Ask Lemmy

If violence isn't a solution then why does the government use it?

Killing in the defense of others is a legal defense to homicide.

If the guy were attacking people with a machete, nobody would dream of prosecuting the person who put him down.

The fact that he's doing it slightly more slowly, but on a massively larger scale should not change anything.

If any other avenue existed: it would long have been tried and replicated. They have the judiciary, they have the legislative bodies, they have the senates, they have the presidencies/head of states whatever. There is no influence left except appealing to their literal and undeniable physical humanity

I think it all boils down to that nebulous concept of "the social contract". The most naive interpretation of the justice system is that it will provide justice when justice is demanded. It is, after all, called "the justice system". But what constitutes justice? And who receives it? We have already seen two separate supreme court decisions that state unequivocally that the police are neither obligated to serve nor protect people. We have also seen that young black men are 7 times more likely to be falsely convicted of serious crimes than young white men, so we know that the justice system does not work for all of us. We know that rich people get convicted far less often, and for far shorter sentences than poor people, and we know that the legal system saps the opportunity to acquire generational wealth from those who do get convicted.

It is illegal to shoplift $100 of groceries from a corporation, but it is perfectly legal for that same corporation to drive out competition and then raise prices, in essence stealing from the entire community. It is illegal to intentionally harm someone, but it is perfectly legal for a medical insurance company to deny coverage to paying customers for necessary medical intervention.

When justice is completely out of reach by legal means, the flimsy fiction of the social contract is voided. New York City has somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 murders per year, which means that there have probably been 5 or 6 other people who have been murdered in the city since Brian Thompson was shot. Are the police putting the same effort into tracking the killers of those people as they are into Brian Thompson's murderer? The reality is that the vast majority of us are intentionally excluded from the halls of power. The American Declaration of Independence makes the bold claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Does the present situation in this country feel to you like equality? Because to me, it feels like there is an owner class, and a peasant class, and brother... we ain't the owners.

I am down for it. If more of it happens I'll laugh just as hard every time.

Because fuck em. They've spent the last half century recreating The Gilded Age. If now is when the bill comes due. Good. Happy I'm alive to see it instead of just reading about it.

The main point of any government is a mediator between people.

When the government is corrupt and not only lets the powerful break the laws, but rewrites them in their favor, people realize it.

They stop following rules because they know others aren't. If someone stops them in the act, they feel innocent because they didn't complete the act. If no one stops them, they legitimate believe it was allowed, because they see people flagrantly break the rules with no consequences on the daily.

That's what today's elite don't get, they're stopping the peaceful process we all agreed was better than violence, because they have a monopoly on legal violence. But eventually it just means no one follows the rules, and 99% of us don't have much to lose these days.

A society that starts acting that way quickly becomes uncontrollable.

Like we saw four years ago, it only takes a relatively small amount of people in one spot to really be uncontrollable. A mob of 5,000 people is just as unstoppable as a hoard of 5,000 zombies. At that point pain compliance is the only thing that can get thru to them, and there's always a chance the mob fights back instead.

That's why if cops think the mob has a chance of having guns, they immediately back down.

If BLM had marched with ARs, shit might have changed.

How do you feel about the French Revolution? Storming the Bastille to kill the governor was an act of vigilante murder, and there's an entire holiday celebrating it.

Violence should only ever be a last resort when all else has failed. But there have been numerous times in history where we consider violence to have been a just last resort.

The hard part is recognizing when it's truly time for that last resort. I can't say for sure where the line is drawn. Maybe it can never be clearly drawn in the moment and will just have to be something for future historians to judge.

When the justice system no longer provides justice, justice will be sought elsewhere.

The closest thing to a real answer that i can come up with is to remove money from politics. That itself seems near impossible a goal, but in order to start making better decisions you have to improve the decision making process that got us to this point.

All I know is that jury nullification is legal and is there for a reason.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm a rather intelligent person. I have done a lot of thinking and reading about these problems. I have tried to consider ways that might change their minds without violence and come up with little.

The rich NEED to be afraid of the poor. Or there needs to be no rich. Those are the options for a prospering society.

but what other option is there in a situation where someone seeks to make an impact in this way?

You can form an organization that gathers evidence and levies lawsuits in an effort to expose and stop their abhorrent practices. You just need to make it your sole purpose in life. It only took Rob Bilott 30 years to get DuPont to stop knowingly poisoning 99.9% of all life on planet earth. DuPont was even fined 3% of their annual profits from a single year. Other than that? Nothing. They have their hooks into the politicians, the legislators, the judges, the regulatory agencies, and the police forces. How do you fight that without making it your entire life's work?

There are so many more of us than there are of them that a general strike would bring about swift change without us stooping to their level of harming others to gain and wield power.

Unfortunately, we’d have to stop all the infighting and work together. We couldn’t be bothered to do that for the latest US presidential election, so I’m not sure we’d do it in this case.

I have even less hope that violence and threats of violence will do any good at this point. They have so much money, they can buy invincibility. And that’ll be even easier under the next administration. Vigilantism is a feel-good revenge fantasy rather than it leading to anyone’s life improving. If it was effective it would be much more common. We’ve got the guns in America, but their use has not yet caused a utopia.

Over the last several years, I have had opportunities or at least contemplated opportunities to make lots of money while exploiting others or being a completely useless finance bro.

The thing that keeps me from moving in those directions is moral character. If you can’t bring yourself to bullshit your fellow human and take from them to enrich yourself without providing any real value, you won’t get as rich as a CEO. Think of all those get rich quick YouTubers who do nothing but sell digital bullshit or ebooks about how to sell ebooks or some other digital bullshit to get rich quick.

There are, of course, exceptions, but what did Brian Thompson really do for society? Moreover, what harm did he cause to society?

These people know they are doing the wrong thing and are cashing in on their ability to take from society while enriching themselves. In the context of health care, they’re literally hurting and killing people.

Remember when the arguments against nationalized health care were mostly about how we would have death panels? How fucking ironic.

Yeah it's so weird that more than 30 countries have managed to implement public healthcare without assassinating CEOs. Mind boggling.

Without knowing why he did what he did, we can speculate, I can not judge him for his actions.

I can make assumptions, as many have done, as to why he felt it justified to take the life of another.

If we are to assume the shooter to be sound of mind and logic, we can only assume his actions to have been taken in a just morality.

He must have known that killing one man could never right or prevent the wrongs he experienced. He didn't kill someone irrefutably innocent. He didn't kill a random person. He didn't kill the messenger. He killed the person at the top to send a message. Points off for his message not being excruciatingly clear in motive. Points for his execution, thus far.

He scared people of a similar position to try and wipe their names from the internet, lol they don't know how the internet works. They are scared, but they will need to be more scared into correcting the wrong that the shooter experienced. They have operated with the feeling of impunity from the consequences of their actions. If one death can correct the course of things, that death is justified. Unfortunately, we do not live in a just world.

If his, or other's ambitions are greater, there can be a horrible justice done in this world if those in power are unwilling to do what is right.

I don't want another person to die when they can be saved, but I don't cry for a life lost to save many more.

Profit < people. If you feel otherwise, you deserve a one gun salute.

Don't kill people and don't be a dick, but I wouldn't see or say a damn thing if you do the right thing in the wrong way.

I don't think vigilante violence is a good idea but if some of the murders in the US are targeted at billionaires instead that's fine by me. If the system wasn't fucked this wouldn't have been news.

imo, the cancerous greed is unchecked capitalism.

when the whole system is designed to gain power thru money, it's money that is needed to fight back. this is all just my two cents but, people that do not vote for increasing minimum wage policies are losing their biggest bargaining chip.

I feel like people are finally starting to see why Batman has so many interesting villains.

Six words:

soap box

ballot box

ammo box

more words than that:

First you try talking. You campaign, you protest, you petition. None of that has worked during my lifetime.

So you turn up to the polls to vote. Because of how elections work in this country there are only two actual choices, one wants to actively destroy the healthcare industry and the other isn't all that bothered by the destruction of the first. Everybody in congress owns stock and they get paid for fucking over the citizens. When the citizens say "give us healthcare" and the Republicans say "no" and the Democrats say "No. 🏳️‍🌈 #BLM" We're kind of past it.

The only option left is violence. Isn't it amazing how much unifying power there is to be found in the act of putting three little bullets in one little executive?

I've never been one to outright support vigilante justice on account of believing that everyone ought to face the same trials and go through the same systems to ensure justice.

I'm not an idiot, though, and I realize a system where our rich are held accountable to the same degree as our poor is incredibly unrealistic/borderline impossible.

"When peace is impossible, violence is inevitable." Paraphrasing, but given the system we find ourselves in, this was just a matter of time.

"And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure."

Both quotes from Thomas Jefferson, which isn't to say that that it's true - only that our founders expected us to defend our liberties with violence if necessary.

Nothing has changed OP. We each protect what is important to us individually.

For the assassin, that meant dealing with the threats to him and his family directly. (Or maybe he was just crazy, or maybe both)

You're not judge, jury, or executioner so don't even try to be.

This is an age old topic and there is no right answer to it. You need to decide where you draw the line. Unpersecuted vigilantism will lead to chaos, on the other hand, we live in an unjust and structural violent system where rich people kill by signing papers and poor, desperate people die. They sometimes even vote for the elite before dying.
I glued myself to the street to protest our government not acting on our planet heating up. I knew I broke the law but I felt like I needed to. It was a rough experience, still I don't regret it because I did what felt necessary to me. The guy shooting the CEO probably feels the same, and pathetic "Proud Boys" chasing immigrants do so as well. For me, violence against other people is a line I don't see myself crossing. But I can think of scenarios where I would understand people resorting to it.