Hacker News Reader

Comment by dutchCourage | Hacker News Reader

> rioting is never justified and must be met with police force

Actually, some governments are so oppressive that sometimes rioting is all the citizens have left. Isn't it what the second amendment is for anyway?

I'd even support yesterday's "revolution" if it was justified and the election was actually stolen. But falsely calling an election stolen is dangerous. It's the equivalent of a false rape accusation at a country scale.

And oppressive governments do meet riots with police force. Sometimes they straight up kill the people, yet they keep on rioting because it's the only way they can defend their rights.

View on HN

I think if you look at any of the cities over the past year, there's example after example of spineless mayors, etc. unwilling to protect their citizens and society generally from chaos and petty thieves.

People powerless while they watch everything they worked for literally go up in flames at the hands of criminals. There's no justification for that, and it's a far cry from "justice."

Disrupting law and order - by definition - turns you into a criminal.

I'm not defending any side of the political spectrum, so it's interesting to see how people interpret this argument.

Manifesting for social change never justifies the type of chaos we saw last year, and if you think otherwise, don't complain about what happened to Congress.

> Disrupting law and order - by definition - turns you into a criminal.

That's only accurate if both the law and the ones who enforce it are reasonable and fair.

People feeling powerless is what fuels riots to begin with. I don't condone the looting and destruction, especially when it hits bystanders. But it didn't start that way. The movement against racism did go through peaceful actions to make itself heard. Their demands were pushed back and the discriminations continued so they had to escalate.

They were cornered into that position.

The protesters who invaded the Capitol were not discriminated against. They just lost an election. No one would've died if they protested peacefully.

You can't equate these protests, just like you can't equate self-defense and murder. The context is important.

You’re justifying riots.

I'm justifying some riots indeed.

What would you do if you were oppressed by your government? Some governments even make protesting illegal and rig the elections (if they're even having elections at all).

Desperate times call for desperate measures, unfortunately.

Let’s consider that your perception is fallible and possibly wrong. And hypothetically assume your concept of “the oppressed” is off to some degree.

You’ve admitted to justifying and even supporting riots on the “left.” And that sets the stage for rioting on the “right.”

Political violence begets political violence and you’re (knowingly or not) supporting the dissolution of civil society.

Sorry, I forgot to follow up. I'm quite enjoying this exchange.

> Let’s consider that your perception is fallible and possibly wrong. And hypothetically assume your concept of “the oppressed” is off to some degree.

Obviously I'm not always right. But neither is the rest of the world. Neither is the government. But then what? Should we just let everyone be?

It's a moral dilemma for sure, and I don't think there's a foolproof way around it. Similarly, you want to allow people to kill in case of self-defense but don't want to allow murder. Or censoring Nazi speech while keeping as much freedom of expression as possible.

You can't say all killings are bad (or good), and you can't say all speech is good (or bad). There's a moral judgement to be made there.

I'm not saying rioting is without risks or consequences. I'm just saying they tend to happen when people run out of alternatives. Then they're justified, and only if the cause is good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com