{"id":629,"date":"2024-09-20T18:25:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-21T00:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=629"},"modified":"2024-09-20T18:25:52","modified_gmt":"2024-09-21T00:25:52","slug":"first-thoughts-on-political-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=629","title":{"rendered":"First Thoughts on “Political Violence”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Seeing a lot of people, including libertarians, oddly enough, pronouncing these blanket oppositions to what the corporate media calls “political violence.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is another case of people failing the Bastiat test–looking only at the bare surface level of such a policy, and failing to account for its secondary effects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse yet, these oppositions actually seem to preach from a moral<\/em> perspective, and not merely a strategic<\/em> one. Yet another blundering oversight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because what kinds of activities do you have to disavow in order to oppose “political violence?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Well, let’s start with the American Revolutionary War. That’s a big one that should be important to all Americans. There is no dispute that the Revolution was political violence on a massive scale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about the Battle of Athens? Would it have been better for those people to shut up and accept the corrupt heads of their local government? For how long? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who are subjected to no-knock raids and fire back at the police? Sorry, that’s political violence, no matter if the police made a mistake and busted in the wrong door. Oh, and if those people claiming to be police happen to be organized robbers (but I repeat myself?)… Well, bad luck to you. Unfortunately, the real police were too busy investigating someone’s spicy social media post to track down these actual criminals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s go really extreme: You must oppose the resistance in the Warsaw ghetto. After all, they were breaking the law and harming law officers executing lawful orders! How terrible! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And don’t let your craven cowardice fool you. Your more mild forms of resistance will absolutely<\/em> be characterized as “political violence” by the corporate media propaganda machine when it’s convenient for them, too. Sit-in? Political violence. Holding hands and singing Kumbaya? Political violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To quote Rothbard, the coercive state is “a predatory gang of robbers, enslavers, and murderers.” We should be no more surprised–or morally outraged–when one of their victims shoots back at them than we are when someone takes a shot at an Al Capone, a John Gotti, or a Pablo Escobar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also worth noting that “political violence” doesn’t seem to include the government’s agents visiting force on peaceful people–it only counts when someone tries to defend himself from such. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are, of course, valid reasons to avoid political self-defense, but they are strategic, not moral. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m working on a more extended philosophical treatment of this, but I felt like I needed to get something out in a more timely fashion, so that’s what this is. Expect a video and essay in the next week or so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seeing a lot of people, including libertarians, oddly enough, pronouncing these blanket oppositions to what the corporate media calls “political violence.” This is another case of people failing the Bastiat test–looking only at the bare surface level of such a policy, and failing to account for its secondary effects. Worse yet, these oppositions actually seem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,82,4],"tags":[153,86,60,19,225,62],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-philosophy","category-political","tag-american-revolution","tag-freedom","tag-libertarian","tag-liberty","tag-resistance","tag-strategy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marginalnonhermit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/dan-mall-JsquWCJ4h9Y-unsplash-cr.jpg?fit=930%2C500&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}