Also, beware the false equivalence between smashing a store window and stealing some crap vs. actually attacking a human being. They will use the word "violence" to describe both, rather than get into a definition war with them, just keep the distinction clear.

You mean like this: https://www.cleveland19.com/story/32814897/men-chant-black-l...

Yes, that is what I am talking about. That is actual violence.

I really do not think that most willing to smash a bunch of windows would hesitate to attack you if you stand between them and said windows.

That's a strange view to hold. For most people there's a significant cognitive difference between being willing to destroy objects and being willing to attack people.

Not once they're part of a mob there isn't.

Don't engage with the trolls!

It's a bad faith argument you're arguing against, which I'm sure you see, just want to call it out.

Thanks for calling me a troll rather than engaging with my arguments, really mature of you.

Sure let me engage then.

Why should anyone engage with your arguments when they are easily debunked both on principle, and with evidence widely available online? Why should anyone engage with your arguments when they are made in bad faith?

More to the point, can you demonstrate that you aren't trolling?

We are not talking simply about destroying objects but about a specific act of vandalism that often happens during rioting.

Attacking a human being, smashing a window, and attacking a human being in order to smash the window behind him are three very different things.

I never claimed otherwise.

> I really do not think that most willing to smash a bunch of windows would hesitate to attack you if you stand between them and said windows.

Unless I misunderstood it this statement implies that a window smashing person would as well attack another humane being. It's not true. These acts are different, require different motivations and a different mentality/personality traits to follow through.

> Unless I misunderstood this statement implies that a window smashing person would as well attack another humane being

...if you attempt to stop them from smashing said window it is likely, yes. This happened a few times in USA in the past few months.

The acts are obviously different, if they were the same we would not have this discussion.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, repeated flamewar, and using HN primarily [1] for political and ideological battle. Those things aren't allowed here because they destroy what the site is for, which is curious, thoughtful conversation. To protect the site, we therefore have to ban accounts that do them—especially that primarily do them.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

> That's a strange view to hold.

Have you ever seen Antifa in action?

Here is a curated selection of the logical failures in your two line comment:

* saying that economic circumstances are "oppressive," then trying to draw this to "violence"

* a claim that if a thief steals all of your stuff, you "starve" -- please give an example of one person who "starved" because BLM looters stole their stuff

* implying that being in a situation where you are "starving" is the same as actually being violently attacked, i.e. shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, etc.

>>* a claim that if a thief steals all of your stuff, you "starve" -- please give an example of one person who "starved" because BLM looters stole their stuff

You are 100% sure that nobody who lost a job because his place of work was destroyed in riots is not starving? Not everybody is so privileged to have enough savings to support himself after loosing a job.

Of course I'm not 100% sure of that, but there is a long sequence of events between smashing a window and getting to that outcome, unlike bashing a guy's face in with a crowbar where the consequence is guaranteed within milliseconds. The two acts are not equal and attempts to equate them are either idiotic or in bad faith.

Once upon a time in Germany there was a special night, it was called "Crystal Night"[1]. It got it's name because of all the glass from the smashed windows lying on the ground. There were some people arguing that it was violence, but some said that those people were either idiotic or arguing in bad faith.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht was a pogrom in which people specifically targeted Jews with the full backing of the state.

Surely the more apt analogy is the systemic violence our state inflicts on Black people, rather than the protests that arose in response to it.

No, mask wearing people (supported by a large part of the political elite) destroying property of a specific social-economic class is the more apt analogy today in the USA.

Those people were met with state violence, so no it’s not.

Ever heard the term "anarcho-tyranny" ?

I'd have gone with the hundreds of Jews murdered that night and subsequent tens of thousands sent to concentration camps in the aftermath as the important violence there, honestly.

You are right, some people just fail to see that the broken windows were just the beginning and what followed was even more vile. The mental gymnastics some people do to downplay violence only because it might look bad for their side is astonishing. The value of a human life for them is nothing more than a sacrificial pawn on their ideological chessboard.

No, but think of the property that was destroyed!

> we take whatever measures we have to to get rid of it for the greater good of society

Justifying around the "greater good" is so obviously fraught and subjective.

And since the workers in tech are overwhelmingly liberal, they will undoubtedly bias policies of mass communication platforms to disallow opposition.

Oddly enough people so concerned with minority representation will steam-roll minorities when they make blind "greater good" majoritarianism the norm.

And nowadays the definition of "harm" has been trivialized so far that really practically anything is a target.