[johndunne]

From the article "Climate activism is on the rise, together with an increased willingness to use violence, marking a shift from environmental activism to environmental extremism"

As far as I can tell, climate activists have been making a nuisance of themselves much more than a 'willingness to use violence.' I find this justification concerning, to say the least.

[consp]

Funny thing with those violent protesters is ... Sometimes they are not protesters. I had the opportunity to be with a peaceful protest against canceling student financing and the people who started violence after it finished were neither part of, nor affected by, the issues or organisation.

[Rinzler89]

>Sometimes they are not protesters

I don't have the source at hand but I remember reading that in Germany, plain clothes police inserted themselves into the group of climate protestors and start throwing rocks at the riot police, in order to give them legal justification to engage the protestors.

Don't know if this is the truth, but since this has also happened in my country in the past, I wouldn't be surprised that it is. Governments and the ruling elite can and will always find ways to legally justify their actions against citizens they consider a threat. The US had the Pinkertons (who stil exist today) who did similar actions but for the private sector.

[morkalork]

Agent provocateurs! I hate that police have been caught doing this crap before because now at every single protest, if there's any stupid violence like a random innocent businesses having their windows smashed, the knee jerk reaction is "It was Agent provocateurs!". There's kids out there who live in some magical fairytale land where every protestor is always 100% innocent and isn't open to even discussing what's happening in reality because in their mind, all the bad stuff that happens is under cover bad actors. It's like the let's version of how January 6th was "antifa".

[Rinzler89]

Unfortunately when crowds go berserk and riots happen, it's very difficult to get solid proof on who exactly started it and identify that person since the tend to cover their faces.

And even if by a miracle you do manage to get the face of that person and submit it to law enforcement, if they happened to be part of one of the intelligence agencies like it was in my country, the government would turn a blind eye and pretend they cant identify that person in order to protect them.

Throwing LEOs under the bus, even if they're guilty of something, is not something most government leaders are rushing to do since they need LEOs on their side in order to enforce the laws and maintain their positions in society, and it's not a good idea to piss off those in charge of the guns and surveillance capabilities and turn them against you.

[yunohn]

Yes, sadly this is a common tactic by the incumbent corruption (politicians, corporations, otherwise) to make the protestors seem dangerous. Nothing new, but maybe it hasn’t been exposed at home as much as it has been abroad.

[llm_trw]

There is no need to bring in agent provocateurs in this day and age. Both anti-fa and fa are a bunch of meth heads looking for an excuse to bash someone's head in. They are perfectly happy to start violence if the police doesn't actively stop them.

[yunohn]

Wait, you seriously think that agent provocateurs are a hoax? Literally not sure how to reply, you could just google it?

[gruez]

I think the claim isn't that agent provocateurs don't exist, it's that jumping to it as first explanation is lazy and slightly cranky. Just because the government has killed civil rights activists in the past, doesn't mean the next civil rights activist who dies was a government assassination.

[yunohn]

Of course, and the Boeing whistleblower and Epstein really did commit suicide amid some of the most high profile cases of the decade.

[llm_trw]

I'm sure they were needed in the 90s and 00s.

Today there are enough meth heads that the only thing police need to do for violence at a rally to explode is nothing.

[yunohn]

So you’re gonna write off any question of illegitimate interference by governments/corporations as “meth heads looking for violence”?

[komali2]

I'm an antifascist and not a meth head. Nearly every protest I've been to has been peaceful. Sometimes the cops try to instigate violence by kettling or shoving people around really aggressively, but well trained protest leaders have people prepped for this and push hardline pacifism - well all know what happens when the cops "get the green light."

Typically when shit kicks off, it's an agent provocateur. Not always, but typically: https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-helped-ignite-george-floyd-rio...

There was similar in Oakland, some white kids from who tf knows where were trying to break windows, and everyone around was shouting for them to fuck off and knock it off.

Recently nazis and right wingers were allowed to do whatever they want as cops stood by and watched them beat up college protesters. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-... At one point one shouted "we're here to finish what Hitler started" https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/uclas-unholy-alliance/

Agent provocateurs are going to become more and more necessary to "justify" the violence against protesters as protesters become more educated on pacifist strategies.

The Anarchist Cookbook (new version) https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html is free to read and gets into the effectiveness of peaceful protest and direct action, and the counter-effectiveness of violence.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Blow_Up_a_Pipeline takes a slightly different perspective, analyzing the possible necessity of extremely limited, targeted destruction of property, that strives to be completely disassociated from the greater movement so that the benefits of the destruction (such as disrupted oil supply, plus attention) can be combined with the opportunity for the greater movement to condemn the action.

[llm_trw]

To use a real world example: of the three men that were shot by Kyle Rittenhouse all were felons with extensive records of drug use and prison terms for everything from domestic violence, statutory rape to false imprisonment.

If you randomly shoot at a anti-fa rally and hit 100% meth heads and felons there's an issue with anti-fa rallies.

[giraffe_lady]

The issue at antifa rallies is fascists. Hope that helps.

[komali2]

> If you randomly shoot at a anti-fa rally

So, Kyle Rittenhouse was shooting randomly into the crowd? Interesting, I wonder what his goal was in doing so.

[johndunne]

I think this is a common problem in the UK during peaceful protests. I've witnessed masked young men clearly getting messages on their phones to go somewhere. They'll suddenly hustle off together. I figure they're there just to cause trouble. If the EU is serious about democracy then they ought to make it clear that this kind of thing goes on during peaceful protests instead of justifying dubious legislative changes in the name of 'protecting people'.

[adrian_b]

This is a common tactic used by the police or secret services in all countries, not only in the UK.

Wherever there are truly peaceful protests against governments there is a very high probability that governmental agents infiltrated among the protestants will attempt to cause violent incidents in order to provide justification for the police to attack the participants with excessive force.

[randunel]

Isn't willingness to use violence exactly what makes peaceful protests efficient? If a protest has exactly 0 risks, why would anyone in a position of power mind it at all?

[diggan]

> Isn't willingness to use violence exactly what makes peaceful protests efficient?

Maybe I misunderstand what you mean, but generally people who participate in peaceful protests isn't willing to use violence, then they'd be a part of a different type of protest. That's not to say there are groups within peaceful protests that are willing to use violence, but it isn't the norm.

[NekkoDroid]

No? A strike also doesn't need to have "willingness to use violence" cuz there are non-violent ways to disrupt.

[smashah]

Maybe it's not a coincidence that the more shameless politicians ignore peaceful protests while doing the bidding of lobbyists, the more climate-concerned people feel the need to escalate their nuisance tactics which conveniently makes those same shameless politicians feel that they can justify more draconian measures to stifle privacy, speech and activism.

[johndunne]

I think politicians are skirting democratic accountability because they can, and not enough people are protesting the lack of this accountability. The most concerning thing about this proposed legislation is the fact that it can be used to further skirt accountability, by labeling protesters under the broad terms the bill covers.

[smashah]

Back in the day, in a more localized times (i.e your life was somewhat controlled by those within your vicinity), if our "leaders" were tratiours, we would get the torches and pitchforks and march to their homes as the citizen's form of keeping leaders accountable.

Post-enlightenment, we put down the torches and pitchforks, we outsourced the accountability function to the media/press. Shame and transparency were the new "torch and pitchforks".

As soon as the likes of Rupert Murdoch/Roger Ailes etc. got involved in media, the press no longer wields the people's power, which was delegated to them, for the people. Instead the press selectively uses that power for ulterior aims - whether that's the Oil & Gas industry, the war machine, or for foreign interests.

After Clinton, and in order to push the illegal Iraq war, politicians (no longer called "leaders") had to shed all their shame so that they would be immune to any press that came out about their illegal acts for the war machine. Wikileaks happened. Only the messenger was pursued.

Shame doesn't work anymore. The press use the power we gave them against us. Therefore no wonder protests don't work. They don't get covered and politicians are rewarded for shamelessly ignoring the people's interests.

The system is broken.

I don't blame climate protesters escalating. Especially while climate destruction is being escalated.

[gruez]

>As soon as the likes of Rupert Murdoch/Roger Ailes etc. got involved in media, the press no longer wields the people's power, which was delegated to them, for the people. Instead the press selectively uses that power for ulterior aims - whether that's the Oil & Gas industry, the war machine, or for foreign interests.

How does this square with the rise of insurgents like donald trump? He was basically snubbed by the GOP political establishment in 2016, but now the republican party is now enthralled to him. There was even a period where he tried to fight fox news and urged his supporters to watch OAN instead. Some of Trump's populist policies were so successful that even the democratic party copied it, eg. his anti-china policy. That's despite such policies being arguably anti-business, which under your framework shouldn't have happened.

[smashah]

Is it a surprise to you that I haven't fully encoded the current world order in one HN comment?

Just as the press usurped our power to block us out of it. Trump usurped the media's power (through his own showmanship) to block them out of it (this was the only reason CNN libs were mad really). At the end of the day Trump did the bidding of the common backgrounds interests so he was allowed to play the part:

- Sold $100s of billions of weapons to dictators (MIC) - His anti-china policy was solely to stop their EVs from taking over the gas car market in the US (Oil & Gas) - Escalated tensions in the middle east to keep netanyahu in power through the Abraham Weapons Deal and moving the US embassy illegally to Jerusalem (Foreign Interests)

The politicians, the media, they fall over, and fight amongst, each other to be top slave to these same various lobbies. The public are only there insofar to keep the facade in-tact, every 4 years people stand in line to larp as casting directors in the great pantomime. Most western states do not live in free, representative democracies - all the ones with significant sway have been totally usurped (in other countries we'd call it coups).

And unfortunately, the tech industry is now going in that direction (with YC now accepting MIC projects, lazy zero-alpha investors and VCs are crawling to the DoD infinite-money-glitch teat).

Read "Silent Coup" by Matt Kennard & Claire Provost[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Silent_Coup/gjmvEAAAQ...]

[gruez]

>- Sold $100s of billions of weapons to dictators (MIC) - His anti-china policy was solely to stop their EVs from taking over the gas car market in the US (Oil & Gas) - Escalated tensions in the middle east to keep netanyahu in power through the Abraham Weapons Deal and moving the US embassy illegally to Jerusalem (Foreign Interests)

Feels like for each of these, you can weave an alternate story with another set of benefactors if the opposite action was taken. For instance, his being pro china would benefit corporate interests through globalization, allowing multinationals to bleed the rust belt even more. Or that signing the Iran deal actually means Russia benefits somehow (dunno, maybe so their client state/ally isn't sanctioned anymore?) and trump is in the pockets of Russian oligarchs. Point is, no matter what policies get enacted, there's going to be someone benefiting, which means you can accuse the people in charge for doing "the bidding of the common backgrounds interests". Even something that should be an unalloyed good (eg. FTC outlawing noncompetes) can be cynically written off as "that's just them throwing us a bone to keep us placated".

To put another way, what would convince you that your theory is false? A full socialist revolution?

[FollowingTheDao]

Ghandi set the standard for effective peaceful protests. Most protests I see people doing are laughably useless.

You have to know how to suffer for what is important.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mahatma-Gandhi/Resistan...

"Thus was born satyagraha (“devotion to truth”), a new technique for redressing wrongs through inviting, rather than inflicting, suffering, for resisting adversaries without rancor and fighting them without violence."

[squigz]

Devotion to one's ideals despite suffering for them is admirable, but not an option for many people. They have children to take care of, families to provide for. They just want to live their lives without inviting more pain into it. That is not something I'm going to hold against people or laugh at them for.

[teddyh]

If you are not prepared to sacrifice anything at all for your ideals, you by definition consider your ideals to be worthless.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

The problem is, and always has been, that you can pick a new round of ideals on your next turn in life and, as you grow older, you recognize that most of those ideals are, and I will generalize here, not ideal. The funny part is that most groups would want to tell you that their particular set of ideas are worth dying for. As is often the case, it seems to be only the rank and file and the young is doing the dying part though.

With that out of the way, maybe ideals is too charged of a word. Maybe the right word here is: priorities.

[squigz]

Of course, a more generous reading of my comment would have you realize I didn't mean literally anything, just as GP didn't mean something as relatively simple as giving up meat.

[dotnet00]

Invoking Gandhi's satyagrahas should always come with all the caveats that made the movement successful. It wasn't merely the act of peaceful protest that won India's independence, but the fact that it happened in the backdrop of WW2. Britain had to be much more careful to not risk escalating things into a full-blown revolt. Then, at the end of the war, they needed to focus their resources towards rebuilding.

[FollowingTheDao]

Agree, but he started his work in South Africa with great success. I was just revealing that there are different ways to protest that entail people sacrificing now a little so they do not have to sacrifice a lot in the future.

But I will also argue, imagine if he did nothing?

[dotnet00]

My intent wasn't to say that Gandhi and satyagraha had no contribution, and I agree that there are better ways to protest than harassing people trying to survive and throwing beans on paintings. I just wanted to emphasize that part of the reason satyagraha remained mainly peaceful was that even the people being protested against couldn't risk it turning violent.

> But I will also argue, imagine if he did nothing?

I think that India would still have gotten independence a few years later, since either way, I don't think post-WW2 Britain had the capacity to hold on to India. However, I do believe that Gandhi's efforts ended up playing a significant role in creating a more unified national identity and helped to foster values that have allowed India to be a mostly stable democracy, in stark contrast to many of its neighbors. So, if he had done nothing, I figure that India might've fragmented into smaller countries with too much conflict to amount to much on the global stage.

[highcountess]

Pretty sure Jesus set that standard many centuries before Gandhi. If anything Gandhi was just taking inspiration from Jesus.

[FollowingTheDao]

I agree, but was hoping to avoid religion.

But I am sad to see that bringing up Ghandi here even leads to downvotes of my original comment.

[McDyver]

How about politicians setting the standard for not fucking up the whole world and their fellow humans?

Why must it be the people suffering the consequence of greedy politicians, who must be the ones behaving with the high moral compass?

This seems to me like blaming the victims

Edit to add:

> You have to know how to suffer for what is important.

With that principle, people who have the decisional power should "suffer" by refraining from causing harm to others/the planet

[FollowingTheDao]

> How about politicians setting the standard for not fucking up the whole world and their fellow humans?

I agree. But can we really only blame the politicians? I do not vote because every politician wants war. That is my small protest that aligns with my morals. They have to earn my vote. What if there were a group of people who got together and said we will only vote for the candidate that is against all war or where serious about climate change?

>Why must it be the people suffering the consequence of greedy politicians, who must be the ones behaving with the high moral compass?

Yes, unfortunate, but the only way out is for those of us with a moral compass to act as an example for others. To be the heroes who sacrifice and are remembered through history and change things for the better.

Start in your town. Keep it local.

[nathanaldensr]

We as a species have to figure out a fool-proof test for sociopathy at a specific threshold, beyond which those people are not allowed to hold public office. Without this, the power-hungry will always, in the end, rule over those who seek to avoid conflict.

[pelorat]

I don't even own a car, but those activists that blockade highways might just come out better persons after spending 5 years in prison.

[nickserv]

Yes, mingling with hardened criminals for a few years is the perfect way to work on self improvement.

[wickedsight]

Dutch politician Pim Fortuijn was murdered by an environmental activist in 2002. I would say that's a bit more than a nuisance.

I agree that most climate activism is more nuisance than violent, but that doesn't mean violence doesn't happen.

[mytailorisrich]

They have been using violence. Violence against property mostly but that's violence nonetheless. Throwing paint or other things at buildings and pieces of art in museums is violence (criminal damage is not peaceful protest).

But in the grand scheme of things this is indeed a weak justification.

[komali2]

I disagree that "violence" is an accurate word to use when describing property damage.

Someone smarter than me wrote:

> Anarchists dedicated to nonviolent direct action are not opposed to all forms of property damage. It can be an effective strategy if the decision to do it involves all participants, the target chosen is one that will guarantee no one who is not part of the action could be injured, and the method used does not frighten the public.

> A simple example is the Food Not Bombs actions taken the night of August 19th... we spray-painted the outline of "dead” bodies on the ground, stenciled mushroom clouds with the word “Today?” and wheat-pasted "War is Murder for Profit" posters along the route that the weapons buyers and sellers would take from their hotel to the conference hall. taking credit for hundreds of dollars in graffiti damage to Boston University's property. Who did this frighten into the arms of the state? No one.

Rebecca Solnit wrote:

> I want to be clear that property damage is not necessarily violence. The firefighter breaks the door to get the people out of the building. But the husband breaks the dishes to demonstrate to his wife that he can and may also break her. It’s violence displaced onto the inanimate as a threat to the animate.

> Quietly eradicating experimental GMO crops or pulling up mining claim stakes is generally like the firefighter. Breaking windows during a big demonstration is more like the husband. I saw the windows of a Starbucks and a Niketown broken in downtown Seattle after nonviolent direct action had shut the central city and the World Trade Organization ministerial down. I saw scared-looking workers and knew that the CEOs and shareholders were not going to face that turbulence and they sure were not going to be the ones to clean it up. Economically it meant nothing to them.

https://www.foodnotbombs.net/a.%20Anarchist%20Cookbook%20int...

[mytailorisrich]

Well that's an important issue in this discussion. People move the goal posts further and further away in order to justify their actions and to claim that their are not violent because violence is always something else, which is exactly what the second person you quote does, and can be safely ignored because it is obviously dishonest mental gymnastic.

In any case, the (Cambridge English) dictionary's definition of "violence" remains "actions that are intended or likely to hurt people or cause damage" (you'll note that what firefighters might do is not intended to cause damage while vandalism obviously is), and the law indeed makes this a criminal offence for a reason.

I'm half expecting someone to seriously claim at some point that an instant death is not violence because there is no suffering...

[komali2]

> which is exactly what the second person you quote does, and can be safely ignored because it is obviously dishonest mental gymnastic.

I disagree that highly cited Solnit is engaging in "obviously dishonest mental gymnastics" and can be safely ignored. Now what?

Great, you found another definition of violence, let's apply your definition to your own example.

Note that your definition includes "intended or likely." For some reason you ignore the "intended to" when discussing firefighters. Firefighters are obviously intending to cause damage to a door they axe down. Why is this not violence and why is this not a criminal offense? It's violence per your definition.

Do you want to use the same word to describe, and justify the criminalization of, all things that can be described by this word? It sounds like you don't because you seem to want to indicate that a firefighter axing a door and a protester bricking a window are different things, and that one is bad and one is good.

If you're ok with using the same word to describe both, then there's not really a point in discussing whether something is violence or not - many things good and bad are violence, and so we don't need to determine if something is violence or not to determine if the action should be criminalized, we need to consider other factors.

If you're not ok with using the same word to describe both, then we need to engage in what you're erroneously describing as "goal post moving." It's actually just seeking to define what "violence" encapsulates. In this case your chosen definition from Cambridge probably isn't great. Though it's in a dictionary, we can always change the definitions of words if we like, it happens all the time. Cambridge describes our language, not defines it.

As to your final sentence I'm not sure the relevancy, nobody ever brought up suffering and its relation to violence, so far as I can tell.

[mytailorisrich]

> For some reason you ignore the "intended to" when discussing firefighters

Hmm, this is an excerpt from my previous comment: "you'll note that what firefighters might do is not intended to cause damage while vandalism obviously is". You do also seem not to understand the meaning of "intent"...

Anyway, this is obviously useless, and in a way illustrates the issue when trying to tackle extremism, which is that it is outside the bounds of logic and reason, so bye.

[komali2]

You don't believe the firefighters intend to damage the door preventing them from entrance? Or are you conjecting that the firefighters dream of a platonic door that functions stoutly as a door should, but magically vanishes when the firefighters (perfectly identified without fault) appear at it and need to force entry? And since this doesn't exist they don't intend to damage the door but do so anyway?

Because if that's the case, then vandals also dream of a platonic city that doesn't require statements to be made through thrown rocks in order to achieve systemic justice.

> Anyway, this is obviously useless, and in a way illustrates the issue when trying to tackle extremism, which is that it is outside the bounds of logic and reason, so bye

It saddens me that when you find someone you disagree with, you assume they're simply irrational lunatics and thus not worth paying attention to.

[wildrhythms]

What's the point of this comment? Some violence is justified. Violence against the Nazis was justified. The destruction of the Berlin Wall was justified. Jesus overturned the tables of the money exchangers, violently I suppose, and that was justified. The focus on the broad term 'violence' without any additional analysis is completely useless.

And it's interesting to me that when 'violence' is used on this specific topic, it seems to only be used to label the reaction of the protesters and not the underlying issue they're protesting about, which itself is also a form of violence.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

The point of the comment is that there is no such thing as 'good violence' just as there is no such thing as 'hate speech'. There is just violence. There is just speech. You try to muddle those simple things and you end up with where are today: confused population unable to reason through their way through otherwise simple reality.

[giraffe_lady]

Taking black and white thinking so far you're considering dropping one of those colors even!

> the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

I want to offer you a moment to reconsider this comment. It adds nothing to this discussion. It does not refute my point. It does not undermine it. It does nothing really except maybe confuse the reader.

Unless the latter is the point, consider an edit that addresses my point directly. I am only human. It is possible that there is a flaw in my reasoning. It is possible coffee did not hit me yet.

As written, this is not an argument at all.

[giraffe_lady]

Thank you for your generous offer but I will decline.

What the comment does in its original form is draw attention to the nonsensical cowardice of refusing to take a stand on any issue. "There's no such thing as good violence" has you condemning slave revolutions for example. "There's no such thing as hate speech" refuses to acknowledge the forces and choices that led to historical atrocities and abdicates power to notice and prevent them. There's no future in this enlightened centrism, nothing to refute because it refuses to take a stand.