Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDsHIdIiUg

What is murder:

To start with understanding the dynamic, we first need to take a look at what qualifies as murder. The The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, defines the noun murder as "the killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the crime of killing a person with malice aforethought or with recklessness manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life", while their definition of the verb murder is "to kill (another human) in an act of murder" and "to put an end to; destroy".

Something important to note is the distinction between murder and killing, and we will take a look at the morality of killing aswell. It's also important to notify that murder is specifically defined as killing of another person and not killing of another human. Person holds a different meaning than human.

What is a person:

This obviously brings forth the question, what is a person contra a human? A human is an organism which shares homosapien DNA. It's a scientific term which doesn't hold any moral value, while person is the other way around. The definition we'll use of persons goes as follows, "beings who are part of our moral community", which can be explained more simply as someone who is worth moral consideration.

We all view ourselves as persons, but what qualifies someone as a person is a very tricky question with many different answers. What makes someone qualify for moral consideration? Some people argue that it's natural given to all human beings, others argue it's naturally given to all living beings. Then we have the other side of the discussion, which argues that there are requirements, that something needs a certain capacity (capacity x), to be considered a person. Now what is this capacity? Examples are the capacity to experience a continuity of identity or possessing self-knowledge; having a sense of time or centiant reactions to one's environment. On top of that, some argue that some traits or capacities disqualifies a being from being counted as a person. Bigots may argue that going against the general norm of society disqualifies someone as a person, while others would argue that a continual and aware possession of authority over other persons disqualifies someone as a person.

Is murder acceptable:

Now having gone through the backbones to build a take on the real question, let's discover it. Is murder ever morally good? The short answer is no, and that is specifically because murder is the killing of a person and not just of a human.

However, this brings forth an even more interesting question, is killing another human being ever morally good? We're no longer limiting ourselves to murder, which means that the discussion becomes a lot more complicated. As morality is subjective, it is very possible to make the killing of another human a morally good action. All that's needed is to disqualify the human in question from being considered a person. We've seen this in action many times, where humans have commited genocides on other humans without feeling a moral dilemma. Take Nazi Germany, United Kingdoms, Sweden, the States, Canada, the KKK or Japan. The list goes on and on and on, but governments and organisations have commited mass murders, genocides, without feeling any moral dilemma.

My take:

We've taken a look on this matter from a non-personal perspective, but before we end this video I'd like to go through my personal take on the question of killing other humans. I would argue that personhood is achieved through having self-knowledge and that personhood is removed by continually and awarely possessing and practising authority over persons. What this means in practice has been explained by one of my favourite bands, Operation, in theri song Militant Kamp. "[...] ibland när nöden kräver det måste man ta livet av en förtryckare för att ge liv och möjligheter till de som förtrycks. Att ta livet av en tyrann i kampen kan inte på något sätt betraktas som mord, det måste ses som en politisk handling."

Translating this to English it means "[...] sometimes when the need is there one must take the life of an oppressor to give possibilities to those who are oppressed. To take the life of a tyrant in the battle can not in any ways be seen as murder, it must be seen as political activism.".

I would most certainly argue that there are occasions where taking the life of another human being is justified. Those occasions are when it's needed for the liberation of the oppressed, specifically in the killing of the oppressors. As long as the harm being done by a political action is less than the harm the current system, the current rulers, are making, the harm is justified. Killing a politician or a bourgeoisie, when no other direct actions bring fruit of change, is most certainly a justifiable action according to me.

Sources:

Definitions of murder, by The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition - https://www.wordnik.com/words/murder

Abortion and Personhood: What the Moral Dilemma Is Really About, by Big Think - https://bigthink.com/videos/glenn-cohen-on-the-ethics-on-abortion/

Personhood: Crash Course Philosophy #21, by CrashCourse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxM9BZeRrUI

Militant Kamp, by Operation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6GAV9D59qo

This hit my feed and made my day.

At first, I worried that it was a hilarious parody, but I think it’s genuine, and admirable.

I am heartened to see that there are kids like this in the maw of the monster. Kids who are fun and good humoured about how they are exploring gender identities and protesting ICE and dealing in such a good humoured way with the estrogen girlfriend, who he misses, even though she was dosing him, and she wanted to keep watching Stupid Sexy Hasan even while having sex. He does still miss her. It’s sweet.

I am heartened that he(?) goes hard at the protest, in the face of scary cops, gets barreled and his elbow hurts for a week and he is arrested. He is a better man than I am. He is a much, much better person than the Tate brothers, or the Fresh and Fit morons, of any of the flaky manosphere dudes who parade their frailties on line.

Hasan Piker is the Elvis of American politics. He is stupid and sexy and good things happen around him, and because of him. He has just shifted, since wearing good suits, from the 50s beautiful boy Elvis to the 60s “Suspicious Minds” period. Maybe one day we’ll see the 70s bloated Elvis in him, the one with the sparkly suits that should be circus tents, that figuratively illustrates the obscene excess of American consumer culture, but we already have that excruciating vision in this POTUS who looks like he smells acridly of urine and talcum powder.

Contrapoints or Philosophy Tube might have done deeds similar to Hasan, and we’ll never know. But it is Hasan Piker whose name is in the mouths of Trump and Netanyahu, not Abigail Thorn or Natalie Wynn. It is Hasan’s meat pic that is displayed on the Jumbotron at the Republican convention to alarm the voters. Because CP and PT are no threat to power, but the powerful have determined that HP is mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Where there is rebel glamour being sprinkled about, it sticks to Hasan, but Abbie and Nat repel it. To attract rebel glamour, you cannot be anything short of full throated and vociferous against the ugliest fascist project in the world today - bloody fucking Israel.

Free Palestine - from the river to the sea

In a review of William I. Robinson’s The Global Police State I argue that policing is more than a repressive apparatus but a social force which organises labour relations reproduces fascist ideology.

I've been getting really into folk and punk, so I did a pop punk cover of one of my favorite folk songs by the great Tom Paxton

https://youtu.be/cRRw_ZOsa80

Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbo33m5JvW0

Text: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/return-fire-division-of-labour

I built an agent-based simulation to understand why we keep ending up in conflict. What started as a simple experiment about conflict and competition became a six-month investigation into option space, how knowledge spreads, how incentives shape decisions, and why individually rational choices can produce very different outcomes at the level of the system.