I think this intervention by a senior econ person highly problematic.
For clarity, in case Harald's tweet is read that way, Obama did not say 'violence and looting discredits the peaceful protests and legit cause'.
Importantly, if you are going to intervene in the debate, and all you emphasize is the criminality, when this is widely accepted to be down to a very small minority in the overall protest movement, you are contributing to the misrepresentation of what is happening.
Trump and conservative commentators want to misrepresent what is happening as a contest between order and chaos, emphasizing the legitimacy of those who want order and property rights respected, covering over the racial injustice that the protest is almost exclusively about.
It's not enough to include a side clause 'legit this' or that in a tweet mostly complaining about rioting.
It comes across as either politically illiterate, or a calculated act to fail to place the protests and the riots in the context of the continual incitement by Trump; of his encouragement and toleration of white, armed ["liberate X"] protests and other outrages.
The tweet, via silence, allows itself to be inferred as a complaint against the movement as a whole, as though genuine protesters are supposed to police the looters themselves, or be held responsible for them, and as support for police tactics in stepping in how they have.
There's also no acknowledgement of systemic injustice. As @annastansbury points out in a reply, many obeying actual laws constructed by the unjustice system and profiting unfairly from it are not scolded by Harald. Only rioters who he sees are obvs all bad faith thieves.
I write this thread hesitantly. Tone policing can be odious. Tone policers have to take policing of their own. Also debate can get throttled on the altar of having to compose an entire position paper on a sensitive topic, many chapters of which the author is not an expert on.
But if you are very senior in a field, as we all learned in spider man, 'with great power comes great responsibility'.
Harald replies to other responses with more information about his views of the protests, which are encouraging.
It does, however, grant too much legitimacy and good faith to the authorities, IMO, who remember were the source of this problem, and are, in so far as they respond to Trump, helping aggravate the problem and obscure the purpose of the protests.
