Comment by happytoexplain
5 years ago
It is also fundamental to keep up public order. That's not even close to being mutually exclusive to my statement. Nor is the obvious answer to your second question. You're engaging in hostile, bad-faith argument.
My argument is that looter, who is willingly committing a crime, shouldn't expect people on the other side to stand by. If it's bad faith to keep up public order and guard private property, then so be it.
If looters know that if they don't obey to orders nobody will punish them, that's flat-out enabling such behaviour. People who are willing to loot don't care about niceties, they're just looking for opportunities.
The main problem is that "loot/shoot" could be abused by shooting peaceful protesters and we need safeguards to clearly separate protesters from looters.
However, IMO it's on protesters to single out looters, stop them and, ideally, give them to police. In my country, it's usual for protest organisers (legal or not) to make a point that any bad behaviour will be reported to police and they'll do whatever they can to help out police. Thus police is more relaxed and thugs don't have as many opportunities. If the crowd would be defending thugs.. Well, now that is "glorifying violence" :/
Kind of telling how you insist that protestors "maintain order" of their flock to protect property, when we see the police do no such thing concerning their own when they kill a citizen.
Looks like a simple way to take high moral ground. "Look, we even protest in a nice way, don't be animals killing us like animals".