I know this is a really vague question, but it’s been on my mind A LOT lately. I’m specifically asking about people fighting on behalf of a group that is subject to oppression of some kind. 3 years ago, with all of the protests in America that included violence majorly against property and minorly against people but were about police brutality, I couldn’t help but question the seemingly popular notion that the violence wasn’t justified. Why wasn’t it justified? Because the police had not officially declared war on black people and other minority groups, but instead continue as an authority figure to protect and uplift their own members who do punch down on people belonging to minority groups? Because the protesters had yet to exhaust their non-violent routes? Were these protests in 2020 a retaliation or a first strike? Even if they were a first strike, was it justified?
What about Hamas? Palestine has suffered from genocide in all but name for over 70 years so does that make Hamas the aggressor or are they the ones acting in self-defense?
What about the issues with income inequality that have previously around the world led to uprisings and revolutions like in France and Russia? Were they justified even though the poor were not being constantly physically oppressed?
What about the issues with representation in government that led to the American revolution? Did those justify violence? Was the American revolution justified simply because of violent moments like the Boston massacre?
Is there a line that a group in power crosses that justifies violent revolt, or is it never justified?
People have been coming up with theories about this forever, from perspectives and time periods as diverse as Aristotle, St. Augustine, Gandhi, and Trotsky. You put a lot of very difficult questions in your post, but you didn’t put forth a criteria for what “justified” means to you. I think you’re going to need to interrogate that before being able to even think about any of these questions. For example, is violence justified by better outcomes, or by some absolute individual right to fight your oppressor? Is justification a question of morality, legality, tactical value, or something entirely different?
I know this lies at the core of the question, simply because “justification” is such a complex concept on its own. I asked the question because I can’t for the life of me get even remotely close to an answer because the different theories of morality and justice all are founded in sound logic, even though they contradict one another.
I want to hear what other people think, if they’ve made up their mind, and why they think what they think.
At the end of the day, you will still have to answer the root question(s) for yourself to yourself in order to resolve it for you. I admire your open-mindedness, but I worry that the post here is your way to avoid answering the deeper questions.
Maybe I am, but I don’t think I am, avoiding answering the question. I think there is no universal answer. Having been raised protestant and pushed away from organized religion by the obstinate idiocy that is the way so many people believe in steadfast rules of morality that have no room for exceptions (i.e. abortion is ALWAYS bad), I have come to realize there are things and concepts of value to humanity that are constantly at odds with each other. Regardless, the value of those things cannot be quantified by scalar values, and therefore cannot be directly compared. For example, human life is valuable, but what about when human lives are directly at odds with one another, like a fetus in the womb of a person who doesn’t have access to enough resources to take care of a baby? The correct course of action to take depends on an infinite number of factors, and those factors are undeniably affected by whichever person perceives them. I believe this to be the reason that the Bible itself contains directions for how, and describes at least one situation in which, to perform an abortion.
I don’t believe that morality is relative, I believe there are things and concepts that will always have value and importance to humanity, but I believe that the value of those things and concepts is relative given each scenario.
Putting it this way, the answer to my question about justifying violence becomes a question of the way the situation that could lead to violence is perceived by each person in the situation. So there is no objective way to determine the answer. And I hate that, but it does bring me some peace. We have to do the best we can with what we have. If our best is bad, then so be it, but we can prepare ourselves for certain situations so our best can be better than it would be otherwise.
I have no idea if any of what I just said made any sense, but it helped me clarify my thoughts. Maybe it’ll help someone else.
From what you’re saying, it seems to me that you are well on your way to building your own view. It does sound like you are thinking it through and not putting it off.
Word. Personally, I really like St. Augustine’s writings, which is a weird thing for an atheist and socialist living 1600 years later to say. I got really into his stuff during the pandemic for some reason. I also recommend some of Trotsky’s writing about war, especially in the run-up to WW1 while they were trying to hold the second international together. Lots of really wonderful stuff about international solidarity, and the role of socialists in a time of capitalist war, that I think would do people good to read today, 100 years later. He also wrote some stuff once he was in power after WW1 that I personally found less cool, but interesting in a “no one can reign innocently” way.
I’m of the mind that violence towards innocent civilians is never justified. Violence towards an oppressive authority can be, depends on the situation. Also, as a side note, it’s impossible to commit violence towards property/inanimate objects. Violence, in my opinion, is an act that specifically harms a person. So burning a house down, even if the owner is not in it, is still violence towards a person.
what if those civilians are condoning/supporting what the oppressive authority is doing?
If they’re not active combatants they’re not a target. How can you tell the difference between someone who is condoning/supporting vs someone who is just trying to survive? You can’t so if they’re not actively a threat they’re not a target either.
Who is a civilian? Does a guy with a shotgun who doesn’t like you in his backyard count as a civilian? Etc. It’s hard to nail down.
That’s true, I would argue that is someone is threatening you then you can obviously respond with violence. This is an issue that has been going on in Israel. Civilians were given weapons and backed by the military to settle. This definitely blurs the line and helps to illustrate the complexity of the problem. In the case of Israel, the current situation is absolutely the result of its governments policies over the past several decades. This does not excuse wanton violence targeting civilians directly though. That’s not even to mention the attacks and absolute war crimes happening to Palestinians right now and in the past.
It is a complicated question with not a single clear answer for every situation.
Violence against aggressors can be justified if you’re not escalating something to new levels, but violence against random people is never justified.
This is the correct answer.
History is written by the winners so whatever you do make it effective. You kill a bunch of people and lose you will be vilified.
It’s not ever justified.
Which is kind of the point. If it’s a last resort of self-preservation or to prevent an unacceptable alternative outcome, inherent to the choice to engage or endorse large scale violence is the underlying reality of choosing between two evils.
It’s not noble or good. It’s never justified.
Yet in certain situations it may be regarded as necessary.
But a necessary evil is not made good by virtue of its necessity.
And attempts to undermine the absolutism by which large scale violence is inherently unjustifiable, to turn atrocity into Micky Mouse heroism or patriotism, ultimately creates a moral tapestry wherein all atrocities can thus be justified by the relative perspectives of what is good.
So no, there is no measure by which large scale violence transforms into justifiable behavior, under any circumstances.
And a wise society would always regard its adoption as a stain upon its history, irrespective of what other horrors it was brought in to clear out.
You seem to think necessary !-> justified.
However, if something is necessary, it is justified.
While you may quibble, “it’s necessary to defend myself in life or death situations, but it isn’t justified”, this part “it’s necessary to defend myself in life or death situations” IS the justification of the action. It’s justified definitionally.
As such, your argument crumbles.
If you want a diamond necklace that you can’t afford, it is necessary to steal it in order to have it.
It is not justified to steal it simply because it was necessary to meet your goals.
You are implicitly assuming that the necessity of self-preservation equates justification on the premise that self-preservation is a just result.
I don’t agree.
If two soldiers are fighting for their lives against each other, it may be necessary for each to survive to kill the other.
But the family of the one that dies may not see their loved one’s death as justified even if the family of the one that survived sees it that way.
Your self-preservation is worthless to me, and thus justifies nothing. My own self-preservation is literally worth everything to me - and yet if still does not justify my taking everything from you, even if I deem it necessary to achieve my own desires and goals, any more than my desire for a necklace I cannot afford justifies its theft.
There is a distinction between things like stealing bread to save a life where a necessary action is justified by the good that comes out of it and stealing bread to throw away in order to achieve a thrill. Both are necessary to their goals, but one has a goal that justifies the necessary action while the other does not.
I’m saying that there is no goal or good in existence that justifies the inherit evil of mass violence, even if there are a myriad of ways in which mass violence might be necessary to one’s goals, with those ranging from ethnic cleansing to fighting tyranny.
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Ok, let’s stay within the confines of individual self-preservation.
If it is necessary for you to have a new organ to survive, but not enough are available through organ donation programs, does the fact that it is necessary to your survival mean that acquiring an organ from an unwilling donor (directly or though black market proxy) is a justified action?
How about a murderer that killed someone and left witnesses? If they are caught, it would mean they are sentenced to death. So it is necessary for their continued self-preservation to minimize the chances of being caught. Does that make their murder of the witnesses of their earlier crime justified?
Your pithy take on necessity = justification is BS at even a cursory examination.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have freed the slaves. Just that neither the Union nor the Confederate killing of each other was justified. I’m not saying that the US shouldn’t have fought in WW2. Just that bombing Hiroshima wasn’t justified.
You are the one conflating necessity with justification. And as such you seem to not be able to wrap your head around that while I’m saying mass violence is never justified, that doesn’t mean I’m saying the relative necessity for admirable goals means it was in the best interest of the US to have had a show of overwhelming force at the end of the WW2 conflict in mind of Stalin’s USSR post-war or that Sherman was wise to burn crops as he marched through the South to reduce supplies for Confederate opposition.
Edit: Also, thank you for making my point about how the notion of justified violence is a slippery slope that can easily end up justifying atrocities by relativist moralizing there with the whole “by any means necessary.”
Wow that is extremely well written. Here I was going to say only in self defense but I think you changed my mind. The nuance of necessity and justification is interesting and one I will have to think about.
There is no nuance. If it is necessary, it is justified.
The only nuance that exists is for acts you can create justifications for that aren’t necessary.
The only argument to be had is whether an action is necessary or not. If not necessary, then justification is required. Otherwise, they’re functionally synonymous.
Bob needed a new heart to survive, but the waiting list was too long.
Bob killed his next door neighbor Jane, cutting out her heart and taking it to a back alley surgeon in order to survive.
Bob was justified in doing this, because whatever is necessary is justified.
I mean that is sort of the definition of justified but it’s being misused here, it just means having a good reason. Everyone is ignoring how subjective it is though. Bob may consider his life above others, so for him staying alive is a good enough reason to commit murder. Jane and a jury are very likely to disagree.
Different language needs to be used I think to avoid the issues people have with the concept of violent resistance.
Peace isn’t an option because injustice still happens under peace time. Liberation is a better solution for the oppressed.
So now we’ve got:
Liberation of oppressed peoples from oppression is always justified.
This focuses more on the end goal than the action that resistance implies. Liberation can still involve violent resistance and that’s okay. You can be on the side of righteousness and still do what is morally wrong, this is true of all movements.
We have to agree that liberation from oppression is always morally good and we have to apply it to all cases. So if we don’t look at the Palestinian struggle the same way we’d look at indigenous issues in north America or apartheid SA, we’d be hypocrites.
You’re close to the crux of the issue.
The real issue at hand is whether or not we’re talking about moral relativism or absolutism.
If we are endorsing relativism, then all actions have a relative frame of reference by which they are justified (i.e. Bob’s killing Jane).
My stance is that in terms of absolutism, there is no such thing as justified mass violence, and that while it is certainly possible for mass violence to be a lesser evil absolutely, and thus easily argued as a moral good relative to the alternative, that ultimately it remains an evil under all circumstances objectively, and at best can be a lesser evil regarded absolutely.
I would have to disagree on the absolutism bit.
I would consider that the Haitian slave rebellion or Warsaw ghetto uprisings were intrinsically good.
I would wish to see liberation of oppressed peoples be a universal law. I would wish for this to be applied to all and I wish for everyone to act on this.
I believe the above fits under Kantian ethics.
Do you include the 1804 massacres of the French with the mass rape of women and killing of children by Dessalines which followed the Haitian revolt in that intrinsic good?
one thing is for sure; it is NEVER justified to attack and use unarmed unengaged civilians to further narratives and motivations. It only strengthens the occupiers stance to ignore military targets for soft ones instead. The ends NEVER justify the means, PERIOD.
Reminds me of the TNG episode The High Ground, there is always a way forward that doesn’t include mass casualties, it’s just humans are too fucking shit to try.
It’s never justified, but it also feels gross to join this chorus of condemnation against Hamas, when it’s so much louder and widespread than any condemnation of official Israeli policies which have had the same or worse material effect for decades.
I wanna see you try dialoguing with Putin. Do you think everyone is shy and nobody ever tried??
I have also been thinking about it myself for a while. Although I do not have a clear answer, I do think it is helpful to realize that violence comes in many forms and is almost always present in at least one. Take, for example, the state’s monopoly on violence, usually handled by the police. Whenever there is a differing opinion on how to handle something, one of the parties may ask: What if I just do the thing I want? If one foregoes compromise and dialogue, there is nothing but violence left as a tool to either push forward or back at a cause. Sometimes there may be legitimate reasons for not wanting to compromise on an issue. Sometimes the ones we see “engaging in violence” are those whose needs have been neglected due to their potential for violence deemed lower than those doing the neglect. Violence is a destructive tool that often have better alternatives. However this should not make us default to the position that there are always clear cut answers to who really started the cycle and that someone are morally faulty for engaging with it.
TL;DR the status quo is usually backed by threats of violence or actual violence. This makes it hard to judge who is at fault for violent actions at any given moment, i.e. it all depends on context.
Beautiful summary. I specially like that it exposes the power assimetry that is key to any oppressive relationship.
Violence can be justified, especially to prevent or answer violence.
But the target of the violence matters a lot. Violence against people who have nothing to do with the problem is never justified.
Rebelling against violent police is perfectly justified. Rebelling against a terrorist state that commit atrocities is perfectly justified. All out war against a invader is perfectly justified.
Killing civilians, murdering civilians and taking them postage is not ever justified. This is either war crime or terrorism.
Sure. Just keep in mind that settlers aren’t random innocent civilians.
Taking the French Revolution for example, as I’ve read summaries of in the past, it was really a high nobles hoarding wealth with high taxes versus lower nobles and merchants inciting the peasantry to overthrow the greedy bastards. The famed “let them eat cake” was propaganda used by one of the lower nobles to properly enrage their mobs.
The Catholic Protestant revolution was a nobles and merchants versus the Catholic Church over paying too high a tithe and donations. Martin Luther was a monk recruited and sponsored by the nobles to incite the masses against the Catholic Church’s greed.
The American Revolution was also about refusing to pay higher taxes and was lead and sponsored by the biggest land and slave owners.
So pretty much, the line in our history that was crossed and triggered many famous revolutions was in fact money. As long as someone’s piece of the pie was threatened, boom! Revolution!
Martin Luther was a monk recruited and sponsored by the nobles to incite the masses
what a pure bullshit
I disagree, there’s no beef involved in this. At most it’s birdshit. But alright, i’ll change it. The lower nobles made use of Luther’s rhetoric to incite the masses and stage revolts.
Depends on what kind of mass violence you’re thinking of.
The degree to which you can control its extent, direction, and collateral damage is the degree to which you can justify it.
An organized millitary march to capture vital infrastructure and establish defensible positions in preparation for retaliation and most likely war, quite easily justified.
An unhinged hate fueled massacre and mass raping to the point of literally smashing open panic room vaults to drag out more victims to murder and rape, well at least Lemmygrad and Hexbear will still have your back!
A lot of people are probably wondering the same thing, but are not connected to realize this. A lot of people are primed like grasshoppers are to changing into locusts
Whenever it’s “the war on/against” something… apparently.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has written some excellent thoughts about this topic.
I recommend the German original texts. There are also English and other translations available.
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer
violence is never justified unless it is in self defense, the problem is people interpret self defense in different ways, that seems to be the issue
But I think the fact that the definition of self defense is up for debate calls into question whether violent self defense is ever justified.
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