The author seems to have some cognitive dissonance. For a piece saying that you cannot justify violence, there sure seems to be an awful lot of justifying violence in here.

You may not be able to justify violence, but sometimes you can understand it.

History is just full of emotional contradictions I guess. French and Russian revolutions were terrible bloodbaths, smaller violent movements like Luddite one caused deaths and achieved nothing - it would be stupid to approve any of these. But you could also see why this violence happened, and assign an appropriate share of blame to those who held the power to resolve social contradictions in a more equitable way and decided not to do so.

I don't see any justification - the article is quite clear that it is anti-violence. Explanation and analysis is not, on its own, justification. This is one of the discursive patterns that most infuriates me: any attempt to analyse something can be seen as promotion or justification. Some of us want to figure out how things work and chart a course through, we are not trying to push an agenda in every single sentence.

You should probably read up on cognitive dissonance, because this ain't it. Here's what the author actually wrote:

> Nothing that Altman could say justifies violence against him. This is an undeniable truth. But unfortunately, violence might still ensue. I hope not, but I guess we are seeing what appears to be the first cases.