Is it rioting or is it revolution?

The recent murder of George Floyd by a police officer has sparked protests nationwide, and over the last week I’ve heard quite a few friends and acquaintances (almost all of them white) lament that some of the demonstrations have turned violent, resulting in the looting of businesses and the burning of police stations. I don’t yet feel qualified to speak on the ethics of violence as a means for effecting change; however, I do at least recognize that the old cliche “violence is not the answer” is usually deficient and often disingenuous. Because as American history clearly teaches, sometimes violence—in the form of belligerent protests and looting/destruction of property—is indeed an answer, and often an effective one.

The question I’ve really been pondering lately, and which I think my aforementioned friends and acquaintances would also do well to consider, is this: what is the difference between rioting and revolution? Does it matter who is doing the rioting? Does it matter who the targets or victims are? Do we apply different standards to acts of violent protest, applauding them when we agree with the perpetrators but condemning them when the dissidents represent the other side? I think looking back at some historical examples really clarify this distinction that I’m trying to make, so let’s take a trip…

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March 5, 1770 - Boston. Tensions between American colonists and British authorities have been increasing. On the evening in question, a teenage boy—in the cocky, reckless manner of teenage boys everywhere—begins insulting a British soldier, eventually poking him in the chest as well, at which point the soldier cracks him over the head with his musket. The cries of the boy quickly draw a crowd of colonists, and the situation predictably escalates. More redcoats arrive on the scene to try and maintain order, but more and more colonists also arrive and commence shouting at the troops, even spitting on them and taunting them to “fire.” Some of the crowd then begin hurling snowballs and rocks at the soldiers, finally knocking one of them down. At this point, the dam bursts: the nervous soldiers fire, and five colonists end up dead.

In this story, who are the heroes? Whom do we feel sympathy towards? I get the feeling that many of the people who condemn any aggressiveness from today’s Black Lives Matter protesters, and state their support for the police as preservers of “law and order,” are also perfectly willing to celebrate the dead colonists as martyrs and condemn the British troops as bullies. After all, we call this event the Boston Massacre, which makes it pretty clear who we think the bad guys were.

In 1770, an act of “police brutality”—just another in a long line of indignities the colonists endured at the hands of the British authorities—led to a violent confrontation, and the American public of today look back on this event and swell with pride at the courage of the colonists in confronting their oppressors. In 2020, another episode of police brutality occurs, but in this instance large portions of the American public condemn the protesters, ignoring their calls for police reform and criticizing their oppression-induced anger. I’m struggling to see what’s so different…

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December 16, 1773 - Boston again. In protest of the Tea Act and other unfair taxes, dozens of American colonists (many “disguised” as Mohawk warriors) board three British East India Company ships in the harbor and proceed to dump over 90,000 pounds of tea into the water. In today’s money, that’s about $1.7 million dollars of property destroyed. This event—cheekily referred to as the Boston “Tea Party”—inspired similar actions a year later in Annapolis, Maryland and Greenwich, New Jersey (and in the former instance, the ship carrying the tea was also destroyed). These various tea parties have since been mythologized and are celebrated by modern Americans as acts of revolutionary defiance.

My question is, why don’t we consider those colonists to be rioters or looters? When BLM protests spawn any kind of property damage or looting, many white Americans are quick to condemn the destruction and insist that it represents the moral failings of the movement and the ill intentions of its supporters. But when a bunch of white dudes dress up like Native Americans and rob tea owners of their rightful property…we consider them heroes?

Beyond the tea parties, the Revolutionary period was full of destructive rioting. In the wake of the Stamp Act of 1765, angry protesters in Boston (as much a hotbed of discontent in that period as Minneapolis is today) destroyed the carriage house of the local tax collector and drank all the wine is his cellar. They then turned their attention to the tax collector’s brother-in-law (who also happened to be the lieutenant governor) and stormed his mansion, looting his paintings, silverware, and other valuables. Surely we are willing to denounce these colonists as thugs instead of celebrating them as patriots…right?

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Regardless of our feelings about the ethics of these historical acts of protest, one thing cannot be denied: they were effective. As this article points out, the violent and destructive campaign of intimidation against the Stamp Act’s tax enforcers resulted in most of them resigning, and rattled British legislators enough that they repealed the act within a year of passing it. The civil unrest that resulted in the Boston Massacre and the various tea parties helped create martyrs and heroes who fed the flames of colonial resistance, eventually resulting in a fire so hot that it successfully drove the British from our shores. So I’m not sure that white people telling today’s black protesters that “violence is not the answer” are being sincere, since most of them are clearly of a different mind regarding other historical moments of destructive rebellion.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to argue that the identity of the Revolutionary-era protesters (primarily middle-class whites) makes them much more relatable to white Americans today, while the identity of the BLM protesters (predominantly lower-income blacks) represents an experience far outside of what most white Americans know. But I think it’s also obvious that people’s response to violent protests is framed by how they see their group’s role: in the 1770s, white Americans cast themselves as the heroes, struggling to overthrow their tyrannical British rulers; in the 21st century, white Americans find themselves cast as the villains, fulfilling the same role of oppressors that the Brits once did, with police officers in blue now standing in for British soldiers in red.

But the underlying principles that one claims to embrace should not change based on historical context. If white Americans are eager to denounce the violence and looting that spin off from BLM protests, they damn sure ought to be as willing to denounce our Forefathers who engaged in similar activities. It’s not fair to criticize today’s protesters and insist on “law and order” while simultaneously celebrating our history of colonial revolt and condemning the Brits’ aggressive response. Granted, we’re all guilty of various kinds of hypocrisy, but the key is to acknowledge our contradictions and analyse them more critically. I think this is an ideal opportunity for many of us (myself included) to really take a hard look at our opinions regarding the current protests, and to examine the fairness of the standards to which we hold the other side.

Postscript:

It’s worth noting that, like most of the police officers who kill unarmed black men in 21st-century America, the British soldiers put on trial for the Boston Massacre pretty much got off scot-free. Six of the eight men were fully acquitted, while the other two were convicted of manslaughter. None of the men were convicted on murder charges. The more things change…