Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
Again you speak in abstractions. If you imagine that typically-anarchists vandalizing statues is a portent of left-wing dictatorship, leave aside that your historical consciousness is rusty; your knowledge of contemporary politics in any country under common discussion is in urgent need of remediation.
The people in question that tear down statues operate in a space where some degree of organization and ideology exist; the statues are not just local issues, but form a big part of a larger national issue. That is why these acts are interesting.

You implicitly labelled acts of 'hooliganism' as of little interest, while the fact is that troubled streets were an important step on the path of several totalitarian regimes. Which is to say that this type of 'hooliganism', given the context, is of great interest. Both because it is of significance in and of itself through the level of escalation that it represents, but also because of its potential to evolve and help bring the country into an extreme situation, both in terms of violence and volatility. Lasting extreme situations more readily facilitate an authoritarian takeover of whichever radical group comes out on top. Describing these acts as a portent of dictatorship is a straw man.

The reason why this year's storming of the US Congress is as interesting as it is, is of course also due to its context. Any mob storming a parliamentary building will create waves, but the severity of the event is of an extra order of magnitude when it is part of something bigger. Any sufficiently large obscure cult could have caused the same scenes; but it would have been a very different event in terms of its implications for the future of a country's democracy.

Honestly you strike me as consistently too biased over the substance of various social developments to register any credible objections over process.
In democracy's case, it is for the most part really about following a formal process.

Ignoring the democratic process in an established democracy in order to achieve specific goals will necessarily undermine the democracy in question.

This stands in contrast to civil disobedience in its strictest, non-violent sense, where the outcome of a democratic process is protested through illegal means, but where ultimately only the democratic process can decide the final outcome.

Are you prepared now to propose any legal protections on behalf of the Gebrus (in case you've forgotten)? If not, what are you moaning about?
I brought up Damore's case as a sample of the status quo, not because I thought he needed legal protection (or sympathy, for that matter; a subjective evaluation). The concept of wrongful dismissal is a separate topic that I am in no hurry to debate.