[user104658]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

Who is encouraging them? My whole point throughout the thread is that you can't provoke a situation, turn it violent and then blame your victims if they respond in kind. I've said very little to nothing about whether the people were in the right or not, just that the old man was responsible for this incident even being a thing.

There have been several posts on the thread encouraging and applauding violent retaliation and if you haven't seen them, then you can't have read the whole thread. I don't disagree that he was responsible both for starting and for escalating the confrontation and I've said multiple times that it's not about blaming them for snapping in retaliation - I'm not judging them for it, I just think it's unfortunate that they did, for multiple reasons, and don't think it should be excused as a good response even by those who can see that it's in many ways an understandable response.

You get what you put out into the world, if you're gonna abuse someone and take a swing at them, sometimes people will swing back.

Again I just don't see how this functionally is any different to arguments about disproportionate response to criminals; it's the argument you see all the time. "If you're gonna commit crimes and you end up in hospital in a coma (or even dead) then that's on you and oh well, you shouldn't have been doing crime".

I understand that it's a contentious parallel especially given the circumstances but it's the most frequent, and most recent, set of example I can think of on this forum where most people have stated or argued that they (IMO rightly) understand that a violent action should be assessed purely on the basis of necessity and the incident itself, and not on how "morally upstanding" the person involved is. Yes he's a racist old arsehole, yes he provoked the situation, yes it was all of his own making... but no, the two men were not at any realistic physical risk and so violent response wasn't necessary. They lost their tempers, which to state again, is understandable and should be taken into account, but should never be lauded as appropriate or necessary.