That still doesn't make looting self-defense.

If you see the community, or the people, as a single organism. Then yes it is reacting in harmful way to an attack. And it is hard to control where the harm is directed.

You’re talking about human beings who are responsible for their own actions.

And yet people generalize the action of a few to the whole protest.

Yes, especially when they say things like, "If you see the community, or the people, as a single organism..."

it's like you're actively trying not to understand my comment?

Not at all. If looting and vandalism is “the action of a few”, then it doesn’t make sense to characterize it as “self-defense” on behalf of some collective “organism”. It’s like you switched sides and started arguing my point in the middle of the argument.

> If looting and vandalism is “the action of a few”, then it doesn’t make sense to characterize it as “self-defense” on behalf of some collective “organism”.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree, opportunists don't exist without a crowd.

What is the point of your comments? You mention the community as an organism that can't control where the harm is directed, that is acting in self-defense. But the people looting, breaking windows and throwing stones are individuals that chose to participate in violent riots. They are not acting in self-defense.

The point of my comment is that you will always have bad apples, doesn't make the whole field rotten.

Sure. If you mistreat a dog for long enough and then let it loose in a playground it may very well react by mauling random children. Usually the end result is the dog getting euthanized because it’s not capable of living peaceably within society anymore, so I’m not sure that’s really the analogy you want to go with here. I would expect grown adult humans to have better judgment.

why not? In a lot of authoritarian state this is what happens. Look at Hong Kong.