Lefties, property and the definition of "violence"

The morning after the night before huh? Seems it kicked off royally in some parts of London as self-proclaimed "anarchists" went on the rampage annoyed that the Government wants to cut the size of the state. It's a bit like a group of anorexics going on the rampage in protest because there has been a marked increase in low-calorie food available in the shops.

Anyway, putting aside this utterly ridiculous situation of anarchists demanding more Government, there appears to be another rather odd idea doing the round for some lefties, that being that what happened yesterday was "vandalism" not "violence".

The trade unionist/parliamentary bag carrier and author of "Chavs - The Demonisation of the Working Class", Owen Jones, was busy yesterday on Twitter saying,

The media et al need to learn to distinguish between "vandalism" and "violence". You can disapprove of vandalism, but it's not violence[1]..... Violence is people getting hurt. Vandalism is property being damaged. They're totally different.[2]

Now I've no doubt that this sort of intellectual light-footedness goes down very well in seminars and lofty debates in Universities, but let's be serous for a second. Violence is the act of exerting physical force for the purpose of damaging something, be that be a person or an inanimate object. So, running at HSBC bank with a large metal bar and smashing the windows in is a violent act.

In fact, the only reason that one might try to play the little word game about it not being violent is if one wanted to use some sort of ideological political argument to justify the action or somehow excuse it, which we see in the second comment that tries to draw a distinction between people and property.

Property is theft and/or something immoral clearly. Therefore any act against it is somehow politically at least, excusable. However, I bet, if you went into the home of one of these "property is theft" type people and started using all the toothbrushes they'd be quick to scream about how it was their toothbrush, likewise if you took their iPhone they'd be very upset about their phone being taken.... no doubt that will be a different type of property though.