this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Property damage is not violence and nonviolent protests are not terrorism. They will claim it is. They are lying.
Gonna disagree with the anarchist viewpoint because physical damage to inanimate objects can still cause PTSD, battered spouse syndrome with enough incidents over time, etc. It's the threat of danger that matters.
Just because it doesn't fit your ideological view doesn't mean people are lying by looking at it differently
Correct! It is the threat of danger that matters. Domestic violence as you described is threatening and abusive, and therefore violent.
Is it the same thing when the property is owned by a company, not a person?
Is graffiti terrorism? It's property damage. It can be ideologically motivated. If someone had spray painted the cars, instead of lit them on fire... would it still be terrorism?
Who was threatened here?
Yep the idea of terrorism bad is honestly kinda overly simple. Can it be bad? Sure especially if you don't have a specific target but well the IRA, American Revolutionaries, and Zapatistas have shown that there is a good way to go about it. The term of the day is damage minimization.
Yep. Nobody (okay, very few people) want to burn Teslas, or make car bombs, or dress up as indians and throw a shipment of tea into the Boston harbor, but when you live in a state where the government is no longer governing for the people (even if the people knowingly, or unknowingly selected that government), ignores it's citizens or even actively harms them, then you don't have much choice. You have to defend yourself.
Surprisingly, Star Wars is a great example of this. A rinky dink political group (rebels) blowing up a military installation (death star) is terrorism. That does not mean the action was unjustified.
But they're at war though, aren't they? I suppose the Empire would still spin it that way.
I mean, technically any rebel group is at war with their oppressors.
Terrorism that succeeds is called revolution.
It's not terrorism if it's war.
Every definition that I can find says it is but maybe you'd like to provide one that says otherwise.
Its an Anarchist thing, you wouldn't get it.
Super simple version?
Violence is defined by the state in such a way that it binds the actions of its subjects, but exempts the actions of itself/its agents.
Look up 'systemic violence' or 'stochastic terrorism' and you can begin to see how it becomes harder to draw very clear lines than you seem to think is.
Lets go with your definition that violence includes acts against property.
Ok... are... taxes violence?
Is it violent to threaten you with immediate arrest if found operating a car without a valid liscense?
Howabout valid insurance?
Is civil asset forfeiture violence?
Is emminent domain violence?
Howabout clearing a homeless encampment, destroying all their belongings?
Is that violent?
Is it violent to, either intentionally or unintentionally... crash the stock market and knock about 20% off of the value of 401ks of the majority of the population?
Reminder that involuntary assault and involuntary murder / manslaughter... are violent crimes.
... The most basic definition of what a State is, is "a formalized group that has the 'legitimate' monopoly of the use of force (violence) within a defined geographic area."
So you don't have one? Glad we sorted that.
Oh, are you asking me, personally, for a definition of violence, just flat out, with no context?
I'd say violence is anything that causes unnecessary suffering to a living being, or significant damage to a nonliving thing.
What exactly do I mean by that?
Well, its quite context dependent.
Is burning down a Tesla dealership violent?
Sure!
Is a lesser act of violence in pursuit of a reduction of much, much greater violence justifiable?
Again, context matters, but generally speaking, the world is built upon violence, people just disagree about when it is justified.
If a man has pummeled you with hammer blows, you'd be justified in doing some violence back to him to get him to stop.
If a cartoon supervillain has become either the most or second most poweful man in the world, he has a history of and declared intention to commit mass systemic violence against hundreds of millions of people... and burning down some of his shittily designed and built self-immolating cars stands a good chance at knocking him, his grip on the minds of his idiot sycophants, and his overall level of power and influence down a peg?
When there are no 'legitimate' means that will effectively do this, effectively lessen his capacity to do violence against millions?
When this harms only things directly, and not people? When those things are overpriced luxury items?
Well, I'd rather not keep taking the hammer blows.
If you've got a more peaceful way to stop the hammering, I'd love to hear it... but my bones are breaking.
No I asked for a definition that doesn't include property damage.
Glad we cleared that up.
If you read what they're saying, they made a pretty good argument for why the definition of violence can include property damage.
You can stick your head in the sand all you want, but only reading answers that match your opinion is a good way to go insane.
Brother, are you blind?
See? Bad faith.
No, I do not.
See? Still bad faith.
The initial claim was that violence does not include property damage. So our self-proclaimed anarchist contradicted themselves in two consecutive comments.
Talk about sticking your head in the head, with reading comprehension like that y'all should go back to twitter
The initial claim was made by a different user. The user you're talking about elaborated on the importance of context, so they didn't contradict themselves.
With reading comprehension like that...
Well you accused me of whataboutism, so I explained how... yeah you could see it that way if you only look at the surface, but it's really a way of illustrating a more complex idea.
And well, here you go again, attempting to distill everything into neat, simple little boxes.
Twice now I quite literally explained to you how context is important in ... you know, definitions, which literally are a network of syntactic associations that are context... and now you've selectively replied by removing all of the context I gave.
So uh, yes, I'm glad we've cleared up that you are definitionally a simpleton, only insterested in very surface level, simple understandings of things.
When the person that started this thread said 'property damage is not violence', they likely (I can't read minds, but I've got a hunch) meant that property damage is not of the same magnitude of severity, does not or should not be judged by the same set of standards as violence directly against a person, that the entirety of a scenario involving violence should be considered when assessing it.
IE, they're using shorthand, and I attempted to unpack some of that shorthand for you.
Sort of like how the colloquial definition of 'theft' generally includes shoplifting, but generally excludes wage theft by employers, despite wage theft being of considerably greater monetary magnitude than shrink loss.
If you want 'a definition' of violence that doesn't include property damage, here you go:
Violence is any act that causes direct harm to a thing capable of suffering.
Now you can point out how that's a flawed definition, and I will redirect you to my comments on your own flawed and favored definition of terrorism from the FBI, and my own previous attempts at better defining violence, and then maybe we can have the actually interesting conversation about violence and property that you've thus far done your damndest to avoid.
I didn't need any of that explained to me. I understand and agree. I'm trying to have a discussion about what is or is not terrorism while you're trying to argue about whether the violence/terrorism is justified. I said in my original reply that it "Doesn't necessarily make it wrong."
After reading through the thread I did the same thing.
I tagged them as "bad faith actor".
Based on what, exactly?
Based on your bad faith acting. Ya know, the whole conversation up above.
No, I do not know. There was no "bad faith acting" above. Someone said property damage is not violence, I asked for evidence, none was provided, someone else jumped in to argue a bunch of stuff unrelated to the question but later admitted it was indeed violence, and by extension terrorism. What part of that do you consider "bad faith acting"?
The other user elaborated to you on the importance of context. They challenged the definitions of violence. You basically responded "I was right" with very simple ideas. They didn't admit anything later, because their position remained the same throughout. You saying otherwise is the bad faith part. It is okay if you don't understand the complexities, but it is bad faith to misrepresent that other user.
Which was unnecessary and irrelevant because the context was already established. That's called "derailing the conversation".
No they didn't, they plainly agreed.
It clearly did not. They said that violence did not include property damage, then later admitted that it did. I don't know how you can claim they "challenged the definition of violence" without disagreeing that property damage is violence.
Lord have mercy.
User A stated that property damage is not violence.
User B expanded on that topic (not a derailment because it is relevant. A derailment would be them talking about another topic, example: music) and challenged the scope of different definitions of violence. You ignored this.
When you asked User B if they agree that property damage is violence, they stated their position that yes, it can be.
There are TWO different people, with TWO different opinions, and you are mixing them up.