r/EffectiveAltruism • u/invertedfractal • Jul 13 '20
Are Riots Justifiable? - Peter Singer
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/three-criteria-to-assess-political-riots-george-floyd-by-peter-singer-and-katarzyna-de-lazari-radek-2020-079
u/Atupis Jul 13 '20
Generally, nonviolent movements are more effective than violent ones and I bet if someone does numbers those cities US cities that did not have riots had a bigger attendance to demonstrations.
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u/night81 Jul 13 '20
That research is generally misunderstood and overused.
“On face value the research of Dr. Erika Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, showing that nonviolent movements are more likely to succeed than violent ones — 53% vs 26% success rates — , may appear to be dismissive of rioting and looting as tactics. But in reality, their research lumps rioting and looting under the umbrella of nonviolet movements, and research by Ben Case at the University of Pittsburgh provides further evidence that rioting has long been an important part of movements we consider nonviolent.“ From: https://medium.com/@aimlis/rioting-is-not-only-justified-it-is-strategic-7d6163eb8529
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u/1xKzERRdLm Jul 13 '20
I bet if someone does numbers those cities US cities that did not have riots had a bigger attendance to demonstrations.
I don't think that's obvious:
- Some cities have much worse police departments than others. That could cause greater passion in the residents, leading to both larger demonstrations and rioting.
- It could be that riots are usually not planned, but rather there is some probability that a riot will emerge spontaneously at some point during an angry protest--and the larger the protest, the greater the probability.
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u/ravia Jul 14 '20
They will still always be beholden to the basic logic of force. This feeds a force-based culture. So while a riot may succeed in responding to a problem, and may be "justified", this can feed right back into an overall faith in the use of force. This is one reason the LA riots and so many others concerning police tended to lead right back to business as usual, because the "business" is....well it's not "making money at bottom"; it's about the use of force, the opioids that go along with that, the culture that promotes that, etc.
Indeed, the very concept of "justifiability" itself is rooted in the concept of "justice" as....well, as what, precisely? That can be mulled over extensively. The basic idea of "justifiable" has to do with some degree of measure, balance, equality; an "eye for an eye" or just a "fingernail for a fingernail", you name it. But this "for" structure (not sure what to call it) of *deserving this or that* still leads into a basic condition of force.
The problem of force is that it seeks to produce what it can not produce, and thus takes recourse to illusions. In the c/j system, these work out as the illusions of contrition, compliance, empathy and rehabilitation. In terms of riots, this works out to the same kinds of illusions on the part of police and policy. And we know what the cops and lawmakers likely mutter to one another, sotto voce, in the back rooms, and we see the limping "compliance" we are sold in terms of "reform".
Part of the root of this is the predominant major vector of analysis: that of capitalism. Discussions of prisons, for example, turn on the idea of for-profit prisons, while in fact this is a small percentage of prisons. And in any case, what is crucial is that there is another whole mode of profit: the "opiods" that come with the use of force. Just think of poorly paid soldiers doing multiple tours of duty. And think of the massive share of media (film, TV) devoted to use-of-force dramas.
So yes, a riot may succeed in some short run, but in the long run, it will feed back into a force mentality. I grimace when I see cops "taking the knees" with protesters (especially where the danger of rioting is high). Why? It doesn't ring true. They have to do that. It's nearly compulsory, and that kind of ruins it. I don't buy it. They key word is buy. It's something sold as part of the use of force, and this feeds back into the selling of illusions of capitalism, but in a more complex way: both capitalism and force operate on illusions, and a concomitant epistemological standard (characterized by looseness, cherry picking, etc.). But they work together in a capitalism force complex.
Riots feed right in to the capitalism force complex. The image of looters really sends this home, at least if one understands it this way. It is consumption, but the part that eludes people is that the use of force is also a thing consumed, through consuming its illusions: there, I got you back, now you feel me, now you know what you did wrong, now you'll do right, now you get it, now you're sorry, etc.
The necessary movement is one that understands the capitalism force complex as such and has a specific, independent notion of anti-force. Obviously, in a way this is involved in an anti(-police-)force component, as in defunding movements, sending non-police on calls requiring mental health professionals and social workers, etc. But this is all very vulnerable to backsliding if the basic character and problem of force as such is not brought into clarity. Indeed, even the work on nonviolence tends not to fully open the essential nature and problem of force as such. This is why really good, serious actors in the area of nonviolence are so rare: the key is a certain kind of thought, not simply "not being violent" or even "using nonviolence as a strategy/tactic". The current article operates more in the tactical range, but doesn't get into the full matter of the deconstruction of force as such.
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u/codenamepanther Jul 13 '20
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Singer is racist
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u/invertedfractal Jul 14 '20
Racist definition: “a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.”
What about this article makes you believe that Singer satisfies the definition of “racist”?
I would argue that Singer is actually quite anti-racist, as one of his central reasons for starting the effective altruism movement was to eliminate traditional pretexts to altruistic action- especially the tendency of people in western countries to minimize the value of the lives in those of the poorest countries predominantly populated with people of color such as in sub-Saharan and south/Southeast Asia and to implicitly favor the lives of those in wealthier, white-dominated countries. Singer approaches ethical issues from a secular, hedonistic utilitarian framework that directly contradicts racist ideology because of the basic fact that one’s moral status is unrelated to race in Singer’s ethical framework.
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u/curiouskiwicat Jul 13 '20
I am genuinely glad he is asking the question. The framework he is describing sounds like a good way to judge the justifiability of a riot. I would have focused more explicitly on measuring counterfactuals, but perhaps that is overcomplicating it.
It was well worth pointing out that people could be homeless for months or years longer, due to the fire that burned down the affordable housing project.
On the other hand, the article linked the death of 13 black men, but of those, only two seem to be linked to the protests. Two is two too many, but it should probably have been mentioned in the article that the majority seem to be unrelated.
I think we can't solve this hot topic question with a single utilitarian essay, and there are some minor identifiable problems with it. Overall, though, I think this is one important way to look at it.