Looting’s fine as it’s fun and people get free stuff. It costs $27.57.

[Brian4Liberty]

A new book says looting’s fine as it’s fun and people get free stuff. It costs $27.57, but perhaps you can steal it instead
Written by Guy Birchall - September 3, 2020

In Defense of Looting is one of the most ridiculous books ever committed to print and would be laughable if the paper-thin philosophy behind it weren’t perniciously making its way into public life.

For most of human history, we have agreed that nicking other people’s stuff is bad. The Bible includes “thou shalt not steal” in the Ten Commandments alongside murder, blasphemy and adultery as things you shouldn’t be getting up to. Sharia law takes such a dim view of larceny that in its strictest interpretation lopping off thieves’ hands is de rigueur.

Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism also denounce pinching that which is not yours. It is illegal in some shape or form in every country on Earth. I’d wager even John Lennon, despite his crooning to “imagine no possessions,” would’ve been a bit ticked off if you made off with one of his guitars.
...
But apparently a trans woman named Vicky Osterweil disagrees with civilised society on this. The self-described editor, writer and agitator has written an entire book defending looting, imaginatively titled: In Defense of Looting. Credit where credit’s due, she is certainly nailing her colors to the mast with a title like that, although presumably she would have no issue if a mob decided to remove the aforementioned mast.

So, what does Ms Osterweil mean by looting? Is she redefining the term as so many other terms (racism, gender, oppression, etc) have been by the left? Well, apparently not. In an interview with American University radio she said: “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.”
...
Describing what this strategy of rioting achieves, Osterweil explains, “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.”
...
Apart from the noble act of getting people stuff they want for free, rioting and looting is apparently also a fantastic way of tackling that bane of our age “white supremacy” because, according to Osterweil, property is intrinsically white supremacist in nature. One imagines that the millions of black people who, you know, own things, will be stunned to discover that by having a car or a house they are contributing to their own oppression, but Osterweil insists that they are.

It is because of this fact that property is steeped in whiteness that looting is a force for good because it “strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police,” even Korean owned ones, apparently. I’m not sure what she makes of businesses owned by African-Americans, and whether they’re a legitimate target too.
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Osterweil is pro-looting any business, it doesn’t matter if it is a multinational corporation or a family store that is their sole livelihood. They are all exploiters to this Osterweil because, “small business, family owned business or locally owned business, they are no more likely to provide worker protections. They are no more likely to have to provide good stuff for the community than big businesses.”
...
It cannot be overstated how deranged the screed this leftist lunatic has produced is. I cannot believe anyone with an even vaguely functioning brain could think it was worth allowing Osterweil access to crayons and post-it notes, let alone giving her a publishing deal. Especially one with Hachette, the third largest trade and educational book publisher in the world. What on earth were they thinking? This kind of bollocks isn’t just misguided, it is dangerous and evil.
...
More: http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives...al-it-instead/

[jkr]

to ez

[Brian4Liberty]

The Pinnacle of Looting Apologia
If the real, lasting change you wish to effect is burning society to cinders, then perhaps looting is the right tool.
Graeme Wood - September 2, 2020

Last week, NPR’s Code Switch published an interview with Vicky Osterweil, the author of In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action. NPR summarizes the book as an argument that “looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society.” If the real, lasting change you wish to effect is burning society to cinders and crippling for a generation its ability to serve its poorest citizens, then I suppose I am forced to agree. Osterweil sees an upside. 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.” She came to this conclusion six years ago, and in her book, which is written “in love and solidarity with looters the world over,” she defends this view as ably as anyone could.

Osterweil’s argument is simple. 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 rest of the remedy is more violence, which she celebrates as an underrated engine for social justice. The destruction of businesses is an “experience of pleasure, joy, and freedom,” Osterweil writes. It is also a form of “queeer birth.” “Riots are violent, extreme, and femme as $#@!,” 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.” Liberal is pejorative in this book. Martin Luther King Jr. is grudgingly acknowledged as a positive figure, but not as positive a figure as he would have been if he had kicked some white-capitalist ass and put a few pigs in the ICU. The “I Have a Dream” speech was, Osterweil writes, “the product of a series of sellouts and silencings, of nonviolent leaders dampening the militancy of the grass roots” and “sapping the movement’s energy.” More to her taste is Robert F. Williams, who practiced armed resistance, and Assata Shakur, who murdered a New Jersey police officer and remains a fugitive in Cuba.

The violence needn’t be in self-defense—Shakur’s certainly was not. Osterweil quotes the “wisdom” of Stokely Carmichael: “Responsibility for the use of violence by black men, whether in self-defense or initiated by them [emphasis mine], lies with the white community.”
...
Osterweil is unable or unwilling to relate to anyone at all with anything resembling a sense of humanity. Comrades and enemies alike are described without compassion, emotional detail, or distinction as people endowed with feelings or moral complexity. Once cast as a villain, a villain one remains, with no intricacies of the human condition explored under any circumstances.
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Her conviction that her opponents deserve violence would be easier to abide if it were not obvious that nearly everyone counts as an opponent.
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More: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...ooting/615925/

[RJB]

I was about to post a thread on this. There are bookstores promoting this book. I wonder how the owners would feel if they were looted.

[CCTelander]

Let me see if I have this straight.

"Property itself is intrinsically white supremecist."

Therefore, to "own" property of any kind is to support white supremacy.

Expropriation of property is to transfer "ownership" of that property from the orginal owner to whomever is doing the expropriating, in this case looters.

Therefore, as per Osterweil's "reasoning," the looters become prpoerty owners and are then acting in support of white supremacy.

It then seems clear to me that one important step we could all take to stem the tide of "white supremacy" would be to shoot all looters on sight, according to Osterweil's "logic," of course.

Did I miss anything?

[RJB]

Let me see if I have this straight.

"Property itself is intrinsically white supremecist."

Therefore, to "own" property of any kind is to support white supremacy.

Expropriation of property is to transfer "ownership" of that property from the orginal owner to whomever is doing the expropriating, in this case looters.

Therefore, as per Osterweil's "reasoning," the looters become prpoerty owners and are then acting in support of white supremacy.

It then seems clear to me that one important step we could all take to stem the tide of "white supremacy" would be to shoot all looters on sight, according to Osterweil's "logic," of course.

Did I miss anything?

They just want to tear it all down, man.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/RonPaulInstitut/...12028692500482

[CCTelander]

They just want to tear it all down, man.

Is your sarcasm detector on the fritz?

[RJB]

Is your sarcasm detector on the fritz?

No, I am just adding to it.

[Dr.3D]

They just want to tear it all down, man.

That's why Biden wants to build it back better. Maybe he can make the buildings riot proof.

[CCTelander]

No, I am just adding to it.

My mistake. Carry on then.

[fedupinmo]

That's not a Sheila.

[Anti Globalist]

I wonder how the author of this book would feel is they owned a business and they ended up getting looted.