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Protests

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Original Question

Would it be a hasty generalization to call the protests in 2020 riots when they did happen? Especially when statistics came out that the majority of protests were peaceful?

Answers

2

No. The problem isn't drawing the conclusion; it's defining "riot." Riots can break out of protests, which they did, but that doesn't make the entire event itself a "riot." This is an area ripe with political bias and spin. One can legitimately refer to the event in 2020 as "riots" as well as "protests." We just need to keep in mind that they are referring to different events. The riots were subsets of the protests.


Implying that the protests, as a whole, were "riots," might be best characterized by the ambiguity fallacy

What Dr Bo said is accurate.


An example of "hasty generalisation" would be "I saw two riots, therefore, all the protests were riots."

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