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Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

I think there are two ways to approach thinking about dramatic acts like self-immolation, rioting, looting, stealing, etc.

One way is to think "wow, those people have had very different experiences from me, to drive them to do that." I'd put your reply in that category and I prefer this. It recognizes shared commonality among people, which is a good place to start for constructive change.

The other way is to think "wow, those people are nothing like me, to want to do something like that." This treats differences as inherent and implies there are different "types" of people. It creates a sense of "us vs them," which makes it harder to build the empathy necessary for constructive change.

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I try to look for primary intent. If somebody is advocating awareness of something worthy of their passion I can empathize with that advocacy even during times I may disagree with the subject advocated. I find it harder to empathize with people who are stealing designer handbags and claiming it’s a form of protest. I just see self enrichment (theft) as the primary motive and then a lie as a qualifier. To me that results in a difference compared to the prior described advocacy group that I cannot shake.

Personally, I see the very existence of a designer handbag store as a clear indication of a system that is broken to the core - an insult to unselfish people everywhere.

A designer handbag store to me perfectly exlemplifies a completely broken tax system and citizens being held hostage by a corrupt government and corporations defending their interests.

I sympathize with people who would want to damage that system in any way available to them.

I wouldn't do that particular act myself, but I also recognize that I've been very lucky to not have been one of the people who has suffered at the hands of such a broken system. Lucky I had good parents, good health and good education. The system has failed others, and shows no signs of self-correction without intervention.

I really agree with you here, except for your inclusion of looters in that group. You're goddamn right opportunistic looters are nothing like me. Those fuckers care nothing about the fight of the protests, and are willing to tarnish the whole movement for some free shit. Fuck them.

Otherwise, right on. I can't tell you how often I come to dead ends in arguments regarding poverty and crime, where folks who've never been poor or desperate give themselves 100% of the credit for their good fortune. Like they picked their fucking parents before birth.

In this post alone, there are people saying that looting is justified... For every person saying that the looters are unrelated, there is another person or two that either condones that behaviour or justifies it.

Either we have looters in this thread, or the movement is a big umbrella that encompasses the unsavourable elements too.

Without the rioting and looting, the protests may have accomplished nothing. Climate March and Women's March were way bigger but led to absolutely zilch.

So if the climate and women's marchers had destroyed blocks of neighborhoods and looted and burned a bunch of stores and small businesses, you think they would have "accomplished" more? Are you fucking serious?

This is such a stupid argument. The only thing violence, vandalism and theft "accomplish" is further retrenchment of police power. It turns otherwise sympathetic people against the protests, and makes it much harder for policy makers to justify police reform to the huge part of the population whose quiet racist and classist biases were just confirmed by the looters.

If anythin's going to spur change from this particular upheaval, it will the hundreds of videos recording police brutality against peaceful demonstrators.

Why do people care more about someone stealing a TV from a corporation than someone stealing $500M from taxpayers?

That's a strawman. Nobody's talking about "stealing a TV from a corporation". That's not what looting is. Go spend five minutes on google and see what's been happening. Looters have destroyed thousands of small businesses -- destroying equipment, ransacking the buildings, and in many cases setting them on fire. The theft is only a small part. Many of these losses cannot be be recouped through insurance, and many of these small businesses will die. For nothing.

Looting and vandalism don't hurt corporations. The corporations have insurance and can rebuild. Looting destroys livelihoods of people who often can't recover, accelerates the decay of already struggling neighborhoods.

I think you've hit on a very interesting way of framing the issue. Perhaps it can be explained with (slightly) statistical language:

- Taking the self-immolator's experiences and actions as sample sets, they are different from the 'stereotypical American' by a statistically significant margin.

- This does not mean that the cause is that the self-immolator is categorically different from the 'stereotypical American' (because correlation does not necessarily imply causation), in fact, it suggests that the experiences and actions may be related.

self immolation is nothing like those others. i can easily loot or steal or vandalize. i'm not holy. but people who self immolate are exactly that.

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