> Riots are extra-public because crowds riot rather than institutionalized groups such as parties or social movements. Riots are extra-state because they violate the state’s monopoly on violence. Riots are extra-legal because they are a form of unlawful assembly. Riots are extra-Parliamentary because they operate outside of the normal legislative process.
Then, by definition, a riot won’t have a durable justification, since its goals are fluid, it uses extraordinary methods, has no accountable leadership, and doesn’t seek enduring change.
Which I think is pretty fair. There's always bad actors who try to justify riots, but almost everyone agrees that they're bad - the "pro-riot" side of a discussion is usually along the lines of "you know, a violent crackdown just isn't going to work, so we'd better do suchandsuch or they'll keep on being angry".
I think you'd be surprised at how many (particularly young) people and leadership from organizations either refuse to denounce or outright condone rioting.
Many young people don't feel secure about their own lives. Priced out of property ownership, didn't find a serious partner to make family with, don't have a rewarding job. By supporting the rioters they feel like they are attacking a common enemy (people that are better off).
Except, it won't work. The rioters are destroying one of the last remaining pillars of the middle class - small businesses. Sure, Walmart and Amazon will be happy to take over the niche, with a private security force to replace the defunded police. But what it will mean for regular people is less meaningful jobs, more poverty, and even less security.
"Many young people don't feel secure about their own lives. Priced out of property ownership, didn't find a serious partner to make family with, don't have a rewarding job."
Good grief - by this logic the entire country would have been continually rioting during the great depression.
Many of the current rioters are rioting because it's fun and/or a way to get free stuff. No need to make it more complicated than that.
Yes and no. I think, some level of hardship is absolutely required in order to develop good personality traits. Sure, if you get too much, and it will break your back. But if you get too little, you grow up as a useless entitled narcissistic asshole, completely toxic to everyone around them.
I bet none of those rioters had to actually work their asses off to put the food on the table. Because once you do, you start respecting other businesses and won't go break their displays for fun.
How do you feel about events like the Stonewall Riots[1], where police historically assaulted LGBTQ+ people, and those people fought back? These people should have just accepted being beaten and arrested for being gay? That should have waited until legislation caught up with their rights?
I'm speaking specifically in the context of the riots we've been seeing over the last few months. To my knowledge the Stonewall riots did not result in the widespread destruction of uninvolved parties, vandalism, arson, etc. (there was some). It was a much smaller scale than what we're seeing now, which I think plays a part. It also had clear, actionable wants, something I think the recent movement lacks.
To answer your question, no I don't think every part of the Stonewall riots were moral or justified, but to some degree the end justifies the means and we look at it historically through that lens.
Refusal to denounce rioting can be problematic, but I'm not comfortable equating it with support. If people came by demanding that I denounce some random riot, I wouldn't do it, not because I'm pro-riot but because I reject the implication that the rioters have anything to do with me.
I've been quite surprised seeing how many people will condone rioting, but I'm still confident it's a small minority, shrinking to a barely existent minority for riots which can't plausibly be spun as honest protests.
Refusing to denounce rioting is almost always paired with something along the lines of "rioting is the language of the unheard" or "our organizations will not denounce any black person’s display of grief and/or rage", as is the literal case with one of the organizations from my hometown [0]. I cannot see that as anything but support. But trying to justify actions, you are, by definition, supporting those actions.
To be clear, it's the justification, not refusing to denounce.
I don't know if you've heard, but it's no longer enough to simply be "not in favor of riots", you must now be "actively anti-riots" — or so goes that other talking point.
I’m not surprised at all. This is a novelty for them. If this were a regular occurrence as in countries where rioting is socially mainstream they’d be singing a different tune.
The pro-riot side of the discussion also wishes to point out that by the legal definition of a riot, an assembly of three[1] or more people, where one of them engages in graffiti is... A riot.
By that definition, there isn't a single protest, that can't, in thirty seconds, be turned by a drunken idiot, an agent provocateur, or an undercover cop into a riot. (Which immediately justifies the use of flashbangs, firing less-lethal rubber-coated bullets into crowds, and flooding the entire street with tear gas.)
The Hong Kong protests, under American law, would be considered riots. The folks tagging federal CCP buildings would, under American law, have been eligible for up to ten years in federal prison. [2]
Strangely enough, most of people demanding for crackdowns against domestic protests are also endorsing the protests in Hong Kong.
I'm referring to clear, unambiguous riots, where people run around looting stores or burning buildings down. Misuse of the American legal definition is a separate issue, and not one I'm interested in discussing.
There are very few clear, unambiguous riots. What is a protest that has a few looters or arsonists operating within it?
I've seen plenty of events here in the Pacific Northwest that police have labelled riots that I would in no way call a riot. I think that the legal definition very much plays into the discussion, because it gives the police the power to tell the media that a riot occurred.
There was one in Chicago just over the weekend. Police declarations of riots are much more common than what you or I would call a true riot, but I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that riots are a non-issue.
I think that the legal definition of a riot is incredibly relevant to this conversation.
It's one that's applied in practice, as justification for police violence, over and over again.
In practice, a lot of the time, peaceful protests turn into 'clear, unambiguous riots' after police violence starts. Generally speaking, protesters try to police themselves - but when you're half-blind, stumbling away from clouds of teargas, you aren't going to do anything to stop the idiots who took advantage of the chaos to start throwing bricks at store windows.
Now riots and civil disorder are there to be exploited by the ruling class leading up to elections until the desired result is changed; they are in power.
Just like the noise leading into 2008, complete with celebrity moms and widows, to protests and destruction of property, once the political goal was achieved the money behind these people are groups were removed along with any attention directed their way through the press. The press has sufficient numbers who operate strictly at the order of political influences, people vastly underestimate this influence.
The protests against police violence in Portland have continued every night since George Floyd was murdered. There has been a lot of attention at times and crowds swelled to the thousands. There is no organized money behind this, especially now that the groups are much smaller (and the police brutality and intimidation has risen to new levels).[1]
Pretty sure the ruling class would prefer for these protests to go away as quickly and quietly as possible.
Lets just take Amazon for example. They donated to organizations(ACLU/NAACP etc). Likely non profits that support the POC communities. No one is paying protesters to be in the streets.
There definitely is an informal and growing consensus on just riot theory.
I hypothesize that the treatment of riots by liberal (classical sense) scholars has been based on their rationalistic optimism and a belief that domestic political problems can be solved non-violently. If they can't, that throws the entire liberal (classical sense) project into question, and opens exhilarating, dangerous doors on both the left and right.
I personally hope that the view that violent riots are illegitimate wins out, but I am not planning my life around that hope.
Addendum: I should note that, if one were opposed to the liberal (classical sense) project, the encouragement of riots (regardless of them being left or right) would be an excellent strategy.
> If they can't, that throws the entire liberal (classical sense) project into question, and opens exhilarating, dangerous doors on both the left and right.
Only if they _can_ be solved with violence. I'd argue that even if a particular issue can be solved with violence, the net result will generally be worse than the status quo as the violence will rarely be limited to such issues.
I'd think that for an undirected mob, violence that was a net beneficial effect would be even more rare than violence by a well regulated army. E.g. U.S. military violence during WWII was arguably a net benefit. What would be an example of mob violence that led to a net benefit?
It's not uncommon where I am from for plain clothes police to start riots. That delegitemizes the protestors and legitemizes violent action by the state. Pretty anti-liberal (classical sense :)
That's not exactly an undirected mob, but police and edgy teens seem to have an aligned interest.
Additionally in the UK, the police often infiltrates protest organisations. They are often near the very top. The official line is that they cannot use entrapment but they are encouraged to help out and assist activists.
Any activist movement should consider themselves hacked and should look at.amd around the leadership for the site of the vulnerability.
> What would be an example of mob violence that led to a net benefit?
The American revolution, the February revolution, the Red River Rebellion, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, the Chech republic, Poland, do I need to keep going?
All of them had violence inflicted on property, and most of them had violence inflicted on people.
Were one of those events happen in your town, your police department, your mayor, your governor, and your president would without hesitation call them 'a violent riot'. Your news anchors would be clutching their pearls, showing pictures of broken Amazon Go storefront windows, bookended by testimonies of police officers, and terrified citizens who'd just like the world to go back to the way it was last week.
French revolution started with a riot. While the terror state that came soon after is condemned, it was the violent spark that realized the Enlighment ideals in Europe.
1830 was a riotous year globally. Belgian independence started with a riot, and was successful in a sense, carving out a place for libertarian optimism and industrial expansion from a war-weary continent.
These are both fairly conventional pop-culture interpretations. But maybe similar developments would have happened without the flash in the pan of some undirected mob breaking things.
Life is complicated and lines are grey. For example, while I am in general opposed to rioting, I am deeply sympathetic to the miners in the coalfield war:
I would argue that the French Revolution was functionally fundamentally, albeit cryptically, illiberal (classical sense) with De Sade as the crux. And to Napoleon as the illiberal tyrant that came out of the chaos of that time.
After the fall of the french empire, my country kept the new laws, the new roads, and the new social structure. We just got rid of the french who had been running things and put locals in their place.
What about a lynch mob murdering a violent criminal (I'm specifically thinking of a pedophile because culturally that's one of the 'worst') who got off due to a technicality? How is that not a small scale version of state violence? Society has a problem that was unable to be solved through normal, peaceful ways, so violence needed to happen.
Also, just throwing this out there for people in the back who seem to forget: You cannot commit violence on things. You can't murder a building, or a car, or a city. Only the people who may be inside those things at the time. They're objects and in a riot become symbols ("we destroy the rich by destroying what makes them rich") but they're not people. A riot can be destructive without being violent.
This is a weird take. Is an armed robbery not violence if the victim gives up their money and doesn’t actually get shot? A riot is violent because it caries the threat of violence for anyone who tries to stop it, in the same way that a stick-up is violent because the alternative to losing your money is getting shot. If you limit someone’s choices via force, that is violence.
So in your opinion, someone can only commit violence against people? So outside of personal injury behavior cannot be violent? I'm sorry to say I disagree with you. (To be clear, this is not an endorsement for or against either "side" in the current culture war in the US.)
I hate to be that guy that quotes the dictionary, but let's start with dictionary.com[0]:
Violence (noun):
- swift and intense force:
the violence of a storm.
- rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment: to die by violence.
- an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws:
to take over a government by violence.
Now, Wikipedia [1]:
Violence is "the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy". Less conventional definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation."
What about domestic abuse violence that doesn't even involve physical abuse? From WebMD [2]:
Domestic abuse is more than just hitting, shoving, and other physical attacks. It’s a pattern of controlling behaviors. The goal always is to get and keep power over an intimate partner.
To be clear, I'm not comparing these riots to domestic violence. What I'm trying to do is debunk this argument that somehow because these rioters aren't hurting anyone that they're not committing acts of violence. These acts of destruction are very much acts of violence. Words are important and the truth matters. Let's call this what it is, violence and destruction. Just because people might not be being targeted doesn't mean that they aren't getting hurt and traumatized. And yes, this is violence.
I've heard complexity science folks entertain the premise that a riot (or any non-equilibrium social order) is perhaps like a phase transition in the social strata of complex matter (like how boiling or combustion is a phase transition in the physical, molecular strata of matter).
A forest isn't a forest if it's always on fire, but the system of the forest is often in equilibrium only when forests are swept with fire every so often. A similar logic might be part of a complete political theory.
> I should note that, if one were opposed to the liberal (classical sense) project, the encouragement of riots (regardless of them being left or right) would be an excellent strategy.
It seems absurd on its face to claim that only classical liberals oppose riots on theory grounds.
A lot of people in this thread seem to have some false dichotomy in their mind - either you are peacefully protesting or you are rioting by burning random cars and destroying uninvolved storefronts. There is another option: peacefully protest but try to occupy administrative buildings and only use violence as a response to police violence. This is what happened in many post-USSR countries in the so called "colour revolutions", Euromaidan, etc. In particular in Euromaidan there were heavy clashes with police, but no destruction of private property (at least not deliberately by protesters). Police cars were burned, paving stone, garbage bins, etc were used for fighting/barricades, but this doesn't hurt anyone in particular the way destroyed car or store would. Meanwhile in US/Western Europe riots are for some reason seem to be directed not at government and police but at uninvolved car/store owners.
There's also a false dichotomy between peaceful and violent.
There are non-violent, non-peaceful protests where protesters are noisy, block traffic, etc. Many of the speakers I've heard have expanded on the phrase "No Justice, No Peace" to describe how they'd like their protests to be remembered not as peaceful, but as non-violent. One speaker I recall saying, "This is a peaceful protest! Wait, no no, it's not that. It's a non-violent protest! We're here because if there is no justice, then there is no peace."
In the examples you gave the state was the obvious enemy to the people rioting. In the US right now there seems to be a heavy focus on property owners, business owners being as much the enemy of the people as the government is.
I would argue that both CHAZ and that siege with the national park that happened a few years ago would fall into that third category of "non-collateral violence", for lack of better words.
My guess is that in Eastern Europe because private business was rare and was an exception and somewhat counterrevolutionary it was seen as part of them of their estate. In the West people who see business as part of the problem of wealth disparity see business as anathema to their promiseland where the community is everything and private enterprise is a vestige of capitalism so it has to go down for participating.
Except that’s only the view of radicals and the normal people protesting and not protesting see a problem in that since they do not believe the whole system is bad, but rather needs some reform.
In more concise terms in the East they were fighting to get capitalism, in the West some fight to defeat capitalism.
"However, the police force denied allegations its undercover officers were there on Monday to provoke the crowd and instigate violence."
"Police came under fire Tuesday, when a video surfaced on YouTube that appeared to show three plainclothes police officers at the protest with bandanas across their faces. One of the men was carrying a rock."
"In the video, protest organizers in suits order the men to put the rock down, call them police instigators and try unsuccessfully to unmask them."
These events are not commonly believed when there isn't clear cut video evidence, though. Property destruction will be, by default, blamed on the protestors rather than police instigators. In this case the police were easily identified simply because they were sloppy and forgot to not wear police issue boots. Had the video not proved that and that they intended to commit violence, this would have been a wild conspiracy theory.
I don't quite understand why this practice isn't extremely illegal in every country that has pretenses towards democracy. It's a form of fraud.
The government and the police permit themselves to commit fraud, as it is often a convenient means by which to achieve their objectives (i.e. the police can lie to you, but you cannot lie to the police).
If I pointed a gun at your head, I'm being non-violent, no? Of course, you might reasonably shoot me if I tried.
Threatening anything, by compromising the security of something, is not neutral; occupying buildings is not either. Neither is wearing a mask and showing up in large, angry groups: even if you do no harm, you are still threatening. Even if the majority commit no crime, they might provide cover for those who do.
To me, the whole appeal of protest in this form is less about an accurate expression of feeling, opening up and appealing to the out-group, than it is about threatening harm, often is a sloppy, undifferentiated manner (e.g. public stores/car are at risk, messages are mixed).
I'm very very surprised that the number one parallel has yet to ever be mentioned in these kinds of discussions: the 2005 Paris riots.
French police were held responsible for the deaths of North African teenagers and riots broke out all over suburban Paris that caused waaay more property damage than anything we've seen in America this summer. French media framed the entire issue as brown people showing their true colors by not posing any 'coherent' message to French political establishment, eg. no slogans or demands. French politics sense has drifted further Rightward, further edifying the French political ideal that if you wanna live in France you better play by our rules (same thing in Germany where you have to pass a cultural test to gain citizenship, imagine such a thing in America! [And no, answering questions about the constitution, the foundational legal document, is not the same thing]).
> (same thing in Germany where you have to pass a cultural test to gain citizenship, imagine such a thing in America! [And no, answering questions about the constitution, the foundational legal document, is not the same thing]).
I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I kind of like that we're more liberal than Germany or France on this. I don't like how liberals in the U.S. fail to appreciate that fact and think the U.S. is super racist and xenophobic. (I guess if they're comparing against a platonic ideal.)
This is a peeve of mine as well, but in the other direction: the American right is motivated by appeals to American exceptionalism, and should be hitting everyone over the head with how exceptional our citizenship law is. We have universal birthright citizenship! It's in the Constitution! That is an amazing thing that we should all be proud of.
(I acknowledge as well that the American left is motivated by appeals to transcending our history of racism, and agree with your implication that American antiracism is itself exceptional among nations of our global stature. You're right, we focus almost entirely on the negative, in the mistaken belief that only negative appeals will persuade.)
Different parts of the US exemplify the full spectrum of tolerance to xenophobia. Our bests are pretty darn good (not near perfect), but the variance is high.
US law/regulatory policy may be a good measure, and is definitely less xenophobic than than of many/most European governments. The best example is what happens with refugees and immigrants, who are treated as interlopers in France; American policy is 'skeptical' of refugee claimants, but much more likely to permit them to settle and work if the claim is accepted.
To say nothing of the fact that their children born in America are natural-born citizens of the United States, unlike almost every other similarly industrialized/wealthy country (the Maple Leaf State doesn't count!).
As a brown guy with a beard, I’ve felt comfortable almost everywhere in the US I’ve been, including rural Illinois, Georgia, and Texas. In my experience, Americans are very uniformly warm and welcoming. Sydney I felt less welcome.
Yeah but come on (I fear I may be verging on no true scotsman territory here, but...) you're not culturally a brown guy, I doubt you even have a non-American accent (do you?).
I'm an American brown guy but I've often felt like an outsider. Having traveled quite a bit, some experiences that stick out in Germany and Iceland is random folks casually starting conversations with me, I struggle to recall this happening to me in America.
What does liberal mean? Surely it depends what's on the test - "culture" could mean anything.
Take a liberal policy (no guns, no death penalty etc) - now test people who fail to adopt those cultural values; are you less liberal for testing people, or more liberal for testing them on liberal values? Seems like one word is being used to describe multivariate dimensions.
In this case the opposite of not having these kinds of tests are racism/xenophobia, because you implied not having them would be a counterpoint to such a reputation.
TBH, I think people cling too much to ideals and maxims to avoid the complexity of reality, then something happens, reality catches up, the maxim weakens, and the pendulum swings the other way. It's easily possible to be too (or naively) liberal, there are many examples of this e.g the existence of an Italian mafia dismissed as anti-migrant xenophobia - until the FBI proved they existed; anyone who dismisses such issues as "price worth paying (for liberty)" has no plan, and quickly find many of their countrymen disagree. The truth is, culture needs to adapt to environment, and if society doesn't do that by conscious design, it'll happen anyway through social economics.
The truth is, multiculturalism is a massive generalisation over "cultures" that suggests we might all get along, if X, and without losing individual group cultural identity - truth is, not all cultures are alike, not all values are beneficial, and even the multiculturalism has implicit maxims that make it a kind of culture in itself; How can you tolerate the intolerant? How can you promote freedom, and avoid Eurocentrism, if freedom is a Eurocentric value (or at least, the source of you definition of "freedom").
As with any destructive force, rioting is not a sustainable state of being. It is a blunt object to signal "Things are not okay" from societies whose frustration boils over in trying to achieve change through more articulate language.
Rioting rarely affects change in the systems in the direction desired, as its methods are misaligned with desirable, sustainable values. Thus, it allows ruling classes to paint a harsh narrative of the rioters - leading in many cases to greater inequality and worse conditions.
Riot theory seems like an interesting starting point to understand the socioeconomic climate in America today. A dialogue from which would naturally lend itself to survey the options that members of a community have in articulating opinions and criticisms of the systems they live within.
Note: I haven't had the chance yet to read the articles linked by Mr Havercroft, but look forward to doing so.
The problem with riots is they often get co-opted by actors whose goals are not in alignment with the goal of the original rioters. Also, there isn't usually a singular person, group, or entity who will take responsibility of the riots and say "We are rioting for XYZ reasons". Contrast this with peaceful protests, where the reasons for and goals of the protests are laid bare by its leaders. They are, in turn, able to promote their cause and have their grievances aired to the public at large. Finally, the destructive nature of riots poison the public perception of the rioters and their reasons, regardless of whatever just causes the rioters might have for their actions.
Keep in mind that coption (or corruption) holds true for all tools of power.
Regulation (capture). Legislation, executive, judiciary and bureaucracy (bribery, lobbying, special interests, nepotism, blackmail, ...). The press. Police and military. Taxes. Fines. Investigations (surveillance). Treaties. Emotions (fear, anger, guilt, embarrassment). Attention. Religion. Culture. Language. Narrative. Buildings, roads, ports, railroads, walls, canals, and tunnels. Bulldozers. Guns and stilettos. Bread and circuses. War. Peace.
Literally everything.
This doesn't make all of these bad, or mean they're never useful. But tools of power are useful because they do have effect, and can be used for both good and ill.
This is a fantastic article and reading list. I'm disappointed at how so much of the discussion around the most recent rioting has devolved to being pro-protest vs anti-rioting. The riots, like the spread of the pandemic are symptoms of wide-spread, systemic failures in our social, political and economic institutions.
The psychologist Stephen Pinker, has pointed out that violence itself is a tool of last resort in the human toolkit. The violence of rioters is mostly spontaneous and fueled by anger, flamethrowers and sledge hammers directed at objects belonging to a system they feel has not responded to their needs or concerns. The fact that violence is not the best tool for the job is irrelevant by this point.
Cooler, smarter and more sympathetic heads should actually focus more on what triggered the riots and determine the changes that are necessary to remediate legitimate grievances and hopefully prevent the recurrence of such failures. The reading list offers an excellent beginning for that. Discussing the efficacy and justification for rioting probably doesn't.
> determine the changes that are necessary to remediate legitimate grievances
Except that the grievances don't appear to be that legitimate and the changes that would be necessary don't appear to be too popular with the majority of the population. Capitulating to a violent mob out of fear of further violence surrenders control from the democratic process to escalating barbarism.
Well, one particular grievance among them, that a person passing off a counterfeit 20-dollar bill doesn't deserve death at the hands of police, probably is legitimate. Choosing to remediate that injustice is not capitulation to the mob, but fulfillment of the promise of equal protection under the law that the democratic process was supposed to protect.
In places where information distribution monopolized by ruling class riots are the only method to signal disagreement to both a) ruling class and b) other non-ruling people.
One reason thinkers usually place riots outside the discourse is because they are an artificial spectacle, and which are necessarily tolerated by a faction in the establishment who could easily suppress them with violence, but they don't because the effect of the riots supports their strategy for change in their institution.
Situationism, and anarchist ideas like "the propaganda of the deed" covered rioting from a more earnest perspective, but in watching movements and protests for a couple of decades, there is always someone within the establishment in whose interest it is to tolerate rioting. This also explains the regular use of police provocateurs to break up peaceful protests by manufacturing riots, and instead of mere explanatory power, you can use it to predict how long an establishment will tolerate a spate of rioting. It's a ritualized performance and a spectacle.
> "While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime, ... I don't think there's anyone in any of those pictures ... [who wouldn't] accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom."
Shouldn't it be easy thanks to Zuckerberg and Co to profile the Personality Trait distributions of any assembling group?
I mean given what marketing teams are able to do these days, in real time, I think any bunch of Violent Trait holders assembling anywhere will be straight forward to identify.
Anyways alternative reading list for the non-violent crowd - Gandhi specifically the Champran Agitation, the Rowlatt Act(non-coop movement), and then the Salt march.
What I liked about it is he didn't react to an issue by just giving speeches, blaming anyone or mindlessly protesting. He would go to the site of the issue with qualified people and work the problem. Gain support through those actions, across all kinds of social, cultural, religious, linguistic boundaries, no one thought possible. And that would freak out the powers that be for whom divide and conquer is the default method of clinging to power.
Nothing freaks them out more than when 2 groups that dont get along march together. And thats when they start making compromises.
Riots are also non-specific. The violence directed toward the "enemy" of the riot is at best a large fraction of the riot's violence. The rest is directed simply at its surroundings. The stores big and small, nearby homes, anyone who happens to be walking by and fitting the wrong description.
You can't do that and be just. A "just riot" would be an attack directed against a specific entity and people would label it a terrorist attack or mob violence, not a riot.
Then, by definition, a riot won’t have a durable justification, since its goals are fluid, it uses extraordinary methods, has no accountable leadership, and doesn’t seek enduring change.