Wrong question
Which is worse, Alt-Right or Alt-Left, Neo-Nazis or Antifa? Wrong question. Is violence a practical or moral means of social change? No.
Wrong question according to whom, bub? In what conversation? In order to discuss what issue?
Of course it’s not the wrong question. It’s a goddam urgent question right now, with Mr “on many sides, on many sides” in the White House. Racism is worse than anti-racism, even when some anti-racists get violent. Resistance to racism and fascism is better than racism and fascism even though many of the resisters are bullies and egotists. You can’t have a large political movement with no assholes in it, that’s just not an option, but you can still know the difference between decent goals and horrific ones.
I thought this guy was supposed to be an incisive, intelligence thought leader? So many false-equivalences.
He is supposed to be that. The supposition is wrong!
“Is violence a practical or moral means of social change? ”
This is two different questions. Neither of which can be answered with one word.
Not to mention that the assholes on the left are acting if their own volition. They aren’t inciting violent action.
Oh, you see these Shermerisms everywhere, and quite often from people who are natural scientists. It is very odd, for it as if there were no such thing as history. No such thing as massive social movements (Peasants’ Wars, etc). Or no such thing as Western nations invading non-Western nations in order to bring about political and social change. Or no such thing as the US fomenting violence in, say, Chile in order to prevent political or social change it doesn’t like. Or no such thing as the American Revolution. I fail to understand how people like Shermer can be so blind to the world, so trapped in a little nest of platitudes. We have had Jerry Coyne recently making rather the same sort of equation when he seemed to approve of what Trump said with respect to the violence in Charlottesville.
#3 – exactly.