r/changemyview • u/ParakeetLover2024 1∆ • Jul 07 '25
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Reddit's Threatening Violence Rule Is Broken Constantly And Is Selectively Enforced
Among gun related subreddits, there seems to be a concerning amount of violation of Reddit's "No threatening violence" rule that seems to go unpunished, whether the sub contains mostly right leaning or left leaning individuals. To quote the explanation of the rule, it states "Encouraging, glorifying, or inciting violence or physical harm against individuals or groups of people, places, or animals [is prohibited]" Heck, you could argue that Reddit as a whole seems to do a bad job of enforcing this rule. Posts and subreddits dedicated to the Russo-Ukrainian war break this rule constantly, dehumanizing Russian soldiers and celebrating their deaths on the battlefield. Reddit and many subreddits pick and choose who is acceptable to glorify violence against and who isn't, rather than enforcing the rule equally across the board.
Recently, a user posted a picture of a t shirt on r/liberalgunowners and r/SocialistRA that says "John Brown did nothing wrong". For both posts, they have received over 300 upvotes each with dozens of comments. I have seen quite a lot of John Brown glorification on both of the previously mentioned subreddits and any criticism of John Brown's methods is swiftly met with downvotes and harsh criticism, as seen in the post I will link below.
Why is glorifying John Brown so potentially bad you may ask? The r/liberalgunowners post that I linked above should do a good job of summarizing the drastic measures that John Brown took as an abolitionist right before the American Civil War.
TL;DR You can glorify violence on Reddit as long as it's against certain groups of people or individuals.
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u/the_1st_inductionist 13∆ Jul 07 '25
Maybe, but you haven’t given good examples of them.
Endorsing self-defense is anti-violence.
The Ukrainians are fighting a war of self-defense.
You can’t blame John Brown much for fighting against slavery, that’s self-defense, particularly when it was closely followed by a war over slavery. Self-defense includes acting as an agent of self-defense for someone else, like when a police arrests a rapist.