UnitedHealth CEO shot
So yes you’re deliberately leaning into a slippery slope argument
But I think we can all agree that there have been necessary and important times that the populace revolted against tyranny
But what if there’s a crime and punishment system that is broken and corrupt - that it shields the privileged and penalizes poverty
Wouldn’t ‘vigilante justice’ just be propaganda that the privilege employ to undermine the attempt to hold bad action to consequence?
When any society breaks down, there’s are always opportunists looking to take advantage and for many revolutionaries, it’s hard to sound ethical and moral to these same people who know you’ve killed tens of thousands of people. The reasons won’t matter anymore because they view people like you as “tearing it all down” so now you’re the good guy, Guido. All of a sudden everyone’s going to get along so much better.
If you’ve watched the Purge movies, it kind of articulates these points more clearly. It’s when the ideals of a revolution get corrupted and co-opted to serve as a vengeance “release valve” on persons or individuals we don’t like for one day of a year.
And just who will be defining tyranny, Guido? Who ends up deserving the axe more than others? Maybe arrest or torture? Beatings? Every revolution has its factions, different leaders and often times after the old system falls apart, usually the ones advocating more severe, recrimination violence win out or outmaneuver more moderate factions and when disagreements pop up, they don’t end peacefully. That’s when revolutions tend to get out of control and turn into bloodbaths.
It happened with Robespierre’s Jacobins overthrew the more moderate Girondins until 1794. It happened after Lenin’s death in 1924 when someone he repeatedly told his own Politburo to get rid of ( along with Trotsky, too in his Theses) and the Great Purges, 5-year plans began.
It happened in Iran too from 1979-81 after the secular, moderate, working-class Iranian groups who deposed the Shah (People’s Mujuhadeen) were outmaneuvered and deposed by some radical, medieval Iranian Shiite Ayatollah who has proceeded to turn Iran into a homophobic, xenophobic, racist medieval Islamic fundamentalist regime.