But in the grand scheme of things this is indeed a weak justification.
Someone smarter than me wrote:
> Anarchists dedicated to nonviolent direct action are not opposed to all forms of property damage. It can be an effective strategy if the decision to do it involves all participants, the target chosen is one that will guarantee no one who is not part of the action could be injured, and the method used does not frighten the public.
> A simple example is the Food Not Bombs actions taken the night of August 19th... we spray-painted the outline of "dead” bodies on the ground, stenciled mushroom clouds with the word “Today?” and wheat-pasted "War is Murder for Profit" posters along the route that the weapons buyers and sellers would take from their hotel to the conference hall. taking credit for hundreds of dollars in graffiti damage to Boston University's property. Who did this frighten into the arms of the state? No one.
Rebecca Solnit wrote:
> I want to be clear that property damage is not necessarily violence. The firefighter breaks the door to get the people out of the building. But the husband breaks the dishes to demonstrate to his wife that he can and may also break her. It’s violence displaced onto the inanimate as a threat to the animate.
> Quietly eradicating experimental GMO crops or pulling up mining claim stakes is generally like the firefighter. Breaking windows during a big demonstration is more like the husband. I saw the windows of a Starbucks and a Niketown broken in downtown Seattle after nonviolent direct action had shut the central city and the World Trade Organization ministerial down. I saw scared-looking workers and knew that the CEOs and shareholders were not going to face that turbulence and they sure were not going to be the ones to clean it up. Economically it meant nothing to them.
https://www.foodnotbombs.net/a.%20Anarchist%20Cookbook%20int...
In any case, the (Cambridge English) dictionary's definition of "violence" remains "actions that are intended or likely to hurt people or cause damage" (you'll note that what firefighters might do is not intended to cause damage while vandalism obviously is), and the law indeed makes this a criminal offence for a reason.
I'm half expecting someone to seriously claim at some point that an instant death is not violence because there is no suffering...
I disagree that highly cited Solnit is engaging in "obviously dishonest mental gymnastics" and can be safely ignored. Now what?
Great, you found another definition of violence, let's apply your definition to your own example.
Note that your definition includes "intended or likely." For some reason you ignore the "intended to" when discussing firefighters. Firefighters are obviously intending to cause damage to a door they axe down. Why is this not violence and why is this not a criminal offense? It's violence per your definition.
Do you want to use the same word to describe, and justify the criminalization of, all things that can be described by this word? It sounds like you don't because you seem to want to indicate that a firefighter axing a door and a protester bricking a window are different things, and that one is bad and one is good.
If you're ok with using the same word to describe both, then there's not really a point in discussing whether something is violence or not - many things good and bad are violence, and so we don't need to determine if something is violence or not to determine if the action should be criminalized, we need to consider other factors.
If you're not ok with using the same word to describe both, then we need to engage in what you're erroneously describing as "goal post moving." It's actually just seeking to define what "violence" encapsulates. In this case your chosen definition from Cambridge probably isn't great. Though it's in a dictionary, we can always change the definitions of words if we like, it happens all the time. Cambridge describes our language, not defines it.
As to your final sentence I'm not sure the relevancy, nobody ever brought up suffering and its relation to violence, so far as I can tell.
Hmm, this is an excerpt from my previous comment: "you'll note that what firefighters might do is not intended to cause damage while vandalism obviously is". You do also seem not to understand the meaning of "intent"...
Anyway, this is obviously useless, and in a way illustrates the issue when trying to tackle extremism, which is that it is outside the bounds of logic and reason, so bye.
Because if that's the case, then vandals also dream of a platonic city that doesn't require statements to be made through thrown rocks in order to achieve systemic justice.
> Anyway, this is obviously useless, and in a way illustrates the issue when trying to tackle extremism, which is that it is outside the bounds of logic and reason, so bye
It saddens me that when you find someone you disagree with, you assume they're simply irrational lunatics and thus not worth paying attention to.
And it's interesting to me that when 'violence' is used on this specific topic, it seems to only be used to label the reaction of the protesters and not the underlying issue they're protesting about, which itself is also a form of violence.
> the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
Unless the latter is the point, consider an edit that addresses my point directly. I am only human. It is possible that there is a flaw in my reasoning. It is possible coffee did not hit me yet.
As written, this is not an argument at all.
What the comment does in its original form is draw attention to the nonsensical cowardice of refusing to take a stand on any issue. "There's no such thing as good violence" has you condemning slave revolutions for example. "There's no such thing as hate speech" refuses to acknowledge the forces and choices that led to historical atrocities and abdicates power to notice and prevent them. There's no future in this enlightened centrism, nothing to refute because it refuses to take a stand.