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Comment by gnusty_gnurc | Hacker News Reader

> beware the false equivalence between smashing a store window and stealing some crap vs. actually attacking a human being

Ok so I guess economic circumstances can never be oppressive.

So if a thieve steals all your stuff and you starve...that's not violence!

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Here is a curated selection of the logical failures in your two line comment:

* saying that economic circumstances are "oppressive," then trying to draw this to "violence"

* a claim that if a thief steals all of your stuff, you "starve" -- please give an example of one person who "starved" because BLM looters stole their stuff

* implying that being in a situation where you are "starving" is the same as actually being violently attacked, i.e. shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, etc.

>>* a claim that if a thief steals all of your stuff, you "starve" -- please give an example of one person who "starved" because BLM looters stole their stuff

You are 100% sure that nobody who lost a job because his place of work was destroyed in riots is not starving? Not everybody is so privileged to have enough savings to support himself after loosing a job.

Of course I'm not 100% sure of that, but there is a long sequence of events between smashing a window and getting to that outcome, unlike bashing a guy's face in with a crowbar where the consequence is guaranteed within milliseconds. The two acts are not equal and attempts to equate them are either idiotic or in bad faith.

Once upon a time in Germany there was a special night, it was called "Crystal Night"[1]. It got it's name because of all the glass from the smashed windows lying on the ground. There were some people arguing that it was violence, but some said that those people were either idiotic or arguing in bad faith.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht was a pogrom in which people specifically targeted Jews with the full backing of the state.

Surely the more apt analogy is the systemic violence our state inflicts on Black people, rather than the protests that arose in response to it.

No, mask wearing people (supported by a large part of the political elite) destroying property of a specific social-economic class is the more apt analogy today in the USA.

Those people were met with state violence, so no it’s not.

Ever heard the term "anarcho-tyranny" ?

I'd have gone with the hundreds of Jews murdered that night and subsequent tens of thousands sent to concentration camps in the aftermath as the important violence there, honestly.

You are right, some people just fail to see that the broken windows were just the beginning and what followed was even more vile. The mental gymnastics some people do to downplay violence only because it might look bad for their side is astonishing. The value of a human life for them is nothing more than a sacrificial pawn on their ideological chessboard.

No, but think of the property that was destroyed!

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