Looting and its Friends

 

                                     Looting and its Friends

National Public Radio had an interview last month with Vicky Osterweil, author of a new book called "In Defense of Looting." Looting is good, she says, because it exposes a deep truth about the great American confidence game, which is that “without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.” The “so-called” United States was founded in “cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist” violence. That violence produced our current system, particularly its property relations, and looting is a remedy for that sickness. “Looting rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property, the moral injunction to work for a living, and the ‘justice’ of law and order,” she writes. Ownership of things—not just people—is “innately, structurally white supremacist.” The destruction of businesses is an “experience of pleasure, joy, and freedom,” Osterweil writes. It is also a form of “queer birth.” “Riots are violent, extreme, and femme as fuck,” according to Osterweil. “They rip, tear, burn, and destroy to give birth to a new world.” She reserves her most pungent criticism for advocates of nonviolence, a “bankrupt concept” primarily valuable for enlisting “northern liberals.”

NPR asked Osterweil to talk about rioting as a tactic, in the way a lifestyle reporter might ask a celebrity to talk a little about a new movie. As the author explains, rioting accomplishes "important things." For starters, "It gets people what they need for free immediately, which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage…That's looting's most basic tactical power as a political mode of action."

But looting isn't simply about stealing. It has a deeper and more uplifting purpose. "It also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed," Osterweil added. "It attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things…It points to the way in which that's unjust."


NPR brought o lot of insight to this "concept." One question was, “A lot of people who consider themselves radical or progressive criticize looting. Why is this so common?” 

So, when you worry about the quality of the Press and its defense of civilization, keep in mind that the civilization's enemies are morons.

Symmetric stupidity.  

(some from Greenhut and Wood)