westwall...are we talking about two different things?
Self defense (or immediate defense of another)...
Or..taking the law into your own hands and meting out justice?
Because imo those are two different things. The first, I agree with you on and the law recognizes it as valid. That is not vigilantism.
Vigilantism begins with self defense. When the State refuses to defend the people, the people are going to defends themselves. Then, if the State CONTINUES to do nothing, the vigilantes will mete out justice. They will do so under control however. Your interpretation of vigilante justice is completely wrong. In all the cases in the west where it was used, the accused was duly tried, had a jury determine guilt, and then was summarily hanged for the crimes they were convicted of. The vigilantes rose up ONLY as a last resort.
They then disbanded. That was true in all cases. Unlike what progressives claim, the regular people are not the bloodthirsty mob you claim them to be. They are NOT the BLM assholes who are doing exactly that! That sort of behavior is a LEFTIST thing. Not a normal human being thing.
I don’t agree...while I agree with you on self defense, I can never condone vigilantism. It is lawlessness at best, and caused the deaths of thousands at worst. It is mob justice.
What do you think is going to happen when the rioters continue to wreak havoc without consequence. Human nature tells us that if they suffer no consequences, they will escalate. How many murders do they have to commit before you start paying attention?
Who says it is without consequence? Most of this is occurring in a very small areas (though the RW media insists entire cities are burning and people everywhere being murdered) - worst have been charged and will be prosecuted. The man who pulled the guy from his car and attacked him is in jail (and apparently has a record of prior violence).
Shooting is not an acceptable consequence for disorderly conduct.
No, it's not. This assault on common decency is ripping the heart out of at least four major cities. It is a LIE that the rioting is small and localised. Portland's downtown is shuttered, the same for Seattle and Minneapolis, and significant parts of New York as well.
This is not localized. Why do you perpetuate these lies? Anyone can look at the THOUSANDS of videos being posted up, every day, and see what is really happening. You have to be willfully ignorant, and only watch CNN to be this misinformed.
I never watch CNN. I do not have cable. I do not use twitter, instagram, nor do I derive my news from FB.
Videos don't tell a whole story, and can often be used to perpetrate a lie. I see the point with Portland (though I will further research it - for instance - where did that map of arson come from? Is that all arsons for that period of time? Or, just those related to protests? What is the timeline - for instance were there many at the start and then they dwindled? How widespread is it NOW? Why doesn't anyone ask questions?
If people are mostly videoing and virally spreading only the violent clashes, and ignoring the (boring) mostly peaceful ones, then doesn't that perpetrate a false sense of what is going on?
Who's agenda is at stake perpetrating THAT? How can you get facts? Are agitators from both sides trying to hijack these movements to start a war? According to the FBI many protests involve outside elements. And them...there is what is going on online. But we're so dug down into left/right we could be failing to see larger patterns.
Here is an article from 7/28/2020 illustrating how both sides are using this to their advantage.
What's happening in the streets isn't what you're seeing in the tweets.
www.wired.com
Protests in Portland following the killing of Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in the custody of Minneapolis police in May, had dwindled to maybe 100 peaceful demonstrators per night before President Trump sent federal agents to the city, ostensibly to protect US government property.
Trump and his backers assert that the deployments are necessary to curb unrest in cities that have become anarchic war zones. You’d be hard-pressed to prove that’s true in Portland if you bothered to look anywhere but Lownsdale Square at midnight. (The only disruptive anarchists in my neighborhood are the crows in my garden.) If any widespread, persistent Portland protest war zone does exist, it isn’t in physical space at all. It’s online.
Anything that happens during a Portland protest happens in front of at least one camera and will end up on the internet. The crowd is full of smartphones. Men in press helmets climb up streetlights with expensive rigs to get a better view. People at the protest pulled up livestreams to see what was happening at the front of the crowd, squinting to see if the Feds had left their fortress yet. The federal agents watched those livestreams too. Ergo, anything that happens at a Portland protest is meme fodder and a chance for good or bad online PR.
So tell me again how accurate videos are? When I said that the Portland Protests were mostly confined to one area - it was true. By the time Trump decided to send in his militia - it was Lowesten Square. It was winding down.
