If you don't use quotes you are legitimising the "protests", which is a political view as well (but I guess you wouldn't care about that one)

The comment didn't need to mention it at all, especially considering that it was preceded by "I remember hearing." It didn't add anything to the point about security and it goes against the spirit of the site.

They should have just called them riots, then. "I remember hearing that in certain protests a couple years ago" or "I remember hearing that in certain riots a couple years ago" would both work. The wording as-is is provocative for no actual benefit to the point.

Whether you agree with their position or not, it's not really relevant to this discussion to draw attention to the ethics of those protests/riots.

Using quotes is sarcasm and mockery.

It is not a good look.

It costs nothing to be polite. Even if your political beliefs revere rudeness, leave it at home here.

Believing that mass looting stores isn't a legitimate form of protesting is a controversial political view now?

It's not that it's a controversial political view, it's that it's really not relevant to this discussion.

Here's a thought: if there is both protesting and rioting going on, we don't have to say this is either protesting or rioting. This implies the venn diagram of the protesters and rioters is a circle. It could be, but there also could be no overlap whatsoever. Pretending it is necessarily a circle -- they are one and the same -- is asserting a political point of view.

(Also, this makes it easy to delegitimize any protest: send some looters. As soon as anyone loots simultaneous with and adjacent to the protests, it is now a riot.)

> we don't have to say this is either protesting or rioting

This is true. The problem is, no one is doing this WRT any of the "civil disturbances" that happened over the last few years.

> this makes it easy to delegitimize any protest: send some looters

Or anyone willing to make the protest cross the line from "peaceful" to "violent."

Of course, these caveats can be just as easily applied to events in the midwest as to events in the capitol.

Odd coincidence considering the video that's going to be released in a few hours.