Setting aside personal bias:  Kudos for admitting that.  It takes a lot of courage to put your beliefs out in the open, or even to talk about the beliefs of a group you once identified with.<p><i>I feel that most of us would&#x27;ve supported violence against those cooperating with law enforcement.</i><p>Could you help me understand that mindset?<p>It seems like violence is one reason we as a species took hundreds of thousands of years to discover (or at least to harness) the scientific method.  For the first time, we&#x27;re now in a position to detect a big rock headed straight for Earth, and then actually have any nonzero chance of doing something to change the situation.  Studying history, one plausible hypothesis we&#x27;re in this situation might be:  Funnel all of the smartest people together, and figure out a way to let them work together for a very long time on the same kinds of problems.<p>And to let smart people work together, it&#x27;s necessary to have systems in place to suppress violence.  In short, law enforcement.  There have been abuses of power, but on the whole, law enforcement seems like one of the main reasons we&#x27;re well-off today.<p>So that&#x27;s where I&#x27;m coming from.  I&#x27;m not trying to be overbearing or say X is bad and Y is good -- I apologize if I&#x27;m failing.<p>It&#x27;s just the opposite:  I&#x27;m interested, and open-minded, to understand how various intelligent people could conclude &quot;It&#x27;s us or them, and if you&#x27;re cooperating with law enforcement, you deserve violence.&quot;  Would you help me to understand the community&#x27;s viewpoint?  Was there any nuance, or is it as simple as &quot;they are traitors, therefore X&quot; mindset?  There must be <i>something</i> if so many intelligent people somehow started to believe this, right?<p>If someone reading this feels like replying anonymously, make a new HN account using Tor.  Your reply will be marked [dead] to begin with, but those of us with showdead enabled will see them.  The community can now vouch for dead-but-thoughtful comments, which makes them visible to everyone.<p>This is the type of topic that usually devolves into a flamewar, but maybe thoughtful conversation has a chance.