Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
I also think pretty much everything people say about the violence of the far-left is based on a certain amount of ignorance and misunderstanding. This isn't really an accusation because the far-left activist community actually has thought a lot, lot more about the use of violence as political tool than pretty much any other group. There's a ton more nuance to political violence (and really violence in general) than people commonly realize. [...]
One of the things that make the far-left and far-right so opposite is their relationship to violence. For the far-left it's considered a necessary evil, the use of which is to be constantly analyzed and examined, as is the question of valid targets for certain levels of violence.
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"I'm sorry, sir, I'd really love to allow you to go to that pro-Trump event, but I'm afraid it's necessary to spray mace in your eyes and hit you repeatedly with this club. I just want you to know, I take no pleasure in this; I've done a lot of soul-searching and considered the political importance of violence and this is where I landed".
In seriousness, I really think this is an incredibly dangerous and hugely misguided way of looking at this problem. Again, it seems rooted in a justification for the use of assault on the basis that the cause motivating you is just and righteous. You want to do
good, as you see it, and you think that the best way to accomplish this is to hurt the people standing in your way. This is hardly the first time that rationale has been applied; I'm sure there were relatively few Spanish monks who actually
wanted to torture people with thumb screws and the potro, but they thought there was a divine purpose to it all that utterly dwarfed any immediate suffering.
People don't generally perpetrate evil out of a desire to do evil. They do so because they think that they're trying to create a better world, and at the end of the day, in the service of righteousness, the ends justify the means.
As a separate issue, even if what you were saying were morally defensible, I still wouldn't agree at all that the vast majority of people perpetrating violence ostensibly on the basis of left-wing ideology have pondered its necessity or the philosophical underpinnings of using it in certain contexts. I don't think the guy who sent three people to hospital by smashing them in the face with a bike lock while wearing a ski mask did so after careful contemplation of the political justification of the use of force against anyone in a MAGA hat. At best, it's a convenient justification, but for the most part, it's just "they're bad, we're good, let's hurt them to make them stop saying things". Much of it is standard fare mob violence. Some people just suck.