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Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

Political violence is sometimes justified. Just hard to see how it is in this case. If Derek Chauvin is acquitted this week. There's a good chance he will be at least partially, based on the trial evidence of drugs and heart disease being the main cause of Floyd's death. If so, this whole incident, will be the ultimate example of misleading video, amplified by lying journalists, for clicks and violence for political gain. As soon as one side is allowed to use violence to achieve political goals, what is to prevent the other side in acting the same way. It will be interesting to see how Biden will react when the shoe is on the other foot.

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Political violence is almost never justified.

The vast majority of these protesters are expressly non-violent. They camp to bring public attention to injustice. Some stay past curfew, deliberately practicing civil disobedience. They anticipate being gassed, maced, shoved, dragged, and otherwise abused by police -- and do so without retaliation.

Of course, there can be other actors with their own agendas. Some looting. Some rioting. However, it does us a disservice to blindly clump those practicing civil disobedience with those practicing violence, or to write about the former as if they were enacting violence, when the opposite is true.

> Some stay past curfew, deliberately practicing civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience is a term that I don't equate to many of the violent actions that they are engaging in.

The protesters that are peaceful early in the evening are not the ones being arrested, pepper sprayed, etc...

The protesters that stay past midnight and assault the police are.

The notion that the "vast majority of protests are peaceful" is irrelevant, because the police actions we are talking about are against the violent protesters.

The news media and the Democrat establishment frequently lump in the millions of Trump voters with Nazis, and then tell us it's okay to assault Nazis.

If group accountability is a thing, why only for one side?

It's actually the Nazis that are lumped in with Trump voters.

e.g., https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/neo-nazi-proud-boys-groups-p...

No doctor that treated him or performed his autopsy has given any evidence of heart disease, or drugs contributing to his suffocation. A defense witness speculated, but had no evidence.

Labelling it "suffocation" is begging the question since the original autopsy didn't include suffocation or asphyxiation as a cause of death (although the autopsy commissioned by the family did, and the prosecution is arguing this).

> He affirmed his findings about Floyd's health problems and drugs, saying again "those are not direct causes. Those are contributing causes."

https://m.startribune.com/medical-examiner-who-did-autopsy-s...

> As soon as one side is allowed to use violence to achieve political goals, what is to prevent the other side in acting the same way.

Power. It being completely hypocritical means nothing to them. The romans conquered Europe, even though they were surely told that they wouldn't like it if they themselves were invaded.

> drugs and heart disease being the main cause of Floyd's death

It's Floyd's fault, he was minutes from death's door, wheezing and barely hanging on to life, when the police showed up and tried to extend his life by kneeling on his neck, but he was too ill and he passed away as if by coincidence

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