4 ms·

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 i

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.

gampleman 5y ago
From the GP: > "Political theorists have also written normative defenses of terrorism (for example, Held 1991, Nielsen 1981)."
Loughla 5y ago
>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?
- echopurity 5y ago
- krapp 5y ago
  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. [0]https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html
- indigochill 5y ago
  > 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.
tcmart14 5y ago
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.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Maybe the term for a justified riot is 'revolution'?
  - tcmart14 5y ago
    Pretty much. Its all a matter of who wins in the end as they get to write the history.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
doliveira 5y ago
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.
julianeon 5y ago
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.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  There seems to be a classification problem here; Stonewall is called a riot, but was very different from the riots we saw recently in the US.
- naasking 5y ago
  > And it was a unquestionably a net positive. An implicit assumption in your argument that the outcome classifies an act as just or unjust. That is not a given.
  - wcarron 5y ago
    No, I think not. The implicit assumption of his argument is that the origin and causes of the violence classify it as just or unjust.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > 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.
tsol 5y ago
>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
- naasking 5y ago
  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.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  > 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.

gampleman 5y ago

From the GP: > "Political theorists have also written normative defenses of terrorism (for example, Held 1991, Nielsen 1981)."

Loughla 5y ago

>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?

echopurity 5y ago
krapp 5y ago
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. [0]https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html
indigochill 5y ago
> 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.

tcmart14 5y ago

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.

cuteboy19 5y ago
Maybe the term for a justified riot is 'revolution'?
- tcmart14 5y ago
  Pretty much. Its all a matter of who wins in the end as they get to write the history.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

doliveira 5y ago

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.

julianeon 5y ago

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.

teakettle42 5y ago
There seems to be a classification problem here; Stonewall is called a riot, but was very different from the riots we saw recently in the US.
naasking 5y ago
> And it was a unquestionably a net positive. An implicit assumption in your argument that the outcome classifies an act as just or unjust. That is not a given.
- wcarron 5y ago
  No, I think not. The implicit assumption of his argument is that the origin and causes of the violence classify it as just or unjust.
Jensson 5y ago
> 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.

tsol 5y ago

>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

naasking 5y ago
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.
xboxnolifes 5y ago
> 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.