>

I don't think critics are arguing with the statement that "black lifes matter". They are saying that the overall movement is causing trouble and not the best way to create positive change. Most of them still agree with the message behind the movement but feel that movement itself is causing more harm.
/u/mattl3791 (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >

Large groups of people under one banner are actually many individuals all with their own way they want to achieve things.
Do you think one person who thorns a brick while 99 others march peacefully should not be condemned? Should there be consequences? >

If only one person fires a gun at the British at Lexington, he probably gets hanged.
If a bunch of other people fire after he does, it's the "Shot Heard Round the World!" >

Can you answer my question without using an idiom, in plain English? >

Sorry I didn't think of the possibility you might not be familiar with the phrase.
If one person walks up to a police station and throws a brick, he's getting arrested. What if 50,000 people walk up to the same police station and overrun it? And does our perspective on the situation change if they are Egyptians or Chinese people storming their government buildings vs our own? >

Are you describing an act of protest?
I think there is a line where a protest becomes a revolution. 
The expectations are different for each. Iran is seeing a revolution currently in those actively fighting for their freedom. 
But does it matter if we label it something or another thing when there will always be supporters of that behaviour and objectors? >

I'd say the distinction lies more in the goals of the people protesting/revolutioning rather than the means they are using >

Where do you draw the line though? Do you believe every cause should be forgiven in public view or straight up allowed to be violent?
Like we can see the seriousness of a cause like BLM but alternatively there are people who genuinly do not believe it has reached the threshold where violence is acceptable. 
And that threshhold is surely different for everyone. And the amount of violence is surely different for everyone. I mean say, Nelson Mandella caused damage to hospitals and undoubtedly that cost people their lives. And many would argue that was justified due to the violence and damage recieved to him and the people of his cause. 
But that logic could be extended to any group. ISIS believes themselves to be freedom fighters just as strongly as any other , they believe their violence is wholy justified and necessary and paid in kind to the violence they recieve. Is condemming their violent acts wrong? Undoubtedly, their cause would not be as widespread if not for their violence. Or is it okay to condem because you might not believe in their cause (which is what you are complaining others do with BLM)?
I use extreme ends on examples to show the reasoning can’t really just be “the violence is okay because the people committing the violence feel like it is okay.” 
Alternatively, how much violence is okay? Like in my two examples, both could be argued as terroistic vs freedom fighter. But either way their causes are extreme change. 
But how much violence should someone protesting the expansion of the “silent area” in a library be able to cause? Like should they be able to destroy books for their cause? Spray paint? Yell and scream in librarians faces? Take a hostage or kill someone? Take over a section of the library and only allow comrades of the anti silent library union in? Should they only be able to do so after they exhaust whatever beuacratic means there are? 
Its a weird thing, because no one really likes violence and giving a blanket okay allows bad stuff to occur. But we can all vaguely agree sometimes it has been necessary historically.  I don’t think its a copout to talk about these lines and to critise violence when some would say movements like BLM have not exhausted to beaucratic democratic means of change at all (if voting records are to be believed, still most gen z and millenials are not voting as much). And starting a precedent of not always looking at violence critcally allows bad actors to be violent without immediate reproach. >

!delta
This is the first post to actually help me understand what my own position is better. Plenty of replies have been some silly semantics about obviously ridiculous extremes. Ironically your reply of extremes has a certain level headedness to it I find refreshing.
I think it's fair as you say to judge violence on a case by case basis as being excessive, uncalled for, understandable, whatever. I think the denouncing of violence in a protest can also be done though without using it as an excuse to avoid addressing the issue of the protest. Can we agree that the BLM riots became an ugly look for the US while not also ignoring that police brutality is another ugly look? >

I definitly can agree. Violence alone does not make any cause wrong and neither does it make the opposition correct. But violence from any cause should be considered critally and can be judged even if the underlining cause is “correct”. 
Though I agree many people jump this to dismiss all claims of a cause. And use it to support the opposing side which definitly brushes over it all easily. I think though the people who do that clearly aren’t making logical conclusions, they are very purposefully just trying to dismiss rather than engage in any discourse. >

What's the difference between a protest and an insurrection?
Should they be treated the same? >

A lot of it is sadly determined after the fact. MLK was certainly called an insurrectionist and worse in his day.
I don't think there is a meaningful distinction it's a sliding scale and very grey. >

The first part of that was a cop out, but okay.
So you're saying there's literally nothing protesters could do to delegitimize themselves?
In theory, the purpose of a protest is persuasion; demonstrate your grievance thereby convincing others to make mollifying changes.
Violent persuasion is coercion, not persuasion.  If a protest movement appears to be coercing rather than persuading, why should I focus on their grievances more than coercion and the subsequent harm they do?
Rudyard Kipling said that once you pay the danegeld, you'll never get rid of the Dane.  If I mollify a movement that's violent and destructive, I invite more violence in the future. >

Kipling was also a horrible racist lol.
The purpose of the violence is to make your life uncomfortable. Slavery is bad. Eventually saying slavery is bad wasn't enough and a civil war had to be fought because peaceful discussion doesn't move bigoted people to change.
The riots of the civil rights movement were every bit as critical to it's success as the impassioned speeches of MLK.
To say, well I don't like being coerced, that's the point. Sometimes peaceful protest doesn't make people change their mind. Sometimes you have to push harder.
No one will listen to you when you're violent is a crap argument, because no one was listening for years while you were peaceful either. >


Kipling was also a horrible racist lol.

You would be too if you were born when and where he was.  Not sure why you brought that up instead of addressing the point.
Also not sure why you didn't answer the question I asked.  Are you saying that a protest movement can do literally nothing to discredit itself?

The purpose of the violence is to make your life uncomfortable.

What's odd in your response is that you completely ignored that we are (by your framing in the OP) talking about a reaction to protests but you interpreted it from the perspective of the protestor justifying himself.
I understand why and how an insurrectionist might do that, but the operative question is how I should react.  You say the point of the violence is to make me uncomfortable - okay, I'm uncomfortable.  Why should I default to "okay I'll listen to your points and consider making changes" instead of "fuck you, you don't get to threaten me and I'm not giving you a goddamn thing while you hold people and things hostage."
Why should I respond to the threat of violence passively?  Why should I care more about mollifying you than protecting myself and peaceful society? >

Say the same thing about jan 6th and ill believe you have a real view. >

Say what about January 6th? 
As far as protests go it honestly was considerably less violent than BLM riots or many other events. There is zero imperial evidence that the election was faked though. If there was legitimate evidence I wouldn't ignore it just because they stormed into a government building.
There is also a disturbing additional component to January 6th. The sitting president encouraged and promoted the riot. That makes it a lot less an expression of free people and more of a coup plot. 
Either way, I think I judged them to be misinformed based on what their platform was, not their actions. >

but we are denouncing this because they broke the law, as you said it was a literal coup attempt. >

No. If the process of democracy was legitimately rigged in the United States so that one side was rigging elections, I wouldn't think it was so outlandish an idea to abandon defunct democracy for a coup attempt.
That is what is so dangerous about being misinformed. If the earth is really secretly ruled by billionaire lizard aliens it's not insane to fight back. The insanity came when I was deluded into believing in billionaire lizard aliens. >

if someone wants to protest in the middle of the park about not enough bigfoot funding, I say go for it. If someone wants to murder random people because of childhood starvation I would be against that. >

I think there are some notable exceptions that need to be made very clear. 
- Power vacuums are dangerous. Protests that remove leadership violently can easily be taken advantage of. 
- Mobs that commit or encourage interpersonal violence in a lateral, nonproductive way (not self-defense, not overthrowing dictators, not fighting back against police) are dangerous. 
- Not all causes are equally valid. If a protest as part of a false premise, or political play, or xenophobic fervor, or some other fear-based reason, then its violence should count against it. >

I'm tempted to award a delta for this because you raise some fair points, but I'm very worried about your last point. Protests are largely based on public outcry. They are given their moral mandate because a large group of people deem it so. It doesn't need to be a majority opinion, as long as a sufficiently large minority feel sufficiently oppressed as to act on it.  I'm not sure who would be in charge of deciding which causes are valid and which are not. Certainly any attempt to do so ends up in uncomfortable territory. >

I'll give you an example that should help clarify what I'm talking about. While protests are probably always legitimate in original cause, (we're upset because we feel economic insecurity, etc), the direction those protests go in aren't always valid (eg we need to remove all the jews from warsaw). >

That's a good example because we all (hopefully) can agree about the moral position of such a protest.
But in that case, I would still say, ignore any violence, any side show so to speak, and deal with the issue of the protest in good faith. In this case, I find the position being put forward to have no logical legs to stand on.
Essentially, I'm trying to avoid the all too common dismissal of public outcry because the outcry isn't expressed in a perfectly lawful way. Deal with the issue and decide as a government or a society if it has merit rather than hiding behind the shield of law and order. >

I don't believe that, as you said above, protests are given a moral mandate, since what I believe is morally justified to protest might not be to you.
When the presidential election in Brazil ended. Many people went out on roads and blocked the traffic asking for  military intervention (stage a coup). When an native-brazilian was arrested by the federal police for suspicion of threat of aggression against the president elected, supporters of the current president tried to invade that building of the federal police and burn several private vehicles in the Brasilia.
So just because you agree with the moral position of a protest, doesn't mean everyone else does it too. And maybe your right. Maybe an ideal or movement shouldn't be dismissed because they committed acts of violence, wether that's burning cars or breaking in government buildings, that doesn't mean that those behaviors are acceptable, since such cases lead to people and people's property being harmed. >

In dictatorship countries the government plant people to vandalize so they can dismiss the protests as terrorists or foreign agents trying to destroy the country >

Not limited to dictatorships unfortunately. The US does all sorts of nutzo stuff like that all the time. Vietnam War is a good example where they sent spies to turn a bunch of anti-war groups violent. They mostly failed and were ousted as government plants but the fact they tried is revealing and they're only getting better at this stuff as time goes on. How people think they haven't moved into social media really makes my head spin. It's the biggest arena for obfuscation that the powers that be have ever had access to.
It is tragic but imo, the casualties of protests are part of it. Things are not so casual as the people merely trying to use the sidewalk think. True evil reigns in these people's lives and they're trying to fight it. Ideas and change are so hard to change, and the truth is we are fighting against a stalwart entity that will kill and lie all it can to hide the ugly truths. >

You make a good point. However, often, there is violence against the people who aren't doing anything wrong. Let's take BLM. I hated the BLM protests for multiple reasons. The one relevant to this discussion is the people involved hurt lots of innocent people. If all of the violence and aggression had been toward entities such as the police or members of government responsible for certain laws, I still would have condemned the protests, but I would have been able to look past that particular aspect. Instead, they destroyed random businesses and attacked random people. >

Do you know how many black owned businesses were destroyed in 'black lives matter' protests (riots)? 
A lot. Lol. >

how many were consciously destroyed with the protesters being aware that's what they were doing vs how many were destroyed just as an inadvertent consequence of things like looting happening in primarily black neighborhoods >

Does....does that matter? 
BLM protests led to a bunch of black owned businesses getting destroyed