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Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

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so what? rioting is still against the law.

Destroying businesses and property of fellow citizens to get your point across will always fall on deaf ears. The only possible way to achieve your goals by rioting is completely terrorizing everyone into submission. Good luck with that.

That’s what they told those sneaky terrorists that disguised themselves and snuck onto private property to destroy tea in Boston harbour.

I've seen the boston tea party brought up several times over the last couple days, and it strikes me as an odd comparison. unlike the rioting/looting that sometimes accompanies protests, the boston tea party was a specifically targeted act of resistance. the colonists resented british taxes in general, and were particularly enraged by the EIC's exemption from the tea tax (which allowed them to undercut other tea merchants in the colonies), so they directly targeted an EIC tea shipment. doesn't really seem that similar to taking advantage of a protest to smash windows and burn random buildings.

Learn your history better. http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/33-tempest-in-a-teacu...

can you summarize? I'm not willing to listen to a 40 minute podcast to figure out what you're alluding to in your single sentence comment.

You can read the full transcript https://public.simonsays.ai/AXqKjRV1Kken/revisionist-history....

But this paragraph summarizes things pretty well:

"Let me spell it out for you: underneath the lofty rhetoric of the patriots of New England was a criminal enterprise. A vast smuggling operation, illicitly supplying the residents of the New World with their drug of choice, bohea, that deliciously addictive tea varietal with a dark liquor and a deep, leathery taste. The foundational myth of the American Republic is not righteous, freedom-loving citizens rising up against oppression. No, it's drug dealers defending their turf."

thanks for linking the transcript. if true, that certainly changes the narrative, but I don't think it weakens my main point: dumping the tea in the harbor made sense given their objective, both symbolically and practically. and to the extent that it weakens the narrative of noble freedom fighters, it makes the comparison even weirder.

Ok, same people same city. Smuggler John Hancock has his boat confiscated, starts a riot

yeah, that would be a fair comparison. or if you really want to stick with the boston tea party, you might liken it to the police station that got burned down in minneapolis (a symbolically and practically meaningful target).

in general I don't think this is a good rhetorical pattern though. comparing controversial current event A to mythologized account of historical event B seems like an attempt to avoid having to defend A on its own merit. as we've seen here in this thread, it may also rely on an incorrect/embellished understanding of B that introduces some weird implications.

Violence and destruction of private property is celebrated if you win.

Suggesting that unfettered capitalism is resulting in extreme wealth inequality assumes we live in a system of unfettered capitalism. Which we don't, not even close.

It's pretty damn minimally fettered.

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