ABSTRACT
This chapter presents violent protest as a form of moral dialogue and democratic dialogue in liberal democratic states. It explores definitions of violence in legal theory, political theory, philosophy, and sociology before taking a paradigmatic, inclusive approach to conceptions of violence. This includes violence to data, violence to the self and self-harm, graffiti, and other forms of harm beyond violence against the person or violence to property and criminal damage. The roles of protest violence are described as being generally either communicative, instrumental, or opportunistic regarding activist aims. Examples such as the 2011 London Riots, Hong Kong street protests, the Stansted 15, Anonymous and hacktivism, hunger strikes, and terrorism are framed within a legitimacy counterclaim framework. Violent protest is shown often to respond to legitimacy deficits on the part of democratic states. Finally, state violence is analysed as also having communicative, instrumental, and at times opportunistic roles but often to much deadlier effect than protest violence alone.
