Political violence uses or threatens physical force against persons or property for political ends. It seeks coercion through fear or harm rather than persuasion, economic withdrawal, or principled acceptance of arrest. Violence can provoke repression, alienate allies, injure uninvolved people, and displace the movement's stated issue. Calling property destruction, threats, and peaceful civil disobedience the same thing destroys distinctions needed for both legal and political analysis.

Protest communicates visibly; boycott withdraws economic or social cooperation; civil disobedience deliberately violates law without making violence its method; political violence relies on physical coercion or threat. An event may combine tactics, but one participant's violence does not logically redefine every peaceful participant's action. Do not classify by whether you sympathize with the cause.

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