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My opinion, already expressed on this thread, is that celebration of assassination is something we should have a bipartisan "cancel culture" about, because it's a load-bearing taboo that allows the rest of freedom of speech to function. This is similar to how Lee Kwan Yew banned the communist party in Singapore at a time when SE Asian countries were falling to communist revolutions. A 99% commitment to liberal norms is more durable than one that commits to 100% with obvious loopholes for bad actors to end the liberal system.
Cancel culture for other things are bad, since it cordons off plausibly true ideas from public discussion. You shouldn't be cancelled for "misgendering", or stating FBI crime statistics, or making the okay sign, or having once made racist jokes, or donating to a conservative cause, or saying riots are bad.
The effect of cancel culture over support for assassination is to preserve liberalism. The effect of cancel culture for slight deviations from the Left platform is to end liberalism. This isn't hard.
https://www.themotte.org/post/3128/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/365663?context=8#context
What is the justification in your eyes under this paradigm for a line between assassination support and riot support?
That's a good question. There is a similarity, in that they both encourage political violence and eat away at the axioms of a free society.
There is a difference in degree, however, as assassination is far more corrosive and easier for a single person to pull off on their own. We are a nation of soft-targets, and living that way is a luxury.
Remember here that we are talking about social opprobrium and not the hard power of the state. If supporting assassinations and riots both faced a good deal of social opprobrium, that would be a sign of health for our democratic system. In many countries, the hard power of the state is deployed to police both of these things. Most political orders are not suicidal. America's may appear to be just because we have a lot of social capital to burn. But we should beware of momentum.
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Riot support is closer to the line than many leftists probably would like it to be. Financial support for riots/ers is a crime after all
It is?
In the case of something like January 6th, assume for the sake of argument it was an attempt at a coup (in my view it of course wasn't). An almost direct but legally implied right to overthrow a tyrannical government is built into the 2nd amendment of the Constitution. Why wouldn't any of the rioters get off on that defense? Because that one isn't entirely clear to me.
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The use of deadly force, surely.
There's a reason rioting isn't in and of itself a capital crime.
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