When Does Violence Against the "System" Become Justified?

(I started writing this as a note in Ken Klippenstein‘s chat board. But I’m too long-winded to express myself that succinctly so it morphed into a full post to spite my attempts at brevity).

The recent murder of a CEO has ignited debates (and occasionally just emotional tirades) about violence to achieve social ends.

It troubles me how childishly many adults think about violence, treating all violence for any reason as bad. If you’re five years old, that’s a good philosophy. If you’re twenty five or older, it’s infantile.

Violence is a part of society. In fact violence is necessary for society to function. The question (for adults, at least) is what violence is acceptable and what’s not.

I have some bad news for some of you: If you believe that the state should be able to arrest someone, then you believe in violence. Violence may be required to perform an arrest. If you don’t sanction that violence, arrests of many violent people will not happen, and they will do even more violence. A “zero tolerance” policy toward violence is a loss for everyone involved.

(If you want to rationally explain how letting violent people remain free to commit more violence is helpful to society - or even to you as an individual - I’m all ears).

So if you believe that someone else should not be able to freely perform violence against you or others, then you must also believe that it’s acceptable for violence to be performed against them to stop them from doing that.

Now, a key defining feature of any society is what violence it sanctions and what it condemns (and therefore what violence it intentionally commits to prevent unsanctioned violence). We can and should disagree where that line should be drawn.

But the state (or the “system” which also includes those who collaborate with the state) isn’t the only entity allowed to perform violence. Anyone is allowed to use violence to protect themselves; it’s an inalienable right that existed long, long before the human species even existed.

And this means it’s even valid for individuals to use violence against the system, if the system attempts to harm them. If you disagree with this, then you must also necessarily believe that the German Jews should have all submitted to being murdered by the system (the Nazis and the companies and citizens working with them), and that everyone that committed violence against a Nazi to save the lives of any Jews was wrong to do so.

(Please spare me the exhortations about how our system is better or different than the Nazi system. All systems tend towards abuse of at least some minority of their inhabitants, whether those are citizens like the Jews were, or non-citizens like illegal aliens are now).

So it’s not enough to argue that the recent murder of a CEO was wrong (which I agree with, by the way). To be taken seriously on that argument, you need to also be prepared to argue about where the line should be drawn. And be prepared to define at what point the system (which includes actors working with the state) crosses the line where it causes enough harm against non-violent individuals for those individuals to be justified in violence against the system to protect themselves or others.

(Note that I intentionally didn’t say “innocent” individuals because the system decides what’s a crime and what’s not. That means that the system can criminalize just being born into a minority, preventing even day-old newborns from being considered “innocent”. You can ask descendants of the Auschwitz Jews how relying on innocence worked out for them).

This means there is a line beyond which violence against the system (and everyone who’s a part of it) may be justified. I don’t think we’re even close to it in the U.S. at the present moment, so I think the CEOs murder was wrong.

But if your answer to the question of violence is to draw the line at “never,” you’re a five-year-old in an adult’s body. And we don’t allow five-year-olds to vote (or use their opinions to inform policy) for a reason. If you want to be taken seriously like an adult, reason like an adult instead of reacting like a child.

So. For anyone with opinions (especially strong ones) on this subject, my questions for you are this:

• Where do you think the line should be drawn and why?

• How can and should minorities (in the voting sense) defend themselves against the excesses of a majority whose votes and policies cause the minority harm?

• At what point does the system cause enough harm that people are justified in using violence to defend themselves against it?

  • Case in point: At what point were the Jews in Nazi Germany justified to use violence to defend themselves?