This is a good point; it wasn't my intention to conflate one kind of activism with other kinds of activism, but I can see that I wasn't at all clear, so thank you for pointing it out.

That said: any one person has limited time and energy. When choosing strategies, there is an opportunity cost to targeted, specific violence against another person. Some of that opportunity cost is going to be about personal costs (punching anyone would almost certainly hurt me more than it would hurt them because I have EDS and no training in throwing punches; for similar reasons I don't feel safe even at peaceful protests and stopped going some years ago), but some of it is also about which people one chooses to challenge, as well as how.