# A note on the Riot Act

**URL:** <https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/a-note-on-the-riot-act/256>\
**Category:** General\
**Tags:** law, no-politics-please\
**Created:** [November 9, 2020, 8:34pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/a-note-on-the-riot-act/256 "2020-11-09T20:34:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Post date:** [November 9, 2020, 8:34pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/a-note-on-the-riot-act/256/1 "2020-11-09T20:34:09Z")

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The Riot Act, a refresher:

> **[Snippet: The Riot Act](https://eldraeverse.com/2018/10/04/snippet-the-riot-act/)**
>
> “Having adjudged those persons here present to constitute a riotous assembly within the meaning of the Act thereupon, and by that Mandate which I hold and which I serve, I charge and command …

Anyway, I was reading an article in _Reason_ this morning ([The Conservative Trans Woman Who Went Undercover With Antifa in Portland](https://reason.com/2020/10/02/the-conservative-trans-woman-who-went-undercover-with-antifa-in-portland/)), and it makes for a good illustrative example. Relevant quotations are these:

> Strategically what they’re doing is, they’re forcing a dilemma action. A dilemma action is when you put your opponent in a no-win situation. Your enemy has to react. If they don’t react, they look weak; if they do react, they have to react in a certain way where it looks like it’s an overreaction.
> 
> […]
> 
> Antifa goes for a certain type of violence, a mid-level violence. Most people aren’t practiced in violence, and what they’ll do is, they’ll either back down or they’ll overreact. Antifa basically as a group does the equivalent of just pushing someone on the shoulder, and again, and again.
> 
> **They keep it at a simmer.**
> 
> Yes. It’s very tricky to react to because people get angry. If you just go in public and pick someone and start pushing them, if you keep pushing them, they’re going to slug you; it’s just how it’s going to work, at the individual level but also at the group level too. I’m also speaking metaphorically, in a sense. Of course if you hit _them_ , they’re going to fall down and go, “Oh, God, you’re violent. You’re a Nazi!”
> 
> What they’re intending to do is use that level of violence that will scare people enough to back down. [The radical left] learned in the '70s that killing people is bad PR. A body count is horrible.

This, in essence, is why the Riot Act is written the way it is. It’s to set expectations.

One of those is the point mentioned in the comments to the Riot Act post, that while they have very few laws, they enforce them with rigor and vigor, combined with the lack of anything resembling a _de minimis_ rule; there is no “acceptable violence” range, and “proportionate response” is not, was never, and never will be a thing. (i.e., You are allowed the presumption that if someone is willing to do you violence, they’ve already thrown out the rulebook and you need not trouble yourself to guess just how much violence they’re willing to do you.) It’s a Schelling fence against creeping acceptability.

The other one is to draw a nice bright line in the sand. Once the Riot Act has been read, those who do not promptly surrender are subject to “such pains and penalties as the law does prescribe for the common enemies of sophontkind”, and more importantly, _have been told so_ . (And yes, that does mean the equivalent of _hosti humani generis_ ; along with pirates, brigands, terrorists, and slavers, rioters get to be in the exclusive club of people whose special crime is without the jurisdiction of the Watch Constabulary and within that of the Imperial Military Service. They do, however, receive the special privilege of being told exactly _when_ said jurisdiction is being handed over to the nice chaps with the powered armor and orbital KEWs.)

And most importantly, both of these are held right out there as the sort of thing that everyone knows from Ethics & Civics class, or if nothing else, that it’s right there in your citizen-shareholdership that you’re hiring the Imperium Incorporate to keep the peace and that they guarantee in turn that the peace will be bloody well _kept_ .

Which is to say, in the end, that there’s less of a PR problem when you’ve established firmly in the public perception, right from the beginning, that trying this shit on is merely an expensive, uncivilized, and particularly stupid form of suicide.