[user104658]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..yeah...(...from the vid that we can see atm...)... the older guy did actively appear to pursue the physical, as well as his verbal abuse...so obviously never condoning violence....it would surely be a ‘self defence’ and a ‘was it reasonable force’, type thing...and it went out of shot a bit so hopefully the police could determine that...

it doesn't go out of shot, one of the men is stood at the front of the shot with his chest right next to the camera, the ol' racist is off to the top right of the shot up a step a good 6ft away, the guy turns around and climbs the step moving towards him, he pushes him away and then he throws the punch. The old man is the initial verbal aggressor, and the initial physical aggressor. The attack was provoked but it was not by any stretch of the imagination self defense, he moved towards him with clear intent.

[edit to add] I personally don't think provokation is often a good reason for physical retaliation and it shows an alarming lack of self control. On top of that, physically attacking someone who is clearly far physically weaker than you are for any reason - again other than to stop an immediate threat to yourself of someone else - is morally abhorrent. That's regardless of whether or not that happens to be a good person.

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

it doesn't go out of shot, one of the men is stood at the front of the shot with his chest right next to the camera, the ol' racist is off to the top right of the shot up a step a good 6ft away, the guy turns around and climbs the step moving towards him, he pushes him away and then he throws the punch. The old man is the initial verbal aggressor, and the initial physical aggressor. The attack was provoked but it was not by any stretch of the imagination self defense, he moved towards him with clear intent.

...well, you obviously have greater eyeballs than me, TS...because I couldn’t determine everything you say from the vid...but I guess that if it was always so clear, the justice system would be a lot easier and maybe not even always necessary...I did say ‘appear to pursue the physical’...because that’s how it appeared to be to me and if that was the case then ‘/self defence/reasonable force..’ etc would come into it...I guess we’ll have to wait to see...

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I have to ask something here Ammi, I'm afraid. If, in the context of school children, a child was racially abusing another child... would you then take no action if that child turned around and punched them in the face (hard enough to give them multiple contusions)?

Would you take no action if the other kid hit first?

Would you take no action, even if the kid being abusive was a known and persistent bully?

I'm hoping and assuming that the answer to all of those, is that physical violence is never the appropriate response. That defending yourself is OK if someone won't get off of you, for example, is OK but if someone hits you and runs away... you tell someone, you don't chase after them and hit them back.

And assuming all of those things (and I really do hope I'm right, that a teacher wouldn't ever justify children carrying out physical retaliation)..

WHY on earth would it be OK for grown adults to engage in unnecessary physical retaliation?

I'm not talking about empathy here; of course you might understand why a kid would hit back. I understand why the people on the bus were frustrated, upset, enraged and hit back. Empathising with why it happened is NOT the same thing as condoning it, and certainly not the same as encouraging it or advocating for it as an appropriate course of action.

Can we forgive these guys for being frustrated, hurt and lashing out? Absolutely... but should we be telling them (and others) that it was justified? In fact not even just justified - but the RIGHT thing to do?

I just can't imagine it.

I can't imagine that you'd be approached by a child saying that another child did something to them - even something awful - and the response would be "Oh you should have socked them one back, right in the side of the head, little Jimmy".

...you can ask, TS, obviously you can...but I’m not going to answer...because your thought processes are excluding something that I said early in the thread that I was considering alongside the hateful racial abuse...
....and something that some people on the bus had also said as we see../ has been reported also etc...I’ll leave a quote here...

Originally Posted by Ammi

..yeah...(...from the vid that we can see atm...)... the older guy did actively appear to pursue the physical, as well as his verbal abuse...so obviously never condoning violence....it would surely be a ‘self defence’ and a ‘was it reasonable force’, type thing...and it went out of shot a bit so hopefully the police could determine that...

[Ammi]

...I do think that this discussion has been such a lengthy and often quite heightened in emotion one etc...because it isn’t so black and white and there is much ‘grey’ with it..ideally, there would be no physical violence, obviously...but ideally also, there would be no such hateful prejudice still felt and voiced in 70 something years of life and life learning in someone in 2020...I also read in some reports that before the older guy had racially abused and called them monkeys and the N word, which can never be diminished or reduced with the label of ‘name calling’...that the younger guys had their hands/...or one of them had their hand on the holding pole to steady them as they ‘were standing room only‘ as it were...and the older guy had pushed the hand/hands off, which was the very first beginning of the leading up to../...incident...and the first ‘laying of hands on’, if it’s being reported correctly...I can’t imagine how it feels to ever be treated like that/to ever be treated in such a superior way as if you’re nothing at all...as if it was unpleasant in some way to physically be around you....on the whole, I don’t feel that violence is a ‘good answer’, but I do feel that sadly in some cases, it will become closer to an ‘inevitable’ or a likelihood and in the present day, much in society sadly seems to be getting closer and closer, rather than further and further as most of us would hope, from this type of abuse...and if and when that abuse happens, as with this incident... we have to consider in ‘judging’...well, we don’t have to but I personally do.. ...but then also what is the answer because I doubt there would ever be ‘the answer’ with someone who had lived so many years of life and still displayed such hatefulness...and in the judging of ‘applauding’ as it were...violence is never something that I personally would applaud but I think it is also a reaction to something quite hateful that sadly will be an inevitable or likelihood as well...


...as I’ve already said, I think...there is also very much ‘human’ to consider as well in judgement...and the psychology of human in reaction with this incident and in those moments...would possibly encompass also that what was provoking/abusing and physically pursuing right in front of them and what they were looking at etc...wasn’t an older man so much..it was hate...’pure hate attacking them verbally and possibly physically as well’...