Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jun 7 2023 10:32pm)
I did not claim that violence is never justified. Direct self-defense is an obvious exception. Furthermore, I don't even claim that there exist no circumstances under which political violence could ever be legitimate. All I said was that one side declaring their talking points to be the universal truth is not a sufficient justification for violence. In this specific case, there is no broad consensus on the existence of "systemic racism" (at least not in the way the contemporary lefty discourse understands it), and you will have a hard time arguing that peaceful approaches had already been exhausted by the time the BLM riots broke out.
Case in point: I would argue that Democrats' win in 2020 would have been larger if the Floyd protests had remained peaceful throughout. The looting, violence and the imagery of burning buildings allowed Trump and the GOP to muddy the waters on an issue on which the left/Democrats/black people initially had the undeniable moral high ground. They succeeded in making public opinion on BLM ultimately fall along the usual partisan lines, which imho allowed them to avoid electoral disaster. Without "fiery but mostly peaceful", chances are that you get a Dem majority post-2020 in which Biden has the votes to enact far more of the Democratic agenda.
It is an undeniable fact that black people are still systemically oppressed. To say otherwise admits you are not willing to look at objective facts. You can wax on about how the treatment is justified, but the fact is the treatment exists. You can normalize it six ways to sunday even down to the same city block and you will still come to the same conclusion.
Meanwhile, the treatment being protested against by right-wingers in relation to trans people is non-existant. There is no systemic attempt to turn kids trans. No systemic child abuse in the LGBT movement. No political interferrence in the medical process in favor of trans people outside of what is born out by peer reviewed medical evidence (and in fact there is a metric shit ton of inteferrence in direct opposition to the evidence).
These are objectively verifiable facts. There is no way to justify the right-wing bomb threats on Target because the thing they are protesting against DOES NOT EXIST. Meanwhile, even if you disagree with the violence that was around the Floyd protests, the treatment they were experiencing which precipitated the protests ACTUALLY EXISTS.
That's a critical distinction. If there was actual a pedo gang millions strong attempting to molest kids all across the country then violent resistance could be justified. But it doesn't exist. It is a fabrication. A lie. And as a result, any attempt to resist is morally wrong. See, morals aren't just about what you believe at the time when you willingly keep yourself ignorant.
This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Jun 7 2023 10:55pm