RE: Nonviolent Protest and Resistance Privileged
February 13, 2017 at 7:58 pm
(This post was last modified: February 13, 2017 at 8:05 pm by Aristocatt.)
This is a tricky one.
Ultimately, violence requires justification, not the other way around.
Some people are dogmatic about the principles that justify violent actions(only direct self defense). Others are more fluid about it.
For people that have a more fluid set of criteria for justifying violence, that they are justified to use violence is probably appropriately correlated to the kind of experiences they go through. So the statement "you wouldn't understand" seems reasonable.
However...
I think if you make the argument that non-violent protest is more effective than violent protest in a given situation, you are flipping the script.
You are changing the discussion from are you justified in using violence to should you be using violence. In which case, the experience of the individual doesn't really seem to matter much. "Experiencing Racism" would not change the fact that people acting violently at a protest caused other people to react poorly to the protesters message.
E.g.
Say org X organized protest Y, and protest Y became violent, then org X defended the violence as necessary. You might poll the population to see if they agreed with org X before and after the defense of violence. If it shows that there is a precipitous drop in support following the defense of violent protest, it really doesn't matter what you experience in your daily life, violence made people look at the protesters more poorly.
The above example is crazy simplified, and ignores all kinds of confounding variables by conflating popular support with effective protest, but the point is to elucidate how somebodies experience doesn't change the conclusion. If someone thought the violence made the protest more effective, they would not respond to the above example by saying "nobody in those polls has experienced this" they would respond by showing how following the violence the group membership increased by 50%...or something similar. If they told you that poll doesn't count because it includes "white cis males" it would beg the question if the opinions of white cis males have influence over public policy(assuming the protests are an attempt to change public policy).
So I don't think you should be compelled to change your mind about if a protest should be violent because you lack a specific experience. You may be inclined to change you mind about if violence is justified, but that does not appear to be what you were arguing at the beginning.
Edit: This makes a few assumptions about what kind of moral philosophy you ascribe to. When I say someone is justified in this sense, I mostly mean(as a consequentialist) that even if I believe they made the wrong decision, I can understand why they thought it was the right decision, and that I see their justification as a valid argument.
Ultimately, violence requires justification, not the other way around.
Some people are dogmatic about the principles that justify violent actions(only direct self defense). Others are more fluid about it.
For people that have a more fluid set of criteria for justifying violence, that they are justified to use violence is probably appropriately correlated to the kind of experiences they go through. So the statement "you wouldn't understand" seems reasonable.
However...
I think if you make the argument that non-violent protest is more effective than violent protest in a given situation, you are flipping the script.
You are changing the discussion from are you justified in using violence to should you be using violence. In which case, the experience of the individual doesn't really seem to matter much. "Experiencing Racism" would not change the fact that people acting violently at a protest caused other people to react poorly to the protesters message.
E.g.
Say org X organized protest Y, and protest Y became violent, then org X defended the violence as necessary. You might poll the population to see if they agreed with org X before and after the defense of violence. If it shows that there is a precipitous drop in support following the defense of violent protest, it really doesn't matter what you experience in your daily life, violence made people look at the protesters more poorly.
The above example is crazy simplified, and ignores all kinds of confounding variables by conflating popular support with effective protest, but the point is to elucidate how somebodies experience doesn't change the conclusion. If someone thought the violence made the protest more effective, they would not respond to the above example by saying "nobody in those polls has experienced this" they would respond by showing how following the violence the group membership increased by 50%...or something similar. If they told you that poll doesn't count because it includes "white cis males" it would beg the question if the opinions of white cis males have influence over public policy(assuming the protests are an attempt to change public policy).
So I don't think you should be compelled to change your mind about if a protest should be violent because you lack a specific experience. You may be inclined to change you mind about if violence is justified, but that does not appear to be what you were arguing at the beginning.
Edit: This makes a few assumptions about what kind of moral philosophy you ascribe to. When I say someone is justified in this sense, I mostly mean(as a consequentialist) that even if I believe they made the wrong decision, I can understand why they thought it was the right decision, and that I see their justification as a valid argument.
