Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
If protesting activities includes such activities such as destroying property, looting, harming shop owners defending their stores / livelihoods, etc. then it's rioting.
The problems with these events are that I think there's three groups of people involved in most riots:
1. People who are generally peaceful who are there for the original purpose of the gathering and have no intention of doing anything violent and do not directly engage in it at all.
2. There's a segment in every population that will riot whenever the thin line between civilization and anarchy gets thin enough. I'm willing to bet the people in Montreal smashing windows and stealing guitars out of that one shop last night would be doing the exact same thing or similar if there was a riot after the Canadiens won a playoff round. Rioters of opportunity if you will.
3.There's people who fall in both categories. The meeting of the Venn diagram if you will. A supporter of the cause will always try to pretend this group is minimal and all the miscreants fall in group 2, and someone looking to dismiss or oppose a cause will try to paint everyone in attendance at the the overall event as part of this group.
Given crowd sizes and how hard these things are to analyze it's very difficult to determine how much of group 2 there is and how much of group 3. What is knowable is that in order for their to be riots there's strong elements of both groups present. Members of group 3 to rationalize the violence and members of group 2 to perpetuate it and keep it going.
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Which group are the anarchists whose main purpose is to take down society?
There is ample evidence that they have hijacked many of these protests and are using them to destroy everything they see.