Ethics of Direct Action Debate & Research

TL;DW I advocate reasons for viewing far-left direct action positively, while my liberal opponent argues for a narrower set of justifications. Hopefully people find the dialogue around ethical foundations and campaign case studies useful.

I had this good debate a few days ago in the Arthuria server on the proposition; It has been and will likely continue to be for some time, in some cases both ethically justified and good political advocacy to use direct action tactics ranging from civil disobedience up to economic sabotage and fighting evil actors today.

Meaning in terms of campaigning against state, corporate and social harms, I think people should have available to them tactics ranging from purposeful; civil disobedience, to graffiti & culture jamming, to hacking, to sabotage & fighting. But, stopping short of political killing today under representative systems.

An example of fighting evil actors would be sometimes fighting people who are displaying character vices and making them feel afraid as being the best solution, like repeat offending rapists and paedophiles. And an example of economic sabotage would be both making a statement and making it more costly for a system or person to continue doing that action, like sabotaging a draft office, disrupting the governments ability to send people to Vietnam.

Here’s my longer essay on the subject: On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence

And finally, in preperation for the debate I started cataloging the history of revolutionairy groups and campaigns to look for interesting case studies which you can find here: Left-Libertarian History Case Studies

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