Whether a crowd uplifts or destroys depends on the moral compass of the society it represents rather than the crowd’s numbers. And here, our compass is badly broken.

Too often, collective gatherings set a precedent of violence instead of civic strength. The mass uprising of July 5 was a rare exception–an instance where ordinary people reached for a moral high ground.

But the fear remains: why should protests so often make us brace for savagery?

Protest is essential in any society that seeks justice. At times, resistance, even resistance to state power, is a moral duty. Resistance to state terrorism, in particular, is indispensable.

But resistance does not have to mean rampage. Why should movements meant to secure freedom become exercises in destruction? Why should violence be sanctified as “political strategy”?

The root of this confusion lies in a collapse of moral clarity. We mistake what we can do for what we should do. Potter Stewart, the American jurist, once drew the distinction neatly: “Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.”

In our context, that distinction has been obliterated.

Part of the problem is structural: we live in a system where rights are neither guaranteed nor protected. Instead, citizens are forced to seize them through strength, and in doing so, they lose sight of the very concept of justice.

The prevailing logic becomes: No one will give me my rights. So I must take them–whatever it takes, no matter who is harmed.

Violence is thus normalized, and the line between rights and wrongs dissolves.

This moral void is why our politics feels like an unending cycle of chaos. The Awami League, true to form, is working to worsen it. And they will succeed–if we let them.

But the answer cannot be to mirror their cruelty. Saying “they are evil, so we may be too” is not a politics; it is surrender. They may have become a machine, a “league” without conscience. But we remain people, capable of judgment, capable of restraint.

The task ahead is clear: we must build a society where rights are real, not transactional, and where justice–not force–defines the boundaries of political life.

Without that, every protest risks devolving into another act of savagery.

Ingrained misunderstanding

Most of the time, we don’t even know what our rights are—because, in truth, we have so few. This vacuum breeds a dangerous illusion: that anarchy itself is a revolutionary act.

But mistaking chaos for liberation is not only naïve; it is destructive.

The confusion stems from failing to distinguish between two questions: What do I have a right to do? and What is the right thing to do?

The first is legal–what the law permits, what won’t land you in jail. The second is moral–what conscience demands, what human dignity requires. Our crisis lies in the collapse of this second category.

Too often, our intellectual class has been complicit in this collapse. Rather than grappling with the hard questions of justice, they deliver shallow verdicts, rooted in political ignorance, sycophancy, or self-interest.

They mistake legalism for wisdom, and in doing so, they hollow out the moral core of public life.

Consider a simple example: you are attacked, and you fight back. You have the right to defend yourself. But if in defending yourself you kill your attacker when it was enough to disable him, what then?

The law may absolve you, but justice does not. The question is not only whether you were free to act, but whether your action preserved a basic respect for life.

This is where morality reveals its sharper edge: in how we treat those who oppose us. The way you deal with an enemy defines you more than victory or defeat ever will.

If resistance descends into savagery, it ceases to be resistance–it becomes complicity in the very brutality it claims to fight.

In short, ethics is not about exercising every right available to us. It is about weighing the consequences of our actions, asking whether they honor human dignity.

If we understood this distinction, our protests would not spiral into anarchy. Our movements would not play directly into the hands of those who thrive on chaos.

True revolution is not force for its own sake. It is the discipline to know when force crosses the line from just to unjust. And that is the line we can no longer afford to ignore.

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Rezaul Karim Rony is a writer and thinker. He is the editor of Joban magazine