Comment by IG_Semmelweiss
1 year ago
A protest is not a riot. A protest may turn into a riot.
A protester, by staying in a protest that turns into a riot, may also turn into a rioter.
Usually, a protester would understand that there's law breaking and leave the scene. Staying put, he'd become a rioter.
If you are standing around watching a friend engage in a streetfight, and someone ends up dead, now you are at a murder scene, and if you stick around doing nothing, don't be surprised if you are arrested as a suspect
> A protester, by staying in a protest that turns into a riot, may also turn into a rioter.
Only if that individual protestor personally commits acts of violence. Obviously they are not a rioter simply by being near other rioters. That's an illegal concept known as collective guilt or collective punishment.
> Usually, a protester would understand that there's law breaking and leave the scene. Staying put, he'd become a rioter.
That would mean the government can outlaw protests by simply committing a single act of violence during one (or falsely claiming there was violence), declaring it a riot, and calling all the protestors, rioters. Obviously illegal.
> If you are standing around watching a friend engage in a streetfight, and someone ends up dead, now you are at a murder scene, and if you stick around doing nothing, don't be surprised if you are arrested as a suspect
Few would be surprised by police doing illegal things. That doesn't mean the illegal things are legal.
In the same vein, if you record police brutality in the United States, don't be surprised if you are threatened or targeted by police. If you insult a police officer to their face in the United States, don't be surprised if you get assaulted, arrested, or shot and killed. Does that make such police behavior legal or righteous?
> That would mean the government can outlaw protests by simply committing a single act of violence during one (or falsely claiming there was violence), declaring it a riot, and calling all the protestors, rioters. Obviously illegal.
That could happen, but in pretty much all known riots that is not what happened. Instead, massive groups of determined violent people have committed many acts of violence, arson, destruction and assault, leading to millions upon millions of dollars of damages and hurting a lot of people. Of course, each rioter would claim there were just present there and its some other people who did that, but it is almost universally a blatant lie. People come to this kind of events with certain intentions, and these intentions are not "mostly peaceful" - they are politically motivated violence. Their claims are just lies aimed at avoiding responsibility. It may be successful in strictly legal sense - that's why terrorist organizations like antifa insist on wearing similar clothing and masking up - to make attributing the violence to a specific person harder - but let's not be fooled by it. All people in that group have the common violent aims, regardless of whether it's possible to legally prove which part of violence were committed by which particular person.
> That doesn't mean the illegal things are legal.
That doesn't only apply to the police. It also applies to the rioters. If you are a participant of the event aimed at political violence as part of the group that explicitly declares political violence as its tactics, then don't whine about "collective guilt".
Your post seems full of assumptions and unsubstantiated claims, so many that they can't all be responded to.
Suffice it to say, if there are eyewitnesses or video evidence of a given individual committing an act of violence, then they might have. If there are not, then they are assumed to have not done so, and are not rioters, as I said above.
This goes even if someone such as yourself claims that everyone came there with violent intentions (a blatant lie).
This goes even in instances where law enforcement initiated violence against someone and claimed there was a riot, which is a common occurrence.
> All people in that group have the common violent aim
Another spurious claim. No matter how much you make it, it doesn't make it true, and it doesn't make the illegal claims of "collective guilt" true or moral.
> don't whine about "collective guilt
Please be respectful on this forum. Pointing out that the concept of "collective guilt" is illegal, fullstop, is not "whining". Not liking what someone says here is not an excuse for attacking them.
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