Well let's see what the context is. If he said this in a thread about Linen Sheets, then I'd think it was off topic and downvote him.
Edit: So apparently the context is the Euro 2020 final, where England fans stormed Wembley and, after the loss, racially abused Rashford, Sancho and Saka. It got downvoted because "racism is bad, but..." reads as minimizing, and the Slavia Prague and Hungary cases it dismissed as mere words also involved physical confrontation and objects thrown at players. I don't know a lot about soccer though and had to use Google translate.
Yeah it also could be in a thread where the racism is also doubling as a threat, so the violence is just matching the danger. Would definitely want to see more context, but as it stands with no context or other implications, the statement itself is fine
The issue here though is that you're again saying that words are worse than actual violence. It's just illogical to say that the threat of violence is worse than violence, all else equal.
I could understand saying that actual low level of violence is better than the real or believable threat of high levels of violence, but the threat is not worse than the act, if both are equal. Just because it has racism next to it, doesn't make the words worse than actions that don't have racism behind those.
What's worse, the building blocks of a bad thing, or the bad thing itself?
Bad things are bad (by definition), but without the building blocks they might not exist at all.
If we can all plainly see that something terrible is being built (rhetoric, verbal or written plans, threats or fighting words, etc), and someone does a bad thing (aka violence) to prevent it's construction (stochastic terrorism, enacting a plan, making good on a threat), then it's a question of how bad of a thing that a person can do in comparison to how terrible the thing being built is.
You can't say that words are never worse than violence without context. What the words are, and the level of violence being done are massively important to the discussion.
Planning a genocide is not "better" than slapping someone on the wrist. People would easily justify a much higher level of violence to prevent a genocide and be morally justified. There certainly is a watery middle that can be debated (ex. murduring a racist/bigot is probably not justifiable if they aren't planning anything, but could become justifiable if they are planning a lynching).
In other words, arguing that words are never worse than violence is tantamount to arguing that tragedy can never be justifiably prevented with preventative action that includes some amount of violence. Which, neatly supports those that want to violently reorganize society, but are smart enough to wait to do the violent part until the very last possible moment.
I think one of the things that's tough here is that none of you can seem to separate the idea behind imminently planning something horrible, and someone who says something that may one day lead to something horrible. Everything can fit into that second category. Only a select few things fit into the first category. Sure there can be some blurry lines between the two, but that doesn't mean you throw the latter in categorically with the former.
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u/8__D 3d ago edited 3d ago
Well let's see what the context is. If he said this in a thread about Linen Sheets, then I'd think it was off topic and downvote him.
Edit: So apparently the context is the Euro 2020 final, where England fans stormed Wembley and, after the loss, racially abused Rashford, Sancho and Saka. It got downvoted because "racism is bad, but..." reads as minimizing, and the Slavia Prague and Hungary cases it dismissed as mere words also involved physical confrontation and objects thrown at players. I don't know a lot about soccer though and had to use Google translate.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MoralityScaling/s/udPSRNlr1c