stop.
>It’s not hard to see when people are looting and move away.
If you're asking that everyone in viewing distance leave, I figure that'd be an area about 20 feet around. The vast majority of protestors are in that area, and cannot even see the rioting.
>The reason it doesn’t happen is because the protesters don’t in fact have a problem with the riots.
This is an oversimplification and a generalization. The logic doesn't even hold up in reality. There already are cops around the majority of large protests. There aren't looters freely destroying things beside them. Looters are separate from protests, they just get grouped together. Looters aren't all in close geographic distance of protests
> the protestors could leave the area where riots are happening, to make their intentions clear.
So a small group of three people breaking windows is enough to force 3,000 people to go home? Because I can think of people who would break windows at events they disagree with. There are
accusations that that occurred already during BLM protests.
> f riots are a “mistake”, then protestors should be admitting that,
"And I would be the first to say that I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the problem from a direct action point of view. I'm absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results. But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity."
- Dr. Martin Luthor King Jr, in a speech given at Grosse Pointe High School on March 14, 1968
EDIT: There is some legalism in OPs link which i am not qualified to criticize, however its dotted with claims which appear to be more general and that ignore hundreds of years of political science theory.
"Very few people defend rioting as a justified political action."
yes! i wanted to past the whole paragraph without elision and i didnt feel like specifically going into how it implies that for some reason Dr. King's speeches dont constitute academic development or that, futher, this ignores the last 200 years of marxist-leninist writing and discussion on the topic. But as i said in my edit, i don't think im qualified to discuss matters of legalism. Its just a little nuts, to my eyes, that someone can look at all of these people who developed their worldview at least partially by study and say "why is no one talking about this!"
Do you know what normative theorizing means? The article in its first few sentences addresses both the academic and non-academic discussion surrounding riots:
"Yet these defenders focus on riots' effectiveness rather than its legitimacy. They do not defend rioting on normative grounds. The lack of normative theorizing in academic scholarship about riots is even more striking."
Really urge people to follow the guidelines and comment on the actual thing posted, or not at all. We do not need to rehash every one's armchair moral theory whenever things like this come up. Your fear, or disgust, does not contribute to a possible fruitful discussion of these matters, and it is not the point of analyses like this. Riots are embedded into the history of social order, whether you like it or not. They are symptoms, they do not care about your principles or your personal moral fortitude. You can see them happen and be shocked or whatever, but it doesn't stop the fact that they happen, and at the end of the day it's just simply irrational to believe that this a moral issue first and foremost!
I think many of you need to take more literally MLK's point that they are "the language of the unheard."
The author doesn't really tackle "extra legal" (lawbreaking) so let me try.
If you see someone burn down a building or beat someone to death, your first thought is "Huh, that could be my home or me".
Thus violent acts tend to turn the population against rioters.
Defenders of rioters will usually say something like "but you have nothing to fear unless you are X!" but it's trivial to understand that rioting mobs are not rational, that they attack the wrong targets or the innocent. This is plain.
Violence against innocent people can not be just. Riots never act in a limited capacity, they are not controlled. They are like hand grenades which harm everyone around them regardless of allegiance.
>If you see someone burn down a building or beat someone to death, your first thought is "Huh, that could be my home or me".
So the exact same mentality that lead to the riots? When a member of your community is killed by the police wouldn't your first thought be "that could be me?" Same with when you hear about your neighbor starving, another frequent historical cause of rioting.
The difference is the available optiobs. People that don't riot as a response have some expectation that the establishment will help them.
I think you might have me confused with someone else! I do admit that last comment was snarky, but it has just been on my mind since last week when there was, in fact, a fire in a rental apartment building in my city, killing a bunch of people.
"rioting mobs are not rational, that they attack the wrong targets or the innocent."
This is true, and this alone makes justice incompatible with rioting, never mind the arrogance and viciousness of riotors. But even if the rioters did attack the "right" people, it would also not be licit for we would fall into vigilantism which puts the self-righteous vigilante in a state of war with the state by denying their moral right to govern and to stop him from carrying out acts of vigilantism.
A just riot is like saying a just mental breakdown. They happen for all kinds of reasons, typically stressors, but not always injustice. People have rioted because they've feared social change, political change, religious change, they've rioted because they've run out of bread, they've rioted due to systematic abuse and racism, and they've rioted because a black man and a white woman wanted to date.
Rioting should never be normative or just. Protest, direct action, striking, sure. But setting a random person's storefront on fire because you're unhappy with something completely unrelated is not just.
If rioting has to happen (and I would agree that it does), it should not be seen as normative or just. It should be seen as an extreme and unjust but necessary action to wake society up to a problem which must be dealt with. If it was considered just, that would be rationalizing the abuse of some members of society by others as a way for them to "vent" about their "injustice". Today the riot could be for civil rights, but tomorrow it'd be for white supremacists.
This article takes great pains to position its argument as "The Crowd" versus "The State". But it's not the state that is harmed by a riot, it's the people. The state is fine! They have a military and can defend themselves. But the innocent people who are the victims of riots can't defend themselves against either the crowd or the state. Some riots don't involve the state at all. Genocidal riots have happened within social groups without the intervention of the state time and again.
Which side of a riot is just? A racist riot and an anti-racist riot are still both riots; how do you tell which one is just? Your own personal morals are not a rational basis for justice, because somebody else's personal morals are going to throw your whole theory out of whack.
I am reading the book Blueprint for Revolution that advocates non-violent activism. In fact, non-violence has to be a core value of your group and you have to actively enforce it among your members. It's often said that violent protest are needed because change happens too slow. The book argues that violence is counterproductive and will only slow down whatever you want to achieve.
Often times, authoritarian regimes actively provoke a violent response or plant infiltrators. Instead of being seen as a reasonable group of people with a just cause, you will be painted as rioters, thieves, and terrorists who are stealing for your own benefit or are bribed by foreign forces.
A lot of people immediately switched from in-between to oppose, and they steadily kept losing support for almost a year and a half, the decline only stopping around this past October. Net support is back to where it was in mid-2018.
BLM and "Defund the Police" are interesting examples of really ineffective activism.
First of all, the demands are too vague. You want to be as concrete as possible with your demands. Get small victories and take baby steps towards your goal.
Secondly, you have to paint a better vision of the future. Just campaigning "Down with the dictator!" doesn't work. Most people have a job and a family to feed. Even if life sucks it's kinda stable and they don't want a civil war and chaos. You need to give a plan or vision of how everything can be 10 times better. That's why campaigning Defund the Police doesn't work, because then what? What's the plan? Chaos? All the riots in the background don't help either.
An example of a better campaign could be to demand longer police training. US police trains for 6 months, while their European counterparts train for 3 years. I think most people don't even know the extend of how undertrained US police is. It's a campaign everyone can stand behind. Left and right. Who doesn't want better police? Even the police want better police. It's not even explicit anti-racist, but it would save many black lives. It's an easy victory you can take towards a bigger goal.
In the popular culture, people usually say that St. Augustine came up with the "just war" stuff. Anybody who actually read him though, he was a lot more into delegitimizing state power. State power he didn't like (rather than all state power). I would put him square into the "just riot" section.
"Without justice, what else is the State but a great band of robbers?"
St. Augustine.
>Very few people defend rioting as a justified political action.
I'll do it.
All political riots are just. The answer is if the rioters will gain anything.
The primary thing that government represents is a monopoly on violence. When violence is an option, society doesn't function.
Their entire goal is to stop any and all violence. Military is about stopping violence outside the borders. Many levels of 'law enforcement' to stop violence inside the borders.
A riot signifies the fall of said government. Their obligation is to stop the riot and violence but failure to do so means they must address.
Minneapolis is a great example here. Stores were on fire by rioters. When george floyd died on video, the current government fell. They were unable to stop violence and therefore no longer represented the people. They however said lots of things like defund the police. However, the government in which ends the violence will be the new government. Minneapolis justly is in anarchy right now. The recent election is not real. Aboliting the police didnt even pass. If it did, they wouldn't even have a small chance of ever reforming the government.
The justice is that clearly the police force in minneapolis is racist and is very clearly commit police brutality. Said government that allows if not encourages this behaviour must fall. Trust is the police force doesn't exist.
This guy is the mayor just about as much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Guaid%C3%B3 is president of venezuela. He's not. In fact the longer than Jacob Frey pretends to be mayor, the worse it becomes for minneapolis. The irony of it all, the rioters dont understand any of the above. They called for defunding of the police but have achieved nothing.
If these rioters understood this and adjusted their worthless tactics of forming their own law enforcement and displace the current government. March all your people up to the capital and take ownership over the municipality. The current police can't do anything at all to prevent this.
This has interesting implications for the events of the past 2 years in general given how little power any of the levels of Government had to prevent protests from interrupting their exercise of power and monopoly on force.
>This has interesting implications for the events of the past 2 years in general given how little power any of the levels of Government had to prevent protests from interrupting their exercise of power and monopoly on force.
Part of why so many people disbelieve Covid is because there was massive protests worldwide. Yellow vests in France, Farmers in the Netherlands and india, BLM in USA. But most relevant...
China marched in and took over Hong Kong. They'll never have another free election. The coincidence that COVID leaked out of a lab at basically the same time is pretty improbable.
There is no theory for a just riot, because riots are never just. Substitute "terrorism" for "riot" and see where the reasoning takes you. Break it down to an individual level: I need money, so I'm justified in robbing a bank.
Just because terrorism and riots result in political gains, it is not a justification. Robbing banks makes me rich, but that is not a justification.
The whole point of a democratic system is to redress grievances. Mob violence destroys democracy. We have a system of laws. If you go outside that system, it is criminal and immoral.
Never? I’ll give you a just riot: Stonewall (thus the slogan, “Stonewall was a riot.”)
There was a democratic system at the time of Stonewall, and it had rendered its verdict: It is good for the police to rough up gays, actually. They’re deviants anyway (we trust the word of the police on this one) and it will discourage young people from becoming gay.
So the “just choice” at the time, if you were gay, was to get beat up periodically by the police, and take it, apparently.
So the gays at Stonewall said “no” to this and rioted. And it was a unquestionably a net positive.
They did something that reads as shocking even now: they answered the authorized agents of the state, the police, doing their democratically approved work to arrest gays at bars, with violence. “This is not a drill, we are going to fuck you up.”
And it was one of the best things the activists (or “terrorists”) of the gay rights movement ever did.
This theory is important because, without it, we have no way to explain why the gays at Stonewall were right to riot, and really should have done it even earlier. But if you agree it was good for them to riot and create a milestone & a turning point in the progress of the gay rights movement, then a theory like this is good also.
> Never? I’ll give you a just riot: Stonewall (thus the slogan, “Stonewall was a riot.”)
Stonewall riots didn't burn down random homes or cars, they just attacked the police. That is the difference. If gay people started burning down random homes and cars I'm sure people wouldn't call them just.
>There is no theory for a just riot, because riots are never just. Substitute "terrorism" for "riot" and see where the reasoning takes you.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. America's independence was fomented by terrorists, who have only been legitimized due to the structural power America eventually acquired. To say "rioting is like terrorism-- they're both never just" is just insufficient. If we believe that, we should be against America as a whole
> One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
> To say "rioting is like terrorism-- they're both never just" is just insufficient.
From my point of view, It looks like you claim one thing here and then turn around and say your own claim is insufficient.
In order to justify a riot, everyone would have to have some set of agreed upon requirements (rights), an agreed upon process for change (legal system), and an agreed upon failure mode (How can we tell the legal system failed to provide the rights so that rioting is valid). The US has some agreed upon failure modes, but as far as I can tell, most riots are not about those directly, so they are essentially responding to an un-agreed upon failure mode. That doesn't necessarily mean it's not worth rioting for, but how could one justify it?
An in progress riot can never be truly justified to every observer, because only the ends can justify them happening. Sometimes the process fails and the populous, or a portion of, must riot to have some form of control, but that doesn't mean one is able to justify it while in progress.
But maybe the issue is defining what it mean to be just or to justify something in this context. How I see it, many of these things are just a power struggles, and justness doesn't exist for such things. Justness is a man-made concept and requires man-made prerequisites to compare it to.
I don't think these are equivalent arguments. Terrorism by definition seeks to incite terror in the population. The American rebellion was a rebellion of the people. Americans weren't rioting either, running around and destroying their own things with no rhyme or reason. Destruction was tactical and strategic because it was a war.
>The whole point of a democratic system is to redress grievances.
God, this is the entire point of decades of research, but, what do you do when the system either will not work for you, or is actively structured to ensure that it cannot work for you? What then?
Perhaps the point is that, once you get out the nooses and guillotines and start lining partisans up against the wall, you're no longer participating in a legitimate, democratic process.
In the oft-quoted "Tree of liberty" letter written by Thomas Jefferson regarding Shay's Rebellion[0], he condemned the actual violence as being born in ignorance and considered it the result of the failure of government to properly "set them right to facts, pardon and pacify them" - even as he praised the spirit which led to it.
Revolution against tyranny is, itself, an act of tyranny (often of a population against itself) and while the ends may be considered justifiable (and always are by the revolutionaries) the means often are not.
> what do you do when the system either will not work for you, or is actively structured to ensure that it cannot work for you?
Purely anecdotally, I emigrated from the US specifically because the US's labor laws were blocking a potential opportunity for me. I admittedly was in a position where I could move so this was more a "opportunity to better opportunity" rather than "no opportunity to... wait, I don't have the opportunity to go anywhere" situation, but this experience made me very pro-immigration/emigration. If the laws of one place are unsuitable and the system is structured in such a way as to make changing that infeasible, then people should be as free as possible to go where they are more suitable or where change is more feasible.
But yet we teach our kids about the Boston Tea party, which was essentially a riot, but that one was justified. The revolution was one big riot. Its not so black and white.
What you're saying is that your society has reached such a high level of perfection in its democratic system that you can't conceive a just reason to riot.
If someone specific is oppressing or destroying your property or life, then you have just cause to go to war with them, but not riot and cause collateral damage to your fellow citizens.
"Just war" is a targeted, purposeful, organized thing, and it is not to be taken lightly.
Rioting is random destruction of fellow citizens' property or life because of generalized hatred.
>"Just war" is a targeted, purposeful, organized thing, and it is not to be taken lightly.
>Rioting is random destruction of fellow citizens' property or life because of generalized hatred.
I'm not saying you're wrong per se, but making an observation; this means the state has a monopoly on violence, including on unjust violence(ex when individuals break the rules during just wars, which can be used as an excuse to allow unjust actions). I think there are some flaws to that argument, and following that logic to the beginning of America's independence leads one to view America as an unjust state
I see what you mean; I badly worded that. I meant more that any group of individuals could get together to decide to wage war and that the state doesn't have a monopoly on violence per se.
The article is good but I think it makes a simple category error. There is quite a lot of theorizing concerning the justification of extra-legal violence. Riots, though, are characterized by their aimlessnessness. When rioters do discriminate in who they attack and what they destroy we don't call them rioters and we are generally more open to the idea that their actions may be justified.
On Violence (Hannah Arendt), which is cited in the article, is a good discussion. In '67 there was an interesting public discussion with Arendt, Chomsky, and others titled "The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act?" We tend to think that we're living in tense times but the 60s and 70s were more tense with more politial violence.
There are some great pieces written on this. The author is just in an academic bubble. If you go to a riotous situation on the ground you will encounter people spreading and handing out plenty of free literature espousing the views the rioters hold about their activities. It is a common topic of discussion and formalization, just not in an academic context generally. One example I saw that was particularly interesting is [0].
It is very much a topic within far-left circles, the issue is rather that there are very few far-left circles in anglo-saxon academia due to a lack of interest in the subject matter by the people funding the universities there. That said, both of the articles are interesting reads, but assume lots of premises as true without exploring them further. A unified theory doesn't exist as far as I know.
Let's go through the article's table w.r.t. the ultra letter:
Freedom preserving, Equality promoting - Indeed, he is overthrowing the elites
Voices of the unheard, Conditions of a polity's most disadvantaged - Indeed, according to his economic overview, he is quite poor and marginalized
Basic liberal democratic framework (life, liberty, property) - he frames this as not being able to buy a house, and the elites owning everything, so in some sense yes, this is about the distribution of property
Inability to seek redress through parliamentary procedures - Yes, the political parties are "fundamentally corrupt" and activism is "rigged". Although, he doesn't mention ever actually calling his representatives.
Unjust law - he is contesting capitalism, so in some sense yes
Unjust dispersal order - he says the riots are the "excuse" for authorities, so yes, presumably there is some suppression going on
Crowd behavior, Legitimate targets, Proportionality - unclear, he talks about riots in general rather than specific riots. But going off of William Gillis's article these are chosen after "careful deliberation", so there is some form of self-policing going on.
So the conclusion I get is that Havercroft's article is essentially pro-riot, although there is a lot of waffling.
People get upset about riots because they don’t live up to the standards we set for the legal system: orderly, hierarchical, governed by a clear set of rules, ie due process.
A “just riot”, if we are to accept there can accept there is such a thing, would be unlikely to take the form of the established legal system, as its source is entirely outside of said system; if there were an avenue for redress within the legal system, how could it be just to riot? Riots only make sense when there is a clear failure within the legal system to deliver justice.
Wars (just or otherwise) are almost always fought "over there". "Our" military may be involved, but "our" property generally is not (assuming we win).
Riots happen "here", and destroy "our" property.
Political/philosophical justifications for things generally support the interests of the property owning classes, because that's how the money reaches those who get to spend their time thinking about such things and then distributing their ideas.
This essay is a thought-provoking read, because it critically analyzes riots by their characteristics and compatibility with classic Western political thought.
It comes very close to making the assertion that once a demonstration attains 'crowd' characteristics, while that crowd may attempt to self-police, the crowd lacks the ability to effectively and rapidly restrain and disavow actors in the crowd or nearby who escalate the level of violence. Lacking any ability to distinguish the faction affiliation of orderly protesters vs. rioters at the same event, the public will readily attribute any violence committed in the same spatial and temporal context to the protest's organizers.
In my view, this specific risk makes riots an ineffective political tool: once the well-targeted violence begins, it's far too easy for its narrative to be hijacked by hot-blooded people or opportunistic agitators amidst the chaos. If poorly-targeted disorder materializes, the riot loses legitimacy with outgroups, and battle lines are drawn along faction lines.
In contrast, riots can be effective tools of terror and/or revolution. After a successful revolution, the victors often expend considerable effort to justify their actions, as the new order must be seen as normal for it to last and not be perceived as an aberration. (New regimes in coup-prone regions don't bother, because there is no expectation that the regime won't be deposed by another coup later.)
With these risks, why would anyone organize anything but the most carefully branded peaceful protest? With clear leaders, coordinators, security, video cameras, and sophisticated media relations, and ideally vetting and uniforms. Careless assembly is a recipe for hurting the stated cause, unless the goal is martyrdom or victory through superior force.
Haven't read this, but I am a little suspicious already - I am pretty sure I have read theories of just riots - but maybe they're just not produced and published in mainstream academia.
Such theories will most likely be produced by the sort of anarchists who may very well eschew academic publishing.
The basic question is interesting, but much of the discussion about riots has an aggressive political framing. Many riots are triggered by wins or losses at prominent sports contests. Also, Stonewall was a riot with a particularly long lasting effect and different dynamics from many others. People in drag humiliating police was a big part of it and property damage was minimal.
Consider this recollection of a riot in 1994:
Having just lived through the hockey riots in Vancouver (the worst mob
action Western Canada has ever seen), it makes me fear not beer-swilling
heteros but the socio-economic system of apartheid they live under. If you
think that makes me an armchair socialist, that's your opinion.
By the way, just talk to a cute 20-year-old rioter who got cruised by a
26-year-old riot squad cop in the middle of the riot. The cop literally
sheltered him with his shield, accompanied him to his car, and gave the kid
his phone number!
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...."
Honestly this is why political discussions are pointless. People can justify literally any behavior if it's for a cause they believe in. Consistent moral principles are only of interest to the philosophers.
> Who decides which is just between left and right wing riots?
The media tries to shape public perception of riots/lawlessness. Compare left vs right media on left vs. right protests/riots. Each will paint the other as domestic terrorists and each will attempt to downplay/justify the actions of their own.
The Right needs to read up on this and take it into account. People on the right generally do not riot or loot (1/6/21 is an outlier), as it goes against a tendency to uphold law and order, and from a recognition that individuals and businesses (many privately owned, and many of them struggling) are the actual victims. However, if it really is an effective tool for gaining a political advantage, it should be considered in that light.
One of the biggest issues with it being adopted by the Right, however, is that the press will cover it very differently than when political violence comes from the Left, due to predominant biases in the media. Perception is reality in terms of public opinion. If a riot is meant to persuade opinion, but is re-framed and re-shaped by media, then it can do more harm than good.
