Comment by m0llusk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m0llusk | Hacker News Reader

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This appears to be driven at a basic level by a desire for justice. Having had some thousands of years of experience with the quest for justice we can say with some level of certainty that effective justice seeking has some particular characteristics without which justice remains elusive.

There must be a clear statement of the injustice which must be corrected. There should be a hearing where all involved can state their view of the situation. The accused should be allowed representation. Judgements should be made by persons who are at some level uninvolved with the conflict and committed to balanced interpretation of evidence. Any punishments should be related to the nature and scale of the injustice. And so on--of course someone with more direct experience could summarize this and make it happen better than I.

The point is that mob justice is not justice and all you have to do is give it some basic rules and constraints and it either gets deflected or gathers up into something that has actual meaning.

yep, you need due process. Other replies referencing metoo and MLK make an excellent point - that mass movements are usually a response to 'due process' that is in practice deeply flawed and biased to the point that it is ineffective. But a) Unlike metoo and civil rights, afaik a formal process that even aspires to fairness to decide issues such as speaker cancellation doesn't exist in the first place, b) even in the case of issues like metoo, surely the ideal outcome is to fix the structural biases and flaws in the processes so they work in practice, rather than rely on ad hoc journalistic investigations indefinitely (aside from preventing such crimes from being committed in the first place, of course)

This is basically it; the normal mechanisms don't work properly, and nobody in the mob has any faith that engaging with any formal process is going to achieve a result, so they complain in public.

(This specific incident sounds like a storm in a teacup, but there's far more serious and less visible problems with racial discrimination in academia)

Similar to #metoo. Reporting sexual harassment, assault and even rape quite often isn't taken seriously by either employers or the police. And in the entertainment industry there was a tacit understanding that reporting it would be a career-ending move. So the route that people have started taking is to complain publicly, in an attempt to shield themselves from retaliation and compel the system to address the complaint.

Dr. King put it best: "a riot is the language of the unheard."

Some portion of the mob on Twitter is people chasing clout and performing social justice. For example: I've been attacked for "generalizing nonbinary people" by cis people while describing my own experience as a nonbinary person, so I don't doubt people like that drive a lot of the discussion, but the vast majority is sincere if sometimes misdirected anger at genuine powerlessness. A Twitter riot is much like a physical riot: some agitators, but mostly just angry people denied a voice taking one by force.

>a riot is the language of the unheard

The context of this quote is in a speech that is largely anti-riot. It's a warning to the government to not be complacent, but the woke left treats as if he was condoning rioters.

So what should we do when the government will not listen? Keep talking? A warning without the backing of consequences is not effective.

> Dr. King put it best: "a riot is the language of the unheard."

Sometimes. It can also be the language of those who know they're powerful enough to do what they want.

Classic example: Lynchings.

I mentioned the segment of rioters who use it as a cover in the comment you replied to.

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