> Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights.
Also, throughout its history, many US agencies astroturf “fake” riots to discredit their targets. The CIA did it in Iran in 1953 for example. Many LEO plants were identified in 2020, smashing glass, planting bricks, etc.
Yeah, these are not equivalent scenarios.
Edit infact in school I was taught Catholic civil right protestors drew inspiration from the black civil rights movement
Indeed, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/dr-king-s-impact-fight-c...
"Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights."
It's about shocking society more than it is about the property and who it belongs to.
So people without property were punishing people who had property? Sounds very standard to me. Extend that a bit further and you get something like the French revolution where poor people executed rich people for the crime of simply being rich.
I'm currently reading 'The Dawn of Everything,' and it is FASCINATING. The case made at the beginning of the book is that notions of equality and individual freedom basically came into being in Europe because of contact with indigenous Americans. Suddenly there was a flood of observations and conversations with societies that made sure no one went hungry.
And then when people started starving with the knowledge that another world was possible, things got violent. Incidentally, many-to-most violent uprisings have started with food shortages. Typically people have to be extremely uncomfortable before they start breaking out the guillotines, and hunger is extremely uncomfortable... And one of the still-active remnants of the French revolution is a government regulation ensuring that baguettes are cheap and readily available.
As for breaking out the guillotines, that doesn't take much. A gallows made an appearance on January 6th. Those people looked very well-fed. I'm not sure they were joking.
The biggest problem with that theory is that indigenous Americans generally did not hold notions of equality and individual freedom.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_the_indigenous_p...
2: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/service...
I read a great book a few years back about the lives of African slaves owned by native Americans, native Americans who took said slaves with them when they were exiled by white settlers. The fact that I had not known of such things is a remnant of the noble savage concept. I was taught little in school about native american views on class.
Note that nothing you've pointed to is exclusive; Mayan society was very different from the societies of New France. Indigenous America is not a cartoon, but a large collection of societies with different organisation.
Another interesting point in the book is that there are many instances of enlightenment thinkers explicitly pointing to indigenous Americans as the source of their ideas... Which has tended to just be ignored or glossed over, in favor of the great man theory where these ideas spring from pure European genius.
And describing indigenous people as "societies that made sure no one went hungry" without mentioning warfare, torture, and slavery does appear to be restating the classic myth of the noble savage. These practices were not limited to the Mayans, but were widespread across the Americas, including New France, as the additional links I added above describe.
https://shanesafir.com/2020/12/before-maslows-hierarchy-the-...
the blm movement was not just about blm, a lot of it was used as a starter to talk about a related issue. which is equality in general, you can see this by how many socialist supporters came out. in reality mlk supported fair wages for all working class people and that is the “conspiracy” theory of why he got shot, but obviously if people can’t eat, or if they feel very they are being massively mistreated, they will riot.
Yes, and those people aren't allowed to do that, only approved governments.
In modern warfare, massive numbers of civilians are often killed -- for example, the most deadly bomb attack of World War II was the Allied firebombing of Tokyo, which killed over 100,000 people, almost all of whom were civilians.[1]
Surely this is "violence, against a civilian population, with the intended aim of effecting political change". Indeed, harming morale was an explicit goal of attacks like those against Tokyo and Dresden during WWII.[2] The idea was that the population would be cowed by these attacks and (somehow) get their governments to surrender to the Allies.
So the question is: If we have a theory of "Just War," that includes wars where the "just" side can claim to morally kill tens of thousands of civilians at once, then should there also be a theory of "Just Riots," even if riots can scare civilians sometimes hurt or kill them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa...
Having said that: If indeed the Allies targeted civilians intentionally in World War II, would you say that the war was unjust? Or that the Allies committed war crimes? If not, then you might consider that there is such a thing as just riots.
I'd argue that an act of desperation is rather aimless, frustation rather apolitical and anger not even well defined and well unintentional. You'd have to assume that a riot is concerted or agitated and that rioters were used, by a government against civilians. That's a real possibility, but it would also include kinda civil wars.
The current understanding as formed by extensive definitions does not capture mass hysteria though. It's simply terrible, a real riot.
Riiiiight. I guess that’s why it’s mostly big box consumer stores being looted and not, say, an industrial supply company like a Grainger or even a hardware store like Home Depot.
Reads a lot like a motivated rationalization of inexcusable criminality.
To MLK ? Really ???
> Riiiiight. I guess that’s why it’s mostly big box consumer stores being looted and not, say, an industrial supply company like a Grainger or even a hardware store like Home Depot.
My guy I'm sure they're just going to their nearest / most frequented shops. If a Home Depot was in the neighborhood, I'm sure they would rob it.
I think that was meant to the quoter of MLK, MLK lived 50 years ago so he has no understanding of the events happening today. So it is the person bringing up the quote who stands by its validity for todays events.
In addition to the point made in a sibling comment, are you sure it is mostly big box stores? It seems just as reasonable to me that the big ticket items are what you hear about because someone stealing a bunch of 50c plumbing supplies just doesn't produce the same headlines. Certainly we've heard of things like 7/11s being hit, which frankly don't have as many "big ticket" items as Home Depot or Grainger.
1. it is important to differentiate between violence done towards individuals and damage caused to private property. i am not accusing you of conflating the two but i just feel it necessary to be explicit in these discussions because people often try to slyly discuss one as if it was the other.
2. I think a compelling argument in defense of the demonstrators in 2020, target isn't a part of the community. It pays minimum wage, makes it difficult for small business owned by the community to compete, and most importantly extracts the wealth and moves it away from the community. I am not saying there weren't better targets. I'm not saying we shouldn't (necessarily) go after government buildings if those are you grievances. I'm just saying that there is reasoning behind this even if its blunt.
(Also worth noting i read an interview with a restaurant owner near the target whos restaurant was burned down that effectivly said "yeah this really really sucks, but at the same time i understand the wider context." That's what happens when you're actually a member of the community and get caught up the fallout from these things.)
Plus, it's traumatic for your family to watch you get beat down - more traumatic than watching you cry at a replaceable loss.
If you think there are no long lasting health effects from that kind of emotional and financial stress, think again.
The enshrinement and protection of private property rights is one of the core principles that separate developed nations from third-world banana republics. If property is worth that little to you, perhaps you should start by offering up your own, and move to one of these places.
If you consider analysis of power structures “daydreaming” I’m not sure what to say. There is a manifest difference between two random people slapping each other in an argument and a cop slapping a civilian.
Every single interaction which has ever occurred between humans has a power dynamic. It’s the furthest thing from “academic” “philosophical” or “theoretical.”
(Though, that book is also about the cruelty and dysfunction of the "justice" system.)
This also shows up in personal relationships. If you had the choice between transitory physical abuse, and permanent wage garnishment, which would you choose? Only one of these is considered legitimate, and yet if people could freely choose I think they'd accept beatings a lot of the time.
In a way, this is what everyone who chooses a physically dangerous or even painful job is doing: "Pain ends. Money, and thus private property, I get to keep."
The question is how much permanent injury you suffer.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901859883/riots-that-followed...
It's just really hard to reconcile all this damage/looting with the notion that all of it was in protest. To me it seems like a lot of people just wanted some free stuff.
Many leftists will argue that sanctions are inherently violent and murderous because they often push people on the precipice over the edge and kill them from malnutrition or lack of medical access. Yet when rioters do essentially the same, destroy property in already precarious communities, this argument is made that it's not violence, it is a noble political demonstration. I for one do not buy it and find it hard to believe that your anecdotal business owner is representative of the wider economic and individual impact riots have.
The truth of the matter is that riots are a symptom. There is nothing noble about a riot and they are inherently violent, even if only property is destroyed. In the same way that those capital rioters deserve prison, so too do other rioters. That does not mean the conditions that caused the riots are just or proper but neither are the rioters righteous.
Nonsense. If rioters burned down a police station and the fire spread to some neighboring buildings it would be unfortunate (and would probably hurt public opinion about the riot to some extent). But it's not even remotely comparable to a riot that doesn't even try to target the sources of its grievances and directly and intentionally harms civilians instead
So basically you made the case for "there are no just riots, they are all mindless violence". If they could behave then they could be just, but if you argue that they can't behave then they can't be just and should be stopped.
Note there are many examples of protests being violent in targeted ways that don't harm innocents, so I disagree with you here. There are just riots, but what we saw in USA wasn't that. Its just that when that happens it isn't called a riot, its just called a violent protest or something like that.
> Unfortunately, the position that many poor people are in doesn't afford them the luxury of being concerned with other peoples private property
There is a huge difference between being concerned about other's property, and intentional wanton destruction of other people's property.
He's painting the most optimistic possible scenario and it's still stomach turning. It's complete moral depravity through and through.
No, I'm not saying that. My worldview is not poisoned blind by my moral views on rioting. I don't think people can only react one way because they clearly react many ways to injustice, societal change, etc, one of those ways being rioting. I will not argue that they should not do these things because it's the same as arguing that rain should not fall. I do believe that actions have consequences and, in a society of rule of law, rioters do not get a pass to burn down buildings and destroy cars for the sake of their cause. They deserve prison, in those cases, even if they don't always face justice. It's interesting that you feel they shouldn't have to face consequences but your worldview does not mesh with how greater society operates. Criminals that are caught go to prison.
Many of the businesses affected (thinking lake street in minneapolis and kenosha) were POC owned small businesses. Many were permanently closed because the owners lost everything and didn't have insurance to cover it.
> it is important to differentiate between violence done towards individuals and damage caused to private property
Tell that to the people who put blood, sweat and tears into getting where they are. You think the emotional, mental and financial pain didnt do any damage?
> target isn't a part of the community
What about the cub foods that was totally trashed? Empty shelves, aisles flooded with broken containers. The community didn't deserve that. Nobody benefitted from it. Nobody saw that and thought to themselves "Yeah, go protesters!" It took 8 months to reopen after all of the damage and unrest.
> by and large the people who were participating in the demonstration were also members of the community
Does that make it okay? Just because someone lives close to a business doesn't give them the right to destroy it. It seems that you would be ok with it happening to your business, but I bet 99% of small business owners would not.
To think that change happens without damage to property or obstruction of daily life is historically inaccurate and myopic.
Ofyen times thieves, corrupt politicians, bad businesses, etc., are part of a community. A community includes all. Good and bad. Saying “but they were part of the community does not speak at all to their intentions.
Even in families, when someone is irrationally upset they may do things they regret later on. Even the self can do irrationally negative things to itself.
We should still be able to revisit events and determine what was bad and could be prevented and how we can provide tools for people to prevent a recurrence. Also highlight the good that might have come out.
>Also worth noting i read an interview with a restaurant owner near the target whos restaurant was burned down that effectivly said "yeah this really really sucks, but at the same time i understand the wider context." That's what happens when you're actually a member of the community and get caught up the fallout from these things
No, what this means is that this owner is privileged enough that this isn't life ruining to them. A lot of small business owners in poor areas have partial coverage at best and will never recover, having their store burned down is having their livelihood burned down.
It’s important to note that when your property is being looted, you can’t actually know for sure whether the mob is going to turn violent. In this case, fleeing to safety and leaving your home or business burned to the ground may be the only legally safe response. (ie, it is usually not
To be clear, I would never sympathize with the political cause of those who would violently destroy the interests of my friends and neighbors. I also don’t believe that violence against people is acceptable simply because they can be considered separate from a community.
I am all for widespread recognition of the horrible state of American policing, including the fact that a lot of (but not all, and I do not think I am prepared to say "most" either) of the people who go into it are clearly bad people. I am also into significantly modifying or abolishing qualified immunity, a move which I think most Americans, of all political persuasions, would favor if they read some of the caselaw and came to understand how much police officers have gotten away with under current law.
In addition to having an obvious direct negative impact on our economy and the victims of such riots, lawless, destructive riots only damage both of those causes.
If only someone had just won a prize for a fifteen page theory of how riots can be justified.
I kinda disagree with this. If it were a local retailer run by your neighbors, you’d be absolutely correct. But if you’re talking about Target, you’re now in the territory of a system of economic oppression where money is siphoned out of local communities by large multinational corporations and the actual residents have no ownership over anything. During the 2020 riots, there were definitely some people trying to make the point, “we have no ownership of our own neighborhoods.”
I can see many people, especially black Americans, feeling all but imprisoned by the fact that they can’t afford to own property, can’t run the businesses that serve their community and are at the mercy of white people who move in and gentrify the neighborhoods forcing them to find new, less desirable places to live. The police who are the immediate focus of protests become merely the jailers in a systemic prison of which Target and other large retailers play a huge part.
Wow, are you using loaded language.
Say the Target wasn't there. The people of the neighborhood are still going to want to buy things. Without the Target, there might be locally-owned mom-and-pop businesses. Target takes the profits out of the neighborhood. All that is true.
But Target drove those businesses out by selling stuff for less money. So your solution is that the people of the neighborhood have to spend more in order that some people of the neighborhood can have the profits. And you call Target a system of economic oppression and a money siphon. Yeah, I'm not buying it.
The idea that keeping that money in the community might benefit the community, including the purchaser, more in the long run than saving a few bucks doesn't seem that crazy to me.
Another reason why riots are not helpful is that it's impossible to know whether someone is breaking a window to make a statement about police violence, institutional racism, capitalist oppression, or because nobody can stop them from breaking a window right now. It's not an eloquent means of expression, and the message will never be received as the author intended.
Most wars are not just, but there is a theory of just war.
On the other hand it's very straightforward to locate some justified wars in history. In fact I would say that most wars have a side that has a just cause, which is typically the defender.
Easy, the same reason most contrarian theories are developed: grant money and academic prestige. Most theories like this are woefully at odds with what the majority of society believes. If you asked most Americans whether or not they wanted a riot, just or not, in their neighborhood, you know what they would answer.
Most wars fail your targeted vs collateral damage test. Maybe the US drone war from 2001 to present as an exception. Although we don’t really have the full picture to say.
To be clear, I am not arguing that my point of view is or should be universal. I'm only sharing my own thoughts on the issue.
If we compare it to war, would a riot be like a certain subset of war that's lost control, like a slaughter, though that name doesn't perfectly fit and my vocabulary may be lacking a term for what I'm thinking of? Are there any theories to call such a war that's lost control just, or would the loss of control preclude it from the theories you mentioned?
It's just that most people who believe a cause justifies a riot (whether that's police killings, blasphemy, a candidate not winning an election or high taxes) want the riot to go beyond a riot and into some sort of actual change. A war is justified as a means to an end; a riot is usually only a small part of that means.
Also, a lot of just war theory boils down to asking religious figures or bodies like the UN for permission, which isn't really practical for your average riot.
Rioters/protestors burned down the third precinct police station in Minneapolis. Also in May, protesters smashed a window and defaced the Veterans Affairs headquarters building, and smashed the doors and windows at the National Treasury Employees Union headquarters. The National Park Service reported vandalized monuments on the National Mall.
Edit: downvotes but no explanation?
Congrats.
Minority groups have been dealing with systemic and deliberate murder as part of their daily lives for 400 years and you're worried about... a reconcilable loss of an inanimate object?
Oddisee and Shabazz Palaces can say it better than I can.
> I got a cuz that’ll be your doctor after a test that I hope he’ll pass
Isn’t that what you fear most? But fear don’t trump your needs
Our pros do trump our cons though. And cons don’t trump your greed
And monsters’ what you make of us and we make you succeed
And that’s what makes this country great, it’s built by those who bleed
It’s built by those who came on boats, it’s built by those who flee
And you forgot your family tree and we’re just all your leaves
So if you just try to chop us down you only hurt your knees
> That's how we start the show
Eagles soar and oil flows
You didn't decide what you chose
We will pay back what they owe
Yeah you say its so
I got mines now you get yours
Crime depends from who you stole
Rich is good, black is no
If you consider a really bloody war, like the korean war, they killed a fifth of the population of north korea, and destroyed basically every single piece of civilian infrastructure.
There are obviously better ways to drive change than destroying whatever's around you, but much like you'd protest a too-low speed limit by speeding, it's not insane to protest a broken social contract than violating it at scale.
And it's bizarre to say that you don't need to get "philosophical or long-winded" about it, when it's a link to the British Academy Brian Barry Price essay. I mean "philosophical and long-winded" is exactly what their looking for here.
BTW, I agree with your normative assessment I am just saying your comment makes no sense in the context of this article.
If the media decides it's a 'mostly peaceful' protest, then acts of violence are not emphasized. Participation is not demonized.
But if the describer calls it 'an insurrection' or 'riot', then acts of violence are magnified. Being present, even without participation, is demonized.
The real truth is that no act of violence is acceptable.
To be clear, there was a riot, but said riot was also allegedly used as cover for (and was also allegedly an outcome of) sedition - https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-oath-keepers-and-10-ot...
The vast majority of Jan 6 charges were riot-related, but that there are any insurrection-related charges at all is what's branding the event as an attempted insurrection against the United States Government.
In war where every soldier is trained on rules of combat, when some break the rules and do unjust things they are seen simply as "lone wolves breaking the rules". In riots, people rarely offer the same reasoning that those who commit crimes against citizens are simply "lone wolves breaking the rules" detracting from the larger movement. The lone wolves actions are taken to represent the entire movement as a whole. There is a huge unexplained distance between those two. Why is it that state powers can make mistakes but sporadic grassroots movements cannot?
If riots are a “mistake”, then protestors should be admitting that, rather than attempting to excuse them.
Since when are protectors a monolithic entity that can sense when a single individual is doing something unjust? I can show up to a riot and break into a house, and the other rioters will continue doing what they were doing totally unaware of my actions.
But this also means if people are justly rioting all it takes is a single bad actor to throw a brick through a window in order to force everyone else to leave. Otherwise it would mean everyone else is being unjust. Again, a single cop beating protesters is seen as doing wrong, and a single soldier raping a foreign citizen is seen as a lone violator. Seems like a double standard.
With this standard, America's founding was closer to terrorism than revolution. People threw hot tar and feathers on innocent tax collectors. Rather than apologize, they armed themselves. America couldn't exist if the world followed these ridiculous rules
It’s not hard to see when people are looting and move away. It’s also not hard to say “hey there is looting happening here, let’s move the protest away”.
Anyone can do this. No monolithic entity required. The reason it doesn’t happen is because the protesters don’t in fact have a problem with the riots.
> But this also means if people are justly rioting all it takes is a single bad actor to throw a brick through a window in order to force everyone else to leave.
Leave, no. Move away from the vandalism, yes. If protesters did this instead of giving cover, the rioting would stop.
If you're asking that everyone in viewing distance leave, I figure that'd be an area about 20 feet around. The vast majority of protestors are in that area, and cannot even see the rioting.
>The reason it doesn’t happen is because the protesters don’t in fact have a problem with the riots.
This is an oversimplification and a generalization. The logic doesn't even hold up in reality. There already are cops around the majority of large protests. There aren't looters freely destroying things beside them. Looters are separate from protests, they just get grouped together. Looters aren't all in close geographic distance of protests
There is no evidence of this, and all of the reporting from the BLM protests showed them together.
If you have some way to support the claim that riots and protests are somehow always distant from each other, it would be interesting to see.
> Looters aren't all in close geographic distance of protests
This seems like a straw man. We are talking about riots that co-occur with looting, of course.
In any case it doesn’t matter. Protesters could distance themselves from riots, but don’t and that is the problem.
So a small group of three people breaking windows is enough to force 3,000 people to go home? Because I can think of people who would break windows at events they disagree with. There are accusations that that occurred already during BLM protests.
> f riots are a “mistake”, then protestors should be admitting that,
I'm not sure what this means.