Property damage indeed isn’t violence. https://twitter.com/conceptualjames/status/1267169153363968008

To say that isn’t to defend or minimize property damage. And you could worry that people who make a point of saying the line are implicitly invoking a political agenda that’s objectionable. Just making the narrow point about word meaning.

Suppose for the sake of argument that property damage is violence after all. Who is the victim in such cases? Property itself? For instance, if my car is torched, my car is the victim? Absurd. *I* am the victim if my car is torched, not the car. But then, we’ve established that..

I can be the victim of violence even in cases in which I suffer no physical harm (and nobody else does either). But in that case, why not just take the next step and hold that words can be violence after all? The usual objection to this step is words don’t cause physical harm but