6 ms·

Riots and Political Theory: A Reading List

83 points by samgilb 6y ago

andonisus 6y ago
The problem with riots is they often get co-opted by actors whose goals are not in alignment with the goal of the original rioters. Also, there isn't usually a singular person, group, or entity who will take responsibility of the riots and say "We are rioting for XYZ reasons". Contrast this with peaceful protests, where the reasons for and goals of the protests are laid bare by its leaders. They are, in turn, able to promote their cause and have their grievances aired to the public at large. Finally, the destructive nature of riots poison the public perception of the rioters and their reasons, regardless of whatever just causes the rioters might have for their actions.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  I'm in agreement with the co-option risk. Keep in mind that coption (or corruption) holds true for all tools of power. Regulation (capture). Legislation, executive, judiciary and bureaucracy (bribery, lobbying, special interests, nepotism, blackmail, ...). The press. Police and military. Taxes. Fines. Investigations (surveillance). Treaties. Emotions (fear, anger, guilt, embarrassment). Attention. Religion. Culture. Language. Narrative. Buildings, roads, ports, railroads, walls, canals, and tunnels. Bulldozers. Guns and stilettos. Bread and circuses. War. Peace. Literally everything. This doesn't make all of these bad, or mean they're never useful. But tools of power are useful because they do have effect, and can be used for both good and ill. The trick is seeing the tools are used for good.
recursivedoubts 6y ago
There definitely is an informal and growing consensus on just riot theory. I hypothesize that the treatment of riots by liberal (classical sense) scholars has been based on their rationalistic optimism and a belief that domestic political problems can be solved non-violently. If they can't, that throws the entire liberal (classical sense) project into question, and opens exhilarating, dangerous doors on both the left and right. I personally hope that the view that violent riots are illegitimate wins out, but I am not planning my life around that hope. Addendum: I should note that, if one were opposed to the liberal (classical sense) project, the encouragement of riots (regardless of them being left or right) would be an excellent strategy.
- hirundo 6y ago
  > If they can't, that throws the entire liberal (classical sense) project into question, and opens exhilarating, dangerous doors on both the left and right. Only if they _can_ be solved with violence. I'd argue that even if a particular issue can be solved with violence, the net result will generally be worse than the status quo as the violence will rarely be limited to such issues. I'd think that for an undirected mob, violence that was a net beneficial effect would be even more rare than violence by a well regulated army. E.g. U.S. military violence during WWII was arguably a net benefit. What would be an example of mob violence that led to a net benefit?
  - nordsieck 6y ago
    > I'd think that for an undirected mob, violence that was a net beneficial effect would be even more rare than violence by a well regulated army. For the mob? I think looting is a pretty easy example.
    - ultramundane8 6y ago
      The net beneficial effect mentioned refers to some kind of societal net benefit. The sentence doesn't stand independently from the rest of the post.
  - moate 6y ago
    What about a lynch mob murdering a violent criminal (I'm specifically thinking of a pedophile because culturally that's one of the 'worst') who got off due to a technicality? How is that not a small scale version of state violence? Society has a problem that was unable to be solved through normal, peaceful ways, so violence needed to happen. Also, just throwing this out there for people in the back who seem to forget: You cannot commit violence on things. You can't murder a building, or a car, or a city. Only the people who may be inside those things at the time. They're objects and in a riot become symbols ("we destroy the rich by destroying what makes them rich") but they're not people. A riot can be destructive without being violent.
    - 6y ago
phnofive 6y ago
> Riots are extra-public because crowds riot rather than institutionalized groups such as parties or social movements. Riots are extra-state because they violate the state’s monopoly on violence. Riots are extra-legal because they are a form of unlawful assembly. Riots are extra-Parliamentary because they operate outside of the normal legislative process. Then, by definition, a riot won’t have a durable justification, since its goals are fluid, it uses extraordinary methods, has no accountable leadership, and doesn’t seek enduring change.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Which I think is pretty fair. There's always bad actors who try to justify riots, but almost everyone agrees that they're bad - the "pro-riot" side of a discussion is usually along the lines of "you know, a violent crackdown just isn't going to work, so we'd better do suchandsuch or they'll keep on being angry".
  - packetlost 6y ago
    I think you'd be surprised at how many (particularly young) people and leadership from organizations either refuse to denounce or outright condone rioting.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Refusal to denounce rioting can be problematic, but I'm not comfortable equating it with support. If people came by demanding that I denounce some random riot, I wouldn't do it, not because I'm pro-riot but because I reject the implication that the rioters have anything to do with me. I've been quite surprised seeing how many people will condone rioting, but I'm still confident it's a small minority, shrinking to a barely existent minority for riots which can't plausibly be spun as honest protests.
      - packetlost 6y ago
        Refusing to denounce rioting is almost always paired with something along the lines of "rioting is the language of the unheard" or "our organizations will not denounce any black person’s display of grief and/or rage", as is the literal case with one of the organizations from my hometown [0]. I cannot see that as anything but support. But trying to justify actions, you are, by definition, supporting those actions. To be clear, it's the justification, not refusing to denounce. [0]: https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/madison-protest-organizers-defend-vandalism-as-contributions-to-liberation/article_2815e2cd-02fa-5413-a2d9-416de5f2d94e.html https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/madison-...
Causality1 6y ago
Riots are also non-specific. The violence directed toward the "enemy" of the riot is at best a large fraction of the riot's violence. The rest is directed simply at its surroundings. The stores big and small, nearby homes, anyone who happens to be walking by and fitting the wrong description. You can't do that and be just. A "just riot" would be an attack directed against a specific entity and people would label it a terrorist attack or mob violence, not a riot.
staticautomatic 6y ago
I’d add to this list Riots and Pogroms by Paul Brass and Among the Thugs by Bill Burford.
betaby 6y ago
In places where information distribution monopolized by ruling class riots are the only method to signal disagreement to both a) ruling class and b) other non-ruling people.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/89101-those-who-make-peaceful-revolution-impossible-will-make-violent-revolution https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/89101-those-who-make-peacef...
maedla 6y ago
Riots helped bring about the American Revolution!
motohagiography 6y ago
One reason thinkers usually place riots outside the discourse is because they are an artificial spectacle, and which are necessarily tolerated by a faction in the establishment who could easily suppress them with violence, but they don't because the effect of the riots supports their strategy for change in their institution. Situationism, and anarchist ideas like "the propaganda of the deed" covered rioting from a more earnest perspective, but in watching movements and protests for a couple of decades, there is always someone within the establishment in whose interest it is to tolerate rioting. This also explains the regular use of police provocateurs to break up peaceful protests by manufacturing riots, and instead of mere explanatory power, you can use it to predict how long an establishment will tolerate a spate of rioting. It's a ritualized performance and a spectacle.
op03 6y ago
Shouldn't it be easy thanks to Zuckerberg and Co to profile the Personality Trait distributions of any assembling group? I mean given what marketing teams are able to do these days, in real time, I think any bunch of Violent Trait holders assembling anywhere will be straight forward to identify. Anyways alternative reading list for the non-violent crowd - Gandhi specifically the Champran Agitation, the Rowlatt Act(non-coop movement), and then the Salt march. What I liked about it is he didn't react to an issue by just giving speeches, blaming anyone or mindlessly protesting. He would go to the site of the issue with qualified people and work the problem. Gain support through those actions, across all kinds of social, cultural, religious, linguistic boundaries, no one thought possible. And that would freak out the powers that be for whom divide and conquer is the default method of clinging to power. Nothing freaks them out more than when 2 groups that dont get along march together. And thats when they start making compromises.
ke7in 6y ago
As with any destructive force, rioting is not a sustainable state of being. It is a blunt object to signal "Things are not okay" from societies whose frustration boils over in trying to achieve change through more articulate language. Rioting rarely affects change in the systems in the direction desired, as its methods are misaligned with desirable, sustainable values. Thus, it allows ruling classes to paint a harsh narrative of the rioters - leading in many cases to greater inequality and worse conditions. Riot theory seems like an interesting starting point to understand the socioeconomic climate in America today. A dialogue from which would naturally lend itself to survey the options that members of a community have in articulating opinions and criticisms of the systems they live within. Note: I haven't had the chance yet to read the articles linked by Mr Havercroft, but look forward to doing so.
jetzzz 6y ago
A lot of people in this thread seem to have some false dichotomy in their mind - either you are peacefully protesting or you are rioting by burning random cars and destroying uninvolved storefronts. There is another option: peacefully protest but try to occupy administrative buildings and only use violence as a response to police violence. This is what happened in many post-USSR countries in the so called "colour revolutions", Euromaidan, etc. In particular in Euromaidan there were heavy clashes with police, but no destruction of private property (at least not deliberately by protesters). Police cars were burned, paving stone, garbage bins, etc were used for fighting/barricades, but this doesn't hurt anyone in particular the way destroyed car or store would. Meanwhile in US/Western Europe riots are for some reason seem to be directed not at government and police but at uninvolved car/store owners.
- mc32 6y ago
  My guess is that in Eastern Europe because private business was rare and was an exception and somewhat counterrevolutionary it was seen as part of them of their estate. In the West people who see business as part of the problem of wealth disparity see business as anathema to their promiseland where the community is everything and private enterprise is a vestige of capitalism so it has to go down for participating. Except that’s only the view of radicals and the normal people protesting and not protesting see a problem in that since they do not believe the whole system is bad, but rather needs some reform. In more concise terms in the East they were fighting to get capitalism, in the West some fight to defeat capitalism.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  There's also a false dichotomy between peaceful and violent. There are non-violent, non-peaceful protests where protesters are noisy, block traffic, etc. Many of the speakers I've heard have expanded on the phrase "No Justice, No Peace" to describe how they'd like their protests to be remembered not as peaceful, but as non-violent. One speaker I recall saying, "This is a peaceful protest! Wait, no no, it's not that. It's a non-violent protest! We're here because if there is no justice, then there is no peace."
- grasshopperpurp 6y ago
  >Meanwhile in US/Western Europe riots are for some reason seem to be directed not at government and police but at uninvolved car/store owners. Makes it seem like those rioters have different - maybe opposite - motivations than the protesters.
082349872349872 6y ago
Rumsfeld's contribution to Riot Theory: > "While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime, ... I don't think there's anyone in any of those pictures ... [who wouldn't] accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom." https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2003/04/11/Rumsfeld-Looting-is-transition-to-freedom/63821050097983/ https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2003/04/11/Rumsfeld-Looting...
acephal 6y ago
I'm very very surprised that the number one parallel has yet to ever be mentioned in these kinds of discussions: the 2005 Paris riots. French police were held responsible for the deaths of North African teenagers and riots broke out all over suburban Paris that caused waaay more property damage than anything we've seen in America this summer. French media framed the entire issue as brown people showing their true colors by not posing any 'coherent' message to French political establishment, eg. no slogans or demands. French politics sense has drifted further Rightward, further edifying the French political ideal that if you wanna live in France you better play by our rules (same thing in Germany where you have to pass a cultural test to gain citizenship, imagine such a thing in America! [And no, answering questions about the constitution, the foundational legal document, is not the same thing]).
- rayiner 6y ago
  > (same thing in Germany where you have to pass a cultural test to gain citizenship, imagine such a thing in America! [And no, answering questions about the constitution, the foundational legal document, is not the same thing]). I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I kind of like that we're more liberal than Germany or France on this. I don't like how liberals in the U.S. fail to appreciate that fact and think the U.S. is super racist and xenophobic. (I guess if they're comparing against a platonic ideal.)
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    What does liberal mean? Surely it depends what's on the test - "culture" could mean anything. Take a liberal policy (no guns, no death penalty etc) - now test people who fail to adopt those cultural values; are you less liberal for testing people, or more liberal for testing them on liberal values? Seems like one word is being used to describe multivariate dimensions. In this case the opposite of not having these kinds of tests are racism/xenophobia, because you implied not having them would be a counterpoint to such a reputation. TBH, I think people cling too much to ideals and maxims to avoid the complexity of reality, then something happens, reality catches up, the maxim weakens, and the pendulum swings the other way. It's easily possible to be too (or naively) liberal, there are many examples of this e.g the existence of an Italian mafia dismissed as anti-migrant xenophobia - until the FBI proved they existed; anyone who dismisses such issues as "price worth paying (for liberty)" has no plan, and quickly find many of their countrymen disagree. The truth is, culture needs to adapt to environment, and if society doesn't do that by conscious design, it'll happen anyway through social economics. The truth is, multiculturalism is a massive generalisation over "cultures" that suggests we might all get along, if X, and without losing individual group cultural identity - truth is, not all cultures are alike, not all values are beneficial, and even the multiculturalism has implicit maxims that make it a kind of culture in itself; How can you tolerate the intolerant? How can you promote freedom, and avoid Eurocentrism, if freedom is a Eurocentric value (or at least, the source of you definition of "freedom").
lurker5000 6y ago
If you are interested in hearing an on-the-ground perspective to accompany the theory, you could do worse than watch this. NSFW language. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Kimberly Jones, "How Can We Win". Excellent.
devnull255 6y ago
This is a fantastic article and reading list. I'm disappointed at how so much of the discussion around the most recent rioting has devolved to being pro-protest vs anti-rioting. The riots, like the spread of the pandemic are symptoms of wide-spread, systemic failures in our social, political and economic institutions. The psychologist Stephen Pinker, has pointed out that violence itself is a tool of last resort in the human toolkit. The violence of rioters is mostly spontaneous and fueled by anger, flamethrowers and sledge hammers directed at objects belonging to a system they feel has not responded to their needs or concerns. The fact that violence is not the best tool for the job is irrelevant by this point. Cooler, smarter and more sympathetic heads should actually focus more on what triggered the riots and determine the changes that are necessary to remediate legitimate grievances and hopefully prevent the recurrence of such failures. The reading list offers an excellent beginning for that. Discussing the efficacy and justification for rioting probably doesn't.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > determine the changes that are necessary to remediate legitimate grievances Except that the grievances don't appear to be that legitimate and the changes that would be necessary don't appear to be too popular with the majority of the population. Capitulating to a violent mob out of fear of further violence surrenders control from the democratic process to escalating barbarism.
  - devnull255 6y ago
    Well, one particular grievance among them, that a person passing off a counterfeit 20-dollar bill doesn't deserve death at the hands of police, probably is legitimate. Choosing to remediate that injustice is not capitulation to the mob, but fulfillment of the promise of equal protection under the law that the democratic process was supposed to protect.

83 points by samgilb 6y ago

The problem with riots is they often get co-opted by actors whose goals are not in alignment with the goal of the original rioters. Also, there isn't usually a singular person, group, or entity who will take responsibility of the riots and say "We are rioting for XYZ reasons". Contrast this with peaceful protests, where the reasons for and goals of the protests are laid bare by its leaders. They are, in turn, able to promote their cause and have their grievances aired to the public at large. Finally, the destructive nature of riots poison the public perception of the rioters and their reasons, regardless of whatever just causes the rioters might have for their actions.

dredmorbius 6y ago
I'm in agreement with the co-option risk. Keep in mind that coption (or corruption) holds true for all tools of power. Regulation (capture). Legislation, executive, judiciary and bureaucracy (bribery, lobbying, special interests, nepotism, blackmail, ...). The press. Police and military. Taxes. Fines. Investigations (surveillance). Treaties. Emotions (fear, anger, guilt, embarrassment). Attention. Religion. Culture. Language. Narrative. Buildings, roads, ports, railroads, walls, canals, and tunnels. Bulldozers. Guns and stilettos. Bread and circuses. War. Peace. Literally everything. This doesn't make all of these bad, or mean they're never useful. But tools of power are useful because they do have effect, and can be used for both good and ill. The trick is seeing the tools are used for good.

recursivedoubts 6y ago

There definitely is an informal and growing consensus on just riot theory. I hypothesize that the treatment of riots by liberal (classical sense) scholars has been based on their rationalistic optimism and a belief that domestic political problems can be solved non-violently. If they can't, that throws the entire liberal (classical sense) project into question, and opens exhilarating, dangerous doors on both the left and right. I personally hope that the view that violent riots are illegitimate wins out, but I am not planning my life around that hope. Addendum: I should note that, if one were opposed to the liberal (classical sense) project, the encouragement of riots (regardless of them being left or right) would be an excellent strategy.

hirundo 6y ago
> If they can't, that throws the entire liberal (classical sense) project into question, and opens exhilarating, dangerous doors on both the left and right. Only if they _can_ be solved with violence. I'd argue that even if a particular issue can be solved with violence, the net result will generally be worse than the status quo as the violence will rarely be limited to such issues. I'd think that for an undirected mob, violence that was a net beneficial effect would be even more rare than violence by a well regulated army. E.g. U.S. military violence during WWII was arguably a net benefit. What would be an example of mob violence that led to a net benefit?
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > I'd think that for an undirected mob, violence that was a net beneficial effect would be even more rare than violence by a well regulated army. For the mob? I think looting is a pretty easy example.
  - ultramundane8 6y ago
    The net beneficial effect mentioned refers to some kind of societal net benefit. The sentence doesn't stand independently from the rest of the post.
- moate 6y ago
  What about a lynch mob murdering a violent criminal (I'm specifically thinking of a pedophile because culturally that's one of the 'worst') who got off due to a technicality? How is that not a small scale version of state violence? Society has a problem that was unable to be solved through normal, peaceful ways, so violence needed to happen. Also, just throwing this out there for people in the back who seem to forget: You cannot commit violence on things. You can't murder a building, or a car, or a city. Only the people who may be inside those things at the time. They're objects and in a riot become symbols ("we destroy the rich by destroying what makes them rich") but they're not people. A riot can be destructive without being violent.
  - 6y ago

phnofive 6y ago

> Riots are extra-public because crowds riot rather than institutionalized groups such as parties or social movements. Riots are extra-state because they violate the state’s monopoly on violence. Riots are extra-legal because they are a form of unlawful assembly. Riots are extra-Parliamentary because they operate outside of the normal legislative process. Then, by definition, a riot won’t have a durable justification, since its goals are fluid, it uses extraordinary methods, has no accountable leadership, and doesn’t seek enduring change.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Which I think is pretty fair. There's always bad actors who try to justify riots, but almost everyone agrees that they're bad - the "pro-riot" side of a discussion is usually along the lines of "you know, a violent crackdown just isn't going to work, so we'd better do suchandsuch or they'll keep on being angry".
- packetlost 6y ago
  I think you'd be surprised at how many (particularly young) people and leadership from organizations either refuse to denounce or outright condone rioting.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Refusal to denounce rioting can be problematic, but I'm not comfortable equating it with support. If people came by demanding that I denounce some random riot, I wouldn't do it, not because I'm pro-riot but because I reject the implication that the rioters have anything to do with me. I've been quite surprised seeing how many people will condone rioting, but I'm still confident it's a small minority, shrinking to a barely existent minority for riots which can't plausibly be spun as honest protests.
    - packetlost 6y ago
      Refusing to denounce rioting is almost always paired with something along the lines of "rioting is the language of the unheard" or "our organizations will not denounce any black person’s display of grief and/or rage", as is the literal case with one of the organizations from my hometown [0]. I cannot see that as anything but support. But trying to justify actions, you are, by definition, supporting those actions. To be clear, it's the justification, not refusing to denounce. [0]: https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/madison-protest-organizers-defend-vandalism-as-contributions-to-liberation/article_2815e2cd-02fa-5413-a2d9-416de5f2d94e.html https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/madison-...

Causality1 6y ago

Riots are also non-specific. The violence directed toward the "enemy" of the riot is at best a large fraction of the riot's violence. The rest is directed simply at its surroundings. The stores big and small, nearby homes, anyone who happens to be walking by and fitting the wrong description. You can't do that and be just. A "just riot" would be an attack directed against a specific entity and people would label it a terrorist attack or mob violence, not a riot.

staticautomatic 6y ago

I’d add to this list Riots and Pogroms by Paul Brass and Among the Thugs by Bill Burford.

betaby 6y ago

In places where information distribution monopolized by ruling class riots are the only method to signal disagreement to both a) ruling class and b) other non-ruling people.

dredmorbius 6y ago
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/89101-those-who-make-peaceful-revolution-impossible-will-make-violent-revolution https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/89101-those-who-make-peacef...

maedla 6y ago

Riots helped bring about the American Revolution!

motohagiography 6y ago

One reason thinkers usually place riots outside the discourse is because they are an artificial spectacle, and which are necessarily tolerated by a faction in the establishment who could easily suppress them with violence, but they don't because the effect of the riots supports their strategy for change in their institution. Situationism, and anarchist ideas like "the propaganda of the deed" covered rioting from a more earnest perspective, but in watching movements and protests for a couple of decades, there is always someone within the establishment in whose interest it is to tolerate rioting. This also explains the regular use of police provocateurs to break up peaceful protests by manufacturing riots, and instead of mere explanatory power, you can use it to predict how long an establishment will tolerate a spate of rioting. It's a ritualized performance and a spectacle.

op03 6y ago

Shouldn't it be easy thanks to Zuckerberg and Co to profile the Personality Trait distributions of any assembling group? I mean given what marketing teams are able to do these days, in real time, I think any bunch of Violent Trait holders assembling anywhere will be straight forward to identify. Anyways alternative reading list for the non-violent crowd - Gandhi specifically the Champran Agitation, the Rowlatt Act(non-coop movement), and then the Salt march. What I liked about it is he didn't react to an issue by just giving speeches, blaming anyone or mindlessly protesting. He would go to the site of the issue with qualified people and work the problem. Gain support through those actions, across all kinds of social, cultural, religious, linguistic boundaries, no one thought possible. And that would freak out the powers that be for whom divide and conquer is the default method of clinging to power. Nothing freaks them out more than when 2 groups that dont get along march together. And thats when they start making compromises.

ke7in 6y ago

As with any destructive force, rioting is not a sustainable state of being. It is a blunt object to signal "Things are not okay" from societies whose frustration boils over in trying to achieve change through more articulate language. Rioting rarely affects change in the systems in the direction desired, as its methods are misaligned with desirable, sustainable values. Thus, it allows ruling classes to paint a harsh narrative of the rioters - leading in many cases to greater inequality and worse conditions. Riot theory seems like an interesting starting point to understand the socioeconomic climate in America today. A dialogue from which would naturally lend itself to survey the options that members of a community have in articulating opinions and criticisms of the systems they live within. Note: I haven't had the chance yet to read the articles linked by Mr Havercroft, but look forward to doing so.

jetzzz 6y ago

A lot of people in this thread seem to have some false dichotomy in their mind - either you are peacefully protesting or you are rioting by burning random cars and destroying uninvolved storefronts. There is another option: peacefully protest but try to occupy administrative buildings and only use violence as a response to police violence. This is what happened in many post-USSR countries in the so called "colour revolutions", Euromaidan, etc. In particular in Euromaidan there were heavy clashes with police, but no destruction of private property (at least not deliberately by protesters). Police cars were burned, paving stone, garbage bins, etc were used for fighting/barricades, but this doesn't hurt anyone in particular the way destroyed car or store would. Meanwhile in US/Western Europe riots are for some reason seem to be directed not at government and police but at uninvolved car/store owners.

mc32 6y ago
My guess is that in Eastern Europe because private business was rare and was an exception and somewhat counterrevolutionary it was seen as part of them of their estate. In the West people who see business as part of the problem of wealth disparity see business as anathema to their promiseland where the community is everything and private enterprise is a vestige of capitalism so it has to go down for participating. Except that’s only the view of radicals and the normal people protesting and not protesting see a problem in that since they do not believe the whole system is bad, but rather needs some reform. In more concise terms in the East they were fighting to get capitalism, in the West some fight to defeat capitalism.
Pfhreak 6y ago
There's also a false dichotomy between peaceful and violent. There are non-violent, non-peaceful protests where protesters are noisy, block traffic, etc. Many of the speakers I've heard have expanded on the phrase "No Justice, No Peace" to describe how they'd like their protests to be remembered not as peaceful, but as non-violent. One speaker I recall saying, "This is a peaceful protest! Wait, no no, it's not that. It's a non-violent protest! We're here because if there is no justice, then there is no peace."
grasshopperpurp 6y ago
>Meanwhile in US/Western Europe riots are for some reason seem to be directed not at government and police but at uninvolved car/store owners. Makes it seem like those rioters have different - maybe opposite - motivations than the protesters.

082349872349872 6y ago

Rumsfeld's contribution to Riot Theory: > "While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime, ... I don't think there's anyone in any of those pictures ... [who wouldn't] accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom." https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2003/04/11/Rumsfeld-Looting-is-transition-to-freedom/63821050097983/ https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2003/04/11/Rumsfeld-Looting...

acephal 6y ago

I'm very very surprised that the number one parallel has yet to ever be mentioned in these kinds of discussions: the 2005 Paris riots. French police were held responsible for the deaths of North African teenagers and riots broke out all over suburban Paris that caused waaay more property damage than anything we've seen in America this summer. French media framed the entire issue as brown people showing their true colors by not posing any 'coherent' message to French political establishment, eg. no slogans or demands. French politics sense has drifted further Rightward, further edifying the French political ideal that if you wanna live in France you better play by our rules (same thing in Germany where you have to pass a cultural test to gain citizenship, imagine such a thing in America! [And no, answering questions about the constitution, the foundational legal document, is not the same thing]).

rayiner 6y ago
> (same thing in Germany where you have to pass a cultural test to gain citizenship, imagine such a thing in America! [And no, answering questions about the constitution, the foundational legal document, is not the same thing]). I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I kind of like that we're more liberal than Germany or France on this. I don't like how liberals in the U.S. fail to appreciate that fact and think the U.S. is super racist and xenophobic. (I guess if they're comparing against a platonic ideal.)
- Chris2048 6y ago
  What does liberal mean? Surely it depends what's on the test - "culture" could mean anything. Take a liberal policy (no guns, no death penalty etc) - now test people who fail to adopt those cultural values; are you less liberal for testing people, or more liberal for testing them on liberal values? Seems like one word is being used to describe multivariate dimensions. In this case the opposite of not having these kinds of tests are racism/xenophobia, because you implied not having them would be a counterpoint to such a reputation. TBH, I think people cling too much to ideals and maxims to avoid the complexity of reality, then something happens, reality catches up, the maxim weakens, and the pendulum swings the other way. It's easily possible to be too (or naively) liberal, there are many examples of this e.g the existence of an Italian mafia dismissed as anti-migrant xenophobia - until the FBI proved they existed; anyone who dismisses such issues as "price worth paying (for liberty)" has no plan, and quickly find many of their countrymen disagree. The truth is, culture needs to adapt to environment, and if society doesn't do that by conscious design, it'll happen anyway through social economics. The truth is, multiculturalism is a massive generalisation over "cultures" that suggests we might all get along, if X, and without losing individual group cultural identity - truth is, not all cultures are alike, not all values are beneficial, and even the multiculturalism has implicit maxims that make it a kind of culture in itself; How can you tolerate the intolerant? How can you promote freedom, and avoid Eurocentrism, if freedom is a Eurocentric value (or at least, the source of you definition of "freedom").

lurker5000 6y ago

If you are interested in hearing an on-the-ground perspective to accompany the theory, you could do worse than watch this. NSFW language. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go

dredmorbius 6y ago
Kimberly Jones, "How Can We Win". Excellent.

devnull255 6y ago

This is a fantastic article and reading list. I'm disappointed at how so much of the discussion around the most recent rioting has devolved to being pro-protest vs anti-rioting. The riots, like the spread of the pandemic are symptoms of wide-spread, systemic failures in our social, political and economic institutions. The psychologist Stephen Pinker, has pointed out that violence itself is a tool of last resort in the human toolkit. The violence of rioters is mostly spontaneous and fueled by anger, flamethrowers and sledge hammers directed at objects belonging to a system they feel has not responded to their needs or concerns. The fact that violence is not the best tool for the job is irrelevant by this point. Cooler, smarter and more sympathetic heads should actually focus more on what triggered the riots and determine the changes that are necessary to remediate legitimate grievances and hopefully prevent the recurrence of such failures. The reading list offers an excellent beginning for that. Discussing the efficacy and justification for rioting probably doesn't.

commandlinefan 6y ago
> determine the changes that are necessary to remediate legitimate grievances Except that the grievances don't appear to be that legitimate and the changes that would be necessary don't appear to be too popular with the majority of the population. Capitulating to a violent mob out of fear of further violence surrenders control from the democratic process to escalating barbarism.
- devnull255 6y ago
  Well, one particular grievance among them, that a person passing off a counterfeit 20-dollar bill doesn't deserve death at the hands of police, probably is legitimate. Choosing to remediate that injustice is not capitulation to the mob, but fulfillment of the promise of equal protection under the law that the democratic process was supposed to protect.