Collipso: supporting violence against people who hold controversial/offensive/wrong views is wrong.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of examples now and throughout history of violence being necessary to defeat dangerous people. I’m generally opposed to violence, but it’s not bad 100% of the time.
Jeebus had a good response.
There are “plenty of examples” of bad acts arguably being justified by the result. Whether they were “necessary” is generally only arguable. And I wager engaging in violence to defeat “dangerous people” more likely made things worse most of the time. There are the times when not engaging in violence was tremendously effective, most notably as led by Gandhi and by MLK Jr, which weighs heavily against the idea that violence is “necessary.”
I disagree that there is a “widespread problem” of police brutality but the logic above could be deployed in defense of police brutality. Sometimes the police make mistakes, the argument would go, but a violent approach is necessary to stop dangerous people. I don’t find a list of examples terribly convincing - for either of your arguments - and they only feed confirmation bias.