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Are aggressive acts legitimate forms of protest and do you believe they are protected free speech?

Are aggressive acts (Property damage, starting fires, etc.) legitimate protest and protected speech?

  • Total voters
    50
dmpi said:
The answer is black and white. There's rioting just to cause mayhem/damage and to go looting and the there's rioting for a legitimate civic or social injustice/cause.
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Either way, rioting is illegal.
 
SuperDS77 said:
....WHATABOUT!!!!!!!
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Excuse me? The thread title is.................

Are aggressive acts legitimate forms of protest and do you believe they are protected free speech?​

Nothing was said about WHICH aggressive acts we should be discussing or not, so it was a general question.

It's amazing how I keep encountering people who are so simple-minded that they think they are catching me on a whataboutism only to end up looking foolish.
 
Gardener said:
The summer of hate proves yours.


That does not even include the fact that Jan 6, was against governmental targets while your supper of hate victimized innocent citizens, instead.
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To be fair, there were very few of them:

"Very few of those charged appear to be affiliated with highly organized extremist groups, and many are young suburban adults from the very neighborhoods Trump vows to protect from the violence in his reelection push to win support from the suburbs.

...Some of those facing charges undoubtedly share far-left and anti-government views. Far-right protesters also have been arrested and charged. Some defendants have driven to protests from out of state. Some have criminal records and were illegally carrying weapons. Others are accused of using the protests as an opportunity to steal or create havoc.

But many have had no previous run-ins with the law and no apparent ties to antifa, the umbrella term for leftist militant groups that Trump has said he wants to declare a terrorist organization."
apnews.com

AP finds most arrested in protests aren't leftist radicals

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump portrays the hundreds of people arrested nationwide in protests against racial injustice as violent urban left-wing radicals.
apnews.com apnews.com
 
Hello My Son said:
I've witnessed multiple posters in threads on this topic recently defending aggressive acts as a legitimate form of protest. What is everyone's position on this idea?
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Why didn't you answer your own poll?

(My answer is other because the term "aggressive acts" is too vague.)
 
lynnwinslow said:
Why didn't you answer your own poll?

(My answer is other because the term "aggressive acts" is too vague.)
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Fair question. Whenever I post a poll, I don't want to impact the results or discussion by putting my opinion upfront. I'd rather allow the natural discourse to play out and once the pieces fall where they may, I'll start to chime in with my own take.

Plus, I also get the benefit of reading through everyone's positions, which could very well lead to my opinion evolving, as I see everyone else's posts (unless they're unhinged personal attacks or really extremist positions) as learning opportunities. When I pose a poll question, it's always for a topic that I'm open-minded and persuadable about.

Also, I intentionally used the vague term because I knew many would have different opinions on what qualifies as aggressive, so I figured that discussion would also naturally play out.
 
Hello My Son said:
Fair question. Whenever I post a poll, I don't want to impact the results or discussion by putting my opinion upfront. I'd rather allow the natural discourse to play out and once the pieces fall where they may, I'll start to chime in with my own take.

Plus, I also get the benefit of reading through everyone's positions, which could very well lead to my opinion evolving, as I see everyone else's posts (unless they're unhinged personal attacks or really extremist positions) as learning opportunities. When I pose a poll question, it's always for a topic that I'm open-minded and persuadable about.
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Try the SNOWFLAKE method and vote for the least plausible.
 
Hello My Son said:
Fair question. Whenever I post a poll, I don't want to impact the results or discussion by putting my opinion upfront. I'd rather allow the natural discourse to play out and once the pieces fall where they may, I'll start to chime in with my own take.

Plus, I also get the benefit of reading through everyone's positions, which could very well lead to my opinion evolving, as I see everyone else's posts (unless they're unhinged personal attacks or really extremist positions) as learning opportunities. When I pose a poll question, it's always for a topic that I'm open-minded and persuadable about.

Also, I intentionally used the vague term because I knew many would have different opinions on what qualifies as aggressive, so I figured that discussion would also naturally play out.
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Without any definition or even guidelines on what "aggressive" means, I think we are just seeing a Rorschach test.
 
We have seen a decades-long push to belittle genuine political conversation, while presenting "direct action", annoyance, and even outright violence as modes of speech. This was a means to debase and degrade our politics, on both sides. There were commercial forces behind it -- obviously, NGP-VAN wanted the Democrats to put all their efforts into compiling a beautiful private company database and working as its appendages, so they could auction it off to the highest bidder. There were foreign political forces behind it -- the "Revolutionary Communist Party" pivoted, after Communism lost its luster, to posing as anarchists and pushing for 'Black Bloc' confrontations, presumably as a mode of destabilizing the country. And there was just a lot of dumb behind it... too many people too eager to say "oh, it's no use talking to them".

Well, we're right on to the 'repent or pay the price' part of this plan.
 
exoplanet said:
Without any definition or even guidelines on what "aggressive" means, I think we are just seeing a Rorschach test.
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I agree, but I'm okay with that discussion playing out too. I'm not sure it would've been possible for me to specifically define "aggressive" vs. "non-aggressive" in a way that would've pleased everyone, so I'm comfortable with people promoting their own definitions of those terms within their overall response.
 
SNOWFLAKE said:
Try the SNOWFLAKE method and vote for the least plausible.
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The Snowflake method involves simplifying the world to the nth degree and mimicking the attitudes of the with whom he identifies.

Why on Earth would he want to do that?
 
Need to define agressive, it can be anywhere from demeanor (which can be percieved as agressive but not meant to be) to physical violence against people or property
 
Hello My Son said:
I couldn't post an option to blame Canada for this one.
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I meant least plausible of the ones you posted, if you wanted to include Canada, you should have posted........

Only in Canada.
 
OrphanSlug said:
Being very direct, pulling no punches. In the modern context, our political divisions over the last 50-60 years, the line between "legitimate forms of protest" and aggressive acts, or "civil disobedience" if you like that term, is as clear as mud.

Jan 6th, responses to George Floyd or Rodney King, or some other law enforcement violence, during then after the Oklahoma City bombing or the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" nonsense, targeted murders and assassinations or attempts at, gunning a bunch of kids down at a school or a group of largely minority people at a grocery store, responses to Immigration sweeps, throwing soup on a painting or blocking a road over climate change, responses here to Israel and Hamas (and others,) just about any weekend on a college campus somewhere in this nation, etc.

Example after example of politics deciding what is and is not legitimate, it gets old watching people split hairs on what can be legitimate because they agree with the issue and sometimes the response.

So again, given all we see right wing to left wing, how can this poll be sincere?
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I take no issue with your response and opinion of it being so unclear, impossible to answer, etc.

I'll go into my own positions later, as I don't like to bias the discussion within my own polls threads--I don't start poll threads to pick a fight with someone. However, my motivation in asking the question, impossible as some may find the answers to be, came from a place of genuine curiosity and open-mindedness.

If my aim was to provoke or flamebait with this question, my poll would've been a straight-up yes or no poll with no options for nuance, and I wouldn't have asked for elaboration.
 
Gardener said:
The Snowflake method involves simplifying the world to the nth degree and mimicking the attitudes of the with whom he identifies.

Why on Earth would he want to do that?
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Well, first of all my suggestion was meant tongue-in-cheek, but I should have guessed it would go over the heads of some.

2ndly, I prefer to mimic the most simple minded people among us, you know the ones, Righties and Trump supporters. They are SO easy to mimic. All it requires is a limited vocabulary, simple-minded thinking, and a TOTAL lack of a sense of humor.

Get it now?
 
SNOWFLAKE said:
I meant least plausible of the ones you posted, if you wanted to include Canada, you should have posted........

Only in Canada.
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Lol, I'll vote genuinely after the bulk of the discussion plays out.
 
Civil disobedience was made righteous in my lifetime by the civil rightsmovement. An example is the lunch counter sit-ins. They were illegal, but I wouldn't call them aggressive. Others might.

But for civil disobedience to be righteous two things must be present:

The protesters must accept, even demand punishment for their law breaking. That is part of the protest.

It can't be aggressive. In fact, it needs to be done with love. King reminded protesters that they are also acting on behalf of the people who are responding to their protests, such as the cops. One might say they, too, are oppressed by the injustice, even as they act on behalf of the oppressor.
 
SkyChief said:
These posters are neoMarxists. (This forum has many)

Karl Marx wrote about aggressive acts and violence as being acceptable forms of protest between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in his Communist Manifesto.
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So, in theory, the aggressive protests leading up to the Revolution were committed by communists.

And MAGA during January 6th…
 
Just remember that since the beginning of America there has been protests of various stripes in our history covering all sorts of different reasons and ideologies.

So before some of you do the “but the libs, the libs” take stock of your own side before pointing fingers.
 
Lutherf said:
At some point it would be a good idea for you to go back and read the "kegger" post again.
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At some point it would be a good idea for you to admit you shouldn’t have said that.
 
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