'In Defense Of Looting'

The destruction of Western Civilization and the general madness really isn't stopping.

National Public Radio recently featured as a serious book for discussion Vicky Osterweil's In Defense of Looting.

From NPR:

Writer Vicky Osterweil's book, In Defense of Looting, came out on Tuesday. When she finished it, back in April, she wrote (rather presciently) that "a new energy of resistance is building across the country." Now, as protests and riots continue to grip cities, she argues that looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society. The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores, she says, are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of "law and order," and the distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society...

For people who haven't read your book, how do you define looting?

When I use the word looting, I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot. That's the thing I'm defending. I'm not defending any situation in which property is stolen by force. It's not a home invasion, either. It's about a certain kind of action that's taken during protests and riots.

RW response:

How mad can you get? There is a convenience store near my office, business for the owner is down by 80%. He is barely surviving. He tells me urban primitives regularly enter the store in packs of 5 or 6. They take what they want and leave. "I can stop them," he says with frustration, "They have knives and the police don't come when I call."

What the hell kind of "tactic" is this? It is destroying the livelihood of this proprietor and has nothing to do with the so-called grievances of the primitives. He is Ethiopian, he came here for a better life.

If he shuts down, it will be one less "re-distribution of property and wealth" that the primitives will have to worry on the stretch that they are even thinking about such a thing. There is no one mad enough to open another convenience store in the area.

All looting does is lower the standard of living. It makes setting up shop for mutual exchange that much more risky.

Vicky Osterweil

More from Osterweil:

[Looting] tends to be an attack on a business, a commercial space, maybe a government building—taking those things that would otherwise be commodified and controlled and sharing them for free.

RW response:

"Sharing" Osterweil calls it.

It is outright thievery when looting is focused on private sector businesses.

Osterweil apparently thinks that the goods and services that appear in shops are magically available and the business owners are taking advantage by controlling this availability.

Osterweil's understanding of how society and economic distribution occurs is at the level of a young child who puts a tooth under her pillow and finds a dollar in the morning and thinks it came from the Fairy Godmother.

I mean listen to this Osterweil madness:

Can you talk about rioting as a tactic? What are the reasons people deploy it as a strategy?

It does a number of important things. 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—which, during COVID times, is widely unreliable or, particularly in these communities is often not available, or it comes at great risk. That's looting's most basic tactical power as a political mode of action.

It also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. 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 that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that's unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.

Remarkably, Osterweil doesn't even understand that regular looting will cause insurance prices to go up, which will mean prices of goods will go up or cause the goods to become unavailable (not to mention Osterweil absurd lumping of the state and business owners):

One thing about looting is it freaks people out. But in terms of potential crimes that people can commit against the state, it's basically nonviolent. You're mass shoplifting. Most stores are insured; it's just hurting insurance companies on some level. It's just money. It's just property. It's not actually hurting any people.

And get this:

It's actually a Republican myth that has, over the last 20 years, really crawled into even leftist discourse: that the small business owner must be respected, that the small business owner creates jobs and is part of the community. But that's actually a right-wing myth.

A business being attacked in the community is ultimately about attacking like modes of oppression that exist in the community. It is true and possible that there are instances historically when businesses have refused to reopen or to come back. But that is a part of the inequity of the society, that people live in places where there is only one place where they can get access to something [like food or medicine]. 

I don't think there is a better example of the lack of basic understanding of how an economy works than these shallow comments about economics cloaked in the garb of revolution.

At its core, this is the battle lovers of liberty are fighting. It is an ideological battle against hardcore ignorance about the importance of free markets, free exchange and respect for private property.

At present, we are losing to the Vicky's of the world.

-RW