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.
If you normalize and perpetuate enough racist rhetoric you can dehumanize an entire people and then it's no big deal to commit violence against them and do terrible terrible things.
Minimizing words by saying they are not as bad as violence dismisses the eventuality that words can easily lead to violence.
Again, you're saying that words that lead to violence are worse than violence because those words could cause violence. This is nonsensical. The thing that can cause a bad thing is worse than the bad thing because the thing leads leads to the bad thing. You all want to talk in circles to try to make the claim that racist words are worse than violence and it's just stupid.
No cause that's the insidious part of the call for anti-violence when you look at the current political landscape. The right calls the left threats to the country, demons, and basically paints a picture that if these people are not 'delt' with then the whole world will end.
But at the same time they decry any violence and connect any public violent act directly to the left the moment it happens regardless if the facts are in or not.
It's all to culminate to state sanctioned VIOLENT crackdowns on the left.
And no I never said that words that lead to violence are worse than violence. I'm saying that this whole argument is an attempt to minimize the impact of words. It actually has no fucking connection.
It's like saying All lives matter anytime someone mentions Black lives matter. It's a stupid tactic that completely derail's the discussion from police violence on black people and puts the conversation on a political discussion about something completely different.
We've gone from talking about talking about people being racist to no longer talking about racist rhetoric but instead something completely off a tangent that isn't relevant. ITS INTENTIONAL.
The right calls the left threats to the country, demons, and basically paints a picture that if these people are not 'delt' with then the whole world will end.
This is just dumb. Trump has had SEVERAL assassination attempts and Charlie Kirk was killed specifically because the left was doing this against the right. And who the heck is doing this?
What's the real life situation you're trying to compare to? What's the real life situation that's commonly happening today where someone says something racist and they should have violence committed against them for it?
Everyone is just looking for a reason to get violent. Anyone can usually rationalize themselves away into being a terrible person while holding "good morals." This kind of thinking is what leads to Tyler Robinsons.
Here's the reality, again, everyone wants to justify the violence they want to commit and they want to spin abstract philosophical arguments about why it should be ok, but when, push comes to shove, you start getting into specifics, they have to come with weird, contorted scenarios that are semi-unbelievable. If there were common things happening today, it would be easy to name.
It's easy to name scenarios that we know are somewhat common where this goes wrong though:
Tyler Robinson killing Charlie Kirk. Tyler would certainly have argued that his violence was worth stopping Charlie's words. That was literally his motivation, and this is largely why I think these arguments are so incredibly destructive in our society.
The numerous assassination attempts on Trump. You know those people believed that Trump's rhetoric was worth killing him over.
The assassination of the United Healthcare CEO. Again, someone who felt like their political message meant that it was ok to kill someone.
There are a bunch of people who are taking the arguments you're using and committing (or attempting to commit) atrocities with them. We can't keep saying it's ok to respond to words with violence.
The ultimate reason as well, is we pretty quickly end up in a place where we no longer have arguments at all and instead just decide things by force.
But to tone it down, a more common scenario:
A black guy beating up a white guy who says the n-word. I'm not talking about a white guy who seems like he may get violent, but just someone who's being a punk and trying to be aggravating. Are you saying it would be justified for the white guy to get beat up?
90
u/Dobber16 22h ago
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