From Twitter's rules: "You also may not affiliate with organizations that — whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform — use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes."
What Twitter really means to address in its rule isn't "violence" but rather "violence outside the accepted rules for when violence can be used." But fuzzy thinking has caused it to bury the concept in a nonsensical universalism.
That may work as polemical statement but is utterly disconnected from the reality of how power and society actually work. No, you are not kept in your place bc of the threat of violence. The law works only because so many comply with it despite the lack of coercive capacity instead of because - the justice system is simply incapable of policing everybody. We need to acknowledge the role of disciplinary power and biopower. For example, we self-discipline being subject to hierarchical surveillance, normalizing judgment, and examination, and also the productive. You don't run around naked outside, because the police could ticket (or, re violence, jail) you for public indecency, but because you dear the judgment of your peers, the potential loss of access to opportunities etc.
War is means to an end, and that end is a political one.
If you can diplomat your way to your political goal without the need for violence, then that is awesome and should always be the first option over bloodshed.
When the US Army fought the Nazis and imperial Japan, were they “promoting violence against civilians to further their causes”?
I don't think you can say the US Army is promoting any violence against civilians, but it is harming civilians, even though it's not promoting that.
Copy-pasting from a previous comment (made by me):
> Here is a list of engagements: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_mili...
> Taking "2017 Shayrat missile strike" as a random example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Shayrat_missile_strike) shows that specific mission had at least 9 civilian casualties.
> So even if not intended, the US army are in fact using violence against civilians (like probably most armies in the world)
Taking "2017 Shayrat missile strike" as a random example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Shayrat_missile_strike) shows that specific mission had at least 9 civilian casualties.
So even if not intended, the US army are in fact using violence against civilians (like probably most armies in the world)
Last week's tl;dr:
Iran should be wiped off the map
-- President Trump
I see why they'd be excluded from this rule. And I don't really care to put my opinion forward here.
Perhaps other verbage in their TOS excludes entities like the US Army.
It's mostly interesting to me to consider what the rules actually mean, and why they're there. It's clearly not intended for entities like the US Army, but why? Why leave the TOS so vague on an important topic? I guess it's just a blanket to cover any appearance of condoning terrorism on their platform.