Is rioting ever justified?

Riots are a necessary response to rulers' breach of power

Question: Is rioting ever justified?
Position1 of 2›: Yes, rioting can be justified
Argument1 of 2›: Riots are a necessary response to rulers' breach of power

Rulers can more easily use violence to unjustly suppress their people. Their people have the right of self-defense and, if necessary, violent protest.

The argument

Oppressed peoples have a right to protest through rebellion and riot, and the argument for it begins with a gap in accountability. While governments are in place to protect the people from being taken advantage of, the government — or the ruling class — has no higher authority holding them accountable. Every other party in the arrangement can be checked by someone above them; the state cannot, which means that when it is the state doing the harm there is no institution left to appeal to. What follows is an argument from self-defence. When rulers legislate or enact violence towards its subjects, then its subjects have a right to protest and defend themselves. If self-defense is justified, then riots against the ruling class or the government are also justified. The principle is not being extended to cover something new: it is the ordinary right to resist violence being applied to the one aggressor conventionally treated as exempt from it. The second strand concerns legitimacy rather than defence. If the government is oppressing its people and violating their right to live or vote, then the government has forgone its social contract to serve its people. The government is an entity meant to serve the common good, but government leaders can easily become corrupt and abuse their power, and when they do the authority that made their commands binding is the thing they have given up. On this reasoning a state that has abandoned its side of the bargain cannot go on claiming the obedience the bargain bought it. When the government uses its power to maintain unjust laws, overtax its people, or imprison its people without due process of the law, the government cannot expect its people to accept such injustices quietly. The people should, and will, riot.

Premises

[P1]Governments exist to serve the common good under a social contract, but when rulers enact violence or maintain unjust laws against their people, they forgo that contract and face no higher authority holding them accountable. [P2] If self-defence against such oppression is justified, then riots against a government that violates its people's rights to live, vote, or due process are equally justified. [C] Therefore, when unjust rulers breach their power, rioting can be justified as a necessary response.

Counter-arguments

Riots legitimize violence and suppression from people in power. If riots are a necessary response to violence from people in power, then people in power have the same right (and more justification) to quell riots with military or police force. If the entity being protested was elected democratically, the entity will rely on its political sovereignty to justify police force (or violence) against protesters. Riots are unlawful because they destroy property and put people in danger. When the people are in danger, rulers are justified to quell the source of the danger—riots—with state-sanctioned police force. Riots are never a justifiable way to petition the government for lasting social change. Only peaceful protest, resulting in civil discourse and policy amendments, will bring about lasting social change.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Violent protest for a political cause does not justify the lives lost during a violent uprising.

The argument

Premises

Counter-arguments

Rejecting the premises

Further reading