I don't think this is a trivial to question to answer, and I don't have an easy answer to give. I suggested the criteria that a reasonable evaluation should consider whether non-violent means have better expected outcomes. I'd also suggest it depends on the urgency of the moment. A state-sanctioned military massacre at the southern border is a very different set of circumstances than a lone wolf right-wing terrorist act, for example.

Sure war can be justified. Violence to achieve civil rights in the 60s would probably be justified, but it wouldn't have been as effective as the nonviolent movement that actually happened. Slave revolts throughout history were certainly justified. But as I'm sure you know, most wars throughout history were not actually fought for humanitarian reasons. Preventing the Nazi genocide would certainly have been a just rationale for war, but that was not actually why the war was fought. The American Civil War is perhaps an exception to that, although if Lincoln actually waged the war to end slavery he was smart enough to know he couldn't say that out loud and had to say that he was fighting not to end slavery but preserve the union. Which would actually be a monstrous rationale for war -- if New England had seceded and Lincoln waged a war that killed half a million people simply to keep the United States whole he should be regarded as a monster. But he probably wouldn't have fought that war, and his real reason for fighting the civil war was the just cause of ending slavery.

So jman is correct that it is possible that someone could engage in speech that is harmful enough to justify violence. Even constitutionally protected speech. If someone were to advocate for a constitutional amendment calling for the re-enslavement of all African-Americans, that would, I think, be constitutionally protected speech. Now just someone being in favor of that wouldn't justify violence imo. But if they were likely to succeed in passing that amendment then violence -- even war -- would certainly be justified.

But I haven't seen anything that Carlson has said that even comes close to passing that bar. People have pointed to his anti illegal immigration views, which isn't a position I share but is a legitimate political viewpoint. Countries decide who enters their borders and under what circumstances. It's a legitimate topic for debate.

My forever pep peeve... this is arguing what the "official and only true" definition of a word is.

A little story... on 1999-12-1 I boarded the Coast Starlight from Seattle to Los Angeles. This was before ubiquitous cells/wifi, and I missed whatever stations stops that I could have got a newspaper. I was in a information bubble for two days. During that time, I was confused that all the new passengers were telling me about all the horrendous violence there was the day before in Seattle. The reason I was confused, was at the time a believed peeps simply meant "active harm to people and animals" when they used the world 'violence'.

It turns out what the MSM was using as a definition is "harm to people and animals -or- breaking things". Which, I quickly then found out was consistent with the most common dictionary definitions, and largely consistent with the laws in the US. The horrendous violence the MSM was carrying on about was simply some trivial vandalism on that day before.

There are two problems here. First, the powers-that-be will consistently use this broader definition as a bait-and-switch as above. Trivial vandalism fits these dictionary definitions of the word 'violence', so always except the MSM to trumpet the world 'violence' in the headlines, but bury or ignore the fact that nothing close to "harm to people and animals" occurred. This is how we get these RWNJ fantasies about roving mobs of antifa thugs/etc/etc.

Second, it causes never ending idiocy among us radical direct action folks. The reason being that a lot of us try to define 'nonviolence' as "good", and 'violence' as "bad". Which bankrupts the language, as there is no longer a distinction between descriptive usage, and normative concepts.

Examples: Is hate speech 'violence'? The way a lot of us folks use the word, it is. Which means that use of the word 'violence' is no longer tied to (non verbal) actions. Is breaking a physical police barricade to avoid mass arrests 'violence'? To some of us it is not... because they feel it is morally justified. Which means use of the world 'violence' isn't describing actions at all, but instead is describing norms. Is stepping on and collapsing an anthill 'violence'. Well assuming the ants are harmed, it trivially meets the dictionary definition, but (almost) all of us will ignore this type of stuff.

What I always advise regarding the MSM is (a) consistently pointing out that the MSM is always going to conflate breaking things with harm to people and animals.

And (b) among us radicals, reserving the word 'violence' to a strictly descriptive usage: a vandal breaking a window is doing a 'violence' act; a Good Samaritan braking a window to save peeps from a fire is also doing a 'violent' act; an eviction is a violent act; a cop or civilian shooting another peep is a 'violent' act, regardless of the context. And... then discuss what 'violent' acts we will are (if any), or are not, willing to reach a consensus on as our "rules of engagement".

Obviously not what I was saying at all. That example was constructed as a trivial example where speech alone could justify violence, an extreme scenario where everyone can agree that that is a scenario that would justify violence. I mean in that same post I said that the civil rights movement in the sixties would be justified in using violence. So of course the re-institution of slavery isn't some minimum threshold required to justify violence.

Annual reminder that SenorKeeed considers filling out the census as a form of slavery, so he is speaking more broadly than you might think.

How wild is it that I can’t tell if it’s a joke or something Libertarians actually believe.

You in for a treat

I don't think that "mild violence" should be a tactic that is legitimate at all. Violence should either be morally justified or not, and the circumstances under which violence should be legitimate ought to be extreme. If only mild violence is justified then it's hard to argue that speech couldn't accomplish the same goal. Which is why right minded people ought to be against Trump's instigation and legitimization of violence, and should be against violence directed towards the right as well.

And no, whatever Fox News is doing to influence elections across the country does not justify violence against its hosts and employees. They're an opinion journalism outlet, their whole purpose is to influence elections. People shouldn't murder Tucker Carlson, abduct his wife, or burn down his house. Hot take, I know.

You're still not understanding the game theory concepts at play. Trying to cooperate when the other side is always defecting leads to some of the worst outcomes possible.

Protest including peacefully breaking the law, obstruction etc is more than acceptable.


Then again, knocking on tucker's door is more like cooperation than defection

Peaceful trespassing/occupying Fox News offices, absolutely acceptable. "Mildly" physically assaulting Fox News employees or threatening violence, no I don't think that's OK.

Of course.

I don't understand your post in context of your quote. I was discussing how certian groups of peeps interally use their own words to discuss things. I can't imagine what the jaywalking laws are in some particular jurisdiction could ever look to seen to be relevant... or any other laws for that matter.

lmao, holy **** there’s some gold in the 2p2 archhives

Dr Blasey Ford still can't go home or back to work. I'm not crying for TC.
But instead of loudspeaker threats they should sing Christmas carols. (Or Hanukkah and Kwanza dittys) Night after night.

So that's a no then? If Abrams catches Kemp in votes, but Brian Kemp declares himself Governor and then summons the police to squash any resistance while Fox News cheers him on, the morally justified thing to do is to lay down and take it?

Stop strawmanning the abduction crap and tell us when YOU personally think it's acceptable to do anything besides use words. Because my perception is if you don't think it's ok now you probably never will.

The threat of violence is already behind literally every single law on the books. You're endorsing state violence over civilian violence as an intrinsic value judgment. Congrats, your Jackboot membership sticker is in the mail.

Your description of Fox News is an absurd understatement. They are the direct information dissemination agency of the Presidency and the GOP political machine. As such, they reflect and bear responsibility for the violence and rhetoric that has emanated from the right. Feel free to dispute any of this.

Yea in the same way that war is peace and freedom is slavery.

Exactly. I bristled a bit when huehue said it was bad strategically for the left to retaliate to growing right-wing intransigence on race, governance, democracy by -- for instance -- pounding on Tucker Carlson's door. I think he means it's bad political optics, which maybe. It might be bad tactically in the short term. The long game, strategically, though -- it's almost unquestionable now why the left is getting curb stomped by the right. And it's because the left is continuously trying to cooperate. Holistically, the right is playing basically game-theory optimal to maximize their interests by continuously defecting. Until the left retaliates, we're just going to get grifted from, abused, silenced, manipulated, imprisoned, shot, whatever.

We can assume banging on Tucker's door won't move the needle much but big picture, Trump egging on ****ing biker's to storm the border and play vigilante border patrol while the left organizes boycotts is just hideously asymmetrical, the right is just goring us because we're bad at this. And we're bad at this because of how deep the "but the social norms!" fretting is embedded into the left and how it's motivating endless cooperation that is never reciprocated and always defected.

No in the same way that hatred, dehumanising and violence are all to trumps advantage. It's cooperating with the disease he is spreading, not defecting from it.

What are you going to argue next - that the liberal/left should do things like take away peoples kids or commit mass murder because 'that's what they do' and we need to defect, not cooperate. It's a pathetic line of argument and absolutely nuts to take seriously.

I reject the premise that we are forced to choose between only two options: cooperation or violent resistance. In an analogy to the prisoner's dilemma I'm not arguing for cooperation, I'm arguing against the use of (unjustified) violence. But I think the notion that you can simplify this topic to an exercise in the iterated prisoner's dilemma is ridiculous on its face. It's merely a fancy way of setting up a false dichotomy.

It's not a strawman. Someone in this thread have said that Carlson morally deserves to have his house burned down and another person said that Carlson morally deserves to have his door broken in and wife abducted. You know, mild violence.

And no, I don't think that the proper response to a razor thin election going one way or another is violence. The proper response is lawsuits, journalistic exposes about what happened and the injustice of what happened, etc. Basically the response that happened to the 2000 presidential election.

I agree that Fox News bears some responsibility for amplifying Trump's endorsement and encouragement of violence. I don't agree that violence is the moral response to that.

The proper response when someone tries to fight you is neither lay down and take the beating nor beat him to the brink of death yourself. It's to hit him back, followed by physically restraining him until he stops hitting you.

Apply this principle to politics.

You admitted in your last few posts you have no real ideas or alternatives, so sure, using iterated prisoner's dilemma is a simplified construct for understanding the problem. You keep saying there are better means to justice other than banging on Tucker's door (which I agree is sort of probably sub optimal) but then all of your ideas really don't sound drastically different than endless cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma game. I guess somewhere in your mind you've worked out that it's way too simple a frame and you have a grander vision here but it seems to remain unarticulated, so again, your only real presence here seems to simply play guardian to the norms no one can really easily observe nor seems to care about. This isn't about you but I will point out you did the very predictable and common "but the norms" and everyone was like "we don't care, those aren't norms" and you grabbed the fainting couch that no one was reasonable or listening, but I think you missed the point: your norms are fantasies, don't exist, no one needs you standing guard on this.

We're not. The mathematically optimal approach is a mixed strategy having an emphasis on reciprocity. The most successful ones seem to be tit-for-tat based with a moderate forgiveness/mercy element built in to them. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Some of them asked questions that could be answered just by reading my previous posts. Some I addressed in my post to microbet earlier.

You asked about my privilege as a white male. Which is granted. Although to answer your question about anyone knowing who I am I could argue that I've appeared in photo on the front page of the local paper carrying a sign in the women's march. :P

But I thought the problem with your question was mostly just that it misses the point of my argument by taking a tiny bit of it and ignoring the context. I mentioned where I live as an example, not as a proof. The argument isn't merely that I, in all my privileged male whiteness, have never felt unsafe, it's that in general the level of politically motivated violence in the US is still really low. I made that point in the context of a larger argument which again I hope you will not ignore.