Violence in the Name of Moral Justice

"I will continue to condemn riots, and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. And continue to affirm that there is another way."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The denunciation of police brutality and racism is a fundamental moral principle of today. It is unimaginable hearing any sort of strange justification for such immoral acts. We are staunchly holding the same principles towards the unfortunate death of George Floyd, and thank goodness the majority of us do. The ensuing discord, however, has been less morally transparent. Some do claim that it IS transparent, justifying riots and looting as a revenge against the police department and the draconian business owners who have had their own shares of “oppressing” their workers. Still, these are dangerously dubious explanations for riots and violent actions. Although this may be fueled by moral intentions, whether or not violence is the appropriate reaction is a question that we must ponder especially when we haven’t assessed the consequences of our actions. In the name of our collective safety, it’s only too important to ask ourselves if our perceived moralistic goals, in the end, justify the violent reactions?

I’m sure many of us are familiar with the movie Joker and its adapted story of Arthur Fleck (aka The Joker). It's a recent movie that illustrates this theme about the morality of violence all too well. Within the fictional world where heroism and villainism are as distinct as black and white, Joker is one of the first superhero movies to overtly deviate from such pattern. In the past, The Joker symbolized pure evil. In the most recent iteration, however, he is a victim. Like George Floyd being socially persecuted for his ethnicity, Arthur was socially persecuted for his mental disorder (although to be utterly transparent, I am not directly comparing the two persons in any way, but only the unfortunate way in which they were persecuted). Like the state failing to treat blacks equally, society has failed to save Arthur from poverty. Like the death of Floyd causing a violent riot, Arthur caused a violent riot by murdering the smug Wall Street businessmen. In the movie’s finale, the bloody riot was the language of the poor and a symbol of the proletariat uprising in class warfare. As such, one of the lasting impressions left to us is the glorification of Arthur’s violent crusade against the injustices of society and class inequality. But here's the gravely important caveat. This still does not and should not normalize Arthur as a character. Arthur Fleck is irrational, unhinged, and nihilistic in many instances during the movie and eventually, corrupts into the bloodthirsty crazed crime-lord, The Joker.

Social persecution, failure of the state, and violence are three of the most prominent themes in Joker that are strangely relevant in how we are responding over the death of George Floyd. In that sense, I wonder if it is fair to view the violent protests over George Floyd in a similar manner? Is it right to justify the destruction and looting of social property as a symbol of racial justice, much like how Arthur justified his murder as a symbol of class equality? In the end, Joker, in all its apparent glorification of violence, makes a painfully cogent point at the same time that violence solves nothing. We have to understand that Arthur’s murder and the instigated riots did not solve or even alleviate class warfare and persecution against the mentally ill. In fact, society and Arthur spiraled deeper down into the abyss. I fear that this form of careless corruption and destruction of the most basic moralities are the inevitable symptoms that come with violence. Although I’m sympathetic to the moral causes of such extreme actions, I cannot find myself confidently justifying violence as a means to an end.

History has repeatedly shown us that racism (at some institutional level) has persisted riot after riot. The 1992 Rodney King riot in Los Angeles was one of the worst in recent history. The moral causes were identical to the case of George Floyd in that Rodney King was also an African-American who became victimized by police brutality. The ensuing reaction from society was identical too, but more horrific. 63 people died, 2,383 people were injured, and $1 billion in property was damaged much of it which disproportionately affected Koreatown. 28 years later in 2020, no single person says that this riot has immensely helped with the progression of ending police brutality and racism. Violence, in my eyes, solves nothing and only serves to “socially destructive and self-defeating” as Martin Luther King Jr. once said in his "The Other America" speech. There are no moral exceptions to this statement. In what started as a crusade in 1992 for the oppressed black people, my own kinspeople of Korean Americans have also directly suffered great emotional and economic despair. The same can be said for all business-owners and workers who have lost their properties, their jobs, and their greatest sources of income during this anarchy masquerading as a social justice protest. And what better time to lose all your assets during a pandemic lockdown… It is even more condemnable that the President of the US would suggest ending the riot by summoning military and shooting people down. Justifying one salvation with the destruction of another is not achieving social justice; it is an outrageous display of selfishness that makes one no less shameful than the convicted cop. If we are willing to trade many more lives and severely damage social properties for the sake of a moral symbolism, then we simply must find another way of advocating for the same moral principles that is both safer and more effective.

We are all at fault for reacting to a bygone tragedy. The truth is we should have been proactively engaged in preventing such tragedies in the first place with the same surge of energy we are displaying now all of the sudden. For that reason, no one is morally superior for being a reactive slacktivist. No longer is the question of whether racism is normal or abnormal. The fundamental question must now evolve into how can we end/reduce racism. This will force us to traverse more difficult challenges and formulate new solutions to a social dysfunction. If procuring a mere symbolism through violence is all we can push for in this century, then we have remained a sorry lot indeed. The easy way out is to act violently and pretend that it will solve a complex issue. The harder path is to use society’s democratic processes to achieve the same goal, but it will require years of active reform and discussion at the institutional level. We have the luxury and privilege of our predecessors (namely Martin Luther King Jr.) having finished half the battle for us and laid down a moralistic avenue of non-violence. The time has come to BE like them, rather than just reading about them in books. The time has come to step away from the abyss that The Joker has fallen into and resist our impulses. We have to make the more difficult decisions and wrestle with an ethical consistency that Batman does with his “no killing” rule. Once we collectively reach such a state hopefully in the near future, maybe we can all finally exclaim in a more realistic fashion for once, “I’M BATMAN!”.

*All images on this post are legally owned by Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, BRON Studios, Joint Effort, DC Comics, and Creative Wealth Media Finance.