Wow, that's pretty absolute. I'm guessing violence must mean a whole lot more (or a whole lot different) to you than it does to me.
I guess I've worked with violence in a lot of different contexts and where it has a lot of different meanings. To someone who grew up in Savannah Georgia it's entirely reasonable that swapping a few light punches among friends is mainly just a way to communicate points (or, yes, make jokes) while avoiding wasted time, hurt feelings and escalation that would result from long drawn out sessions of passive-aggressive bitching or screaming about those points.
But violence is very different for different people. Soldiers, bar bouncers, bar brawlers, professional wrestlers, abused partners, excessively punished children, people who've acted in defense of themselves or their own -- every last one of them has a different thing that violence can mean to them. Thinking it always means the same thing no matter what, or even that the people involved in a particular violence interpret it in exactly the same way, is, IMO, not paying attention to who they are and where they're coming from.
And, just FWIW, someone who smacks me on the arm to make a joke, or to make a point if I'm saying or doing something they think is stupid or evil, is something I take a whole lot more casually and lightly than someone who YELLS about things, or wants to have long-drawn-out discussions where nothing gets resolved except that other people besides themselves are morally and irredeemably wrong. Those last behaviors -- yelling about things and blame-gaming -- are fast ways to end relationships with me because I won't stand for them as a general rule.