>Politics is merely the mechanism by which organized systematic violence happens
Yes, in the sense that "the government has a monopoly on violence", and the application (or at least threat) of "violence" is needed to for a government to work (eg. tax collection, enforcement of property rights, law enforcement), but that's clearly different than "political violence" mentioned in the OP (ie. extrajudicial politically motivated killings), and pretending they're the same because they both "violence" borders on bad faith argumentation.
It's quite important to me because to some approximation, "legal" is some sort of morality that society can agree on. Absent that, partisans from each side can come up with spurious arguments to justify extrajudicial violence against whatever they hate. For pro-lifers, it might be that abortion is murder and therefore they can bomb abortion clinics. For "hate speech" opponents, it might be that "hate speech" causes actual violence and therefore it's fine to use violence against "hate speech" to prevent said violence from happening. The list goes on and on.
My interest in this discussion was to correct a groundless accusation of bad faith. Your arguments would be better directed to the people who made opposing arguments or asked relevant questions.
>My interest in this discussion was to correct a groundless accusation of bad faith.
I stopped short of calling it bad faith, only saying that it "borders" on it. More to the point I don't see how your comments refutes this. The "borders on bad faith" isn't just from bring up other forms of deaths which are as a result of politics, it's to pretend that they're equivalent because they're both "deaths", ignoring the circumstances entirely. It borders on bad faith in the same way that "the golden state killer is a killer, but so was Obama" (because he was the commander in chief of the US military) is bad faith.
> I stopped short of calling it bad faith, only saying that it "borders" on it.
I deny a difference in effect. And you said pretending. I know no relevant definitions of pretending and bad faith which pretending would include and bad faith would exclude.
> ignoring the circumstances entirely
No. They weighed some circumstances less and some circumstances more than you.
> It borders on bad faith in the same way that "the golden state killer is a killer, but so was Obama" (because he was the commander in chief of the US military) is bad faith.
Obama ordered people killed. Some people believed the commander in chief of the US military lacked legal authority to order some of those killings. Some people believed the commander in chief of the US military lacked moral authority to order some of those killings. Some people believed the commander in chief of the US military lacked moral authority to order any of those killings. All were good faith beliefs.
Clausewitz said war is the continuation of politics by other means. Obama's killings were a continuation of politics. The Golden State killer's were not.
If I remember my von Clausewitz correctly, at least some professional violence workers believe it’s the other way ‘round. Political ends by violent means and all that… violence being one of many species of persuasive technique available to people and groups with political aims.
True in the most general sense. Generalized political violence is very different from the state using force to based upon the accent of the govern where we have a generalized concept of human rights. To me its a little like saying all art can be be made up with pixels therefore everything is a pixel.
