In Defense of Looting
A Riotous History of Uncivil Action
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- USD 16.99
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- USD 16.99
Descripción editorial
A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy.
Looting -- a crowd of people publicly, openly, and directly seizing goods -- is one of the more extreme actions that can take place in the midst of social unrest. Even self-identified radicals distance themselves from looters, fearing that violent tactics reflect badly on the broader movement.
But Vicky Osterweil argues that stealing goods and destroying property are direct, pragmatic strategies of wealth redistribution and improving life for the working class -- not to mention the brazen messages these methods send to the police and the state. All our beliefs about the innate righteousness of property and ownership, Osterweil explains, are built on the history of anti-Black, anti-Indigenous oppression.
From slave revolts to labor strikes to the modern-day movements for climate change, Black lives, and police abolition, Osterweil makes a convincing case for rioting and looting as weapons that bludgeon the status quo while uplifting the poor and marginalized. In Defense of Looting is a history of violent protest sparking social change, a compelling reframing of revolutionary activism, and a practical vision for a dramatically restructured society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The New Inquiry contributor Osterweil debuts with a provocative, Marxist-informed defense of looting as a radical and effective protest tactic. Osterweil argues that the surplus wealth that allowed capitalism and modern property rights to flourish only existed because European colonialists in the New World stole land from and committed genocide against Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans in order to produce the commodities (silver, sugar, tobacco, cotton) that created that surplus. Therefore, Osterweil contends, when protestors loot and riot as part of an anti-police uprising, they are confronting and exposing the inextricable links between America's economic and social structures and white supremacy. Moreover, in her analysis, the "threat" that looting and rioting pose to the established order is necessary "to overturn this miserable world of white supremacy, anti-Blackness, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, empire, and property." Osterweil supports her claims with close looks at 1960s uprisings in Detroit, Newark, and Watts and the 1992 L.A. riots that broke out after police officers accused of brutalizing Rodney King were acquitted. Her inflammatory rhetoric (she calls police a "despicable occupying army") and vague conception of what her called-for revolution would look like undermine her more credible historical interpretations. Still, this is a bracing rethink of the goals and methods of protest.
