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The evil idiocy of 'In Defense of Looting'
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Willie Brown's Cum Dumpster
Jan 1, 2021, 9:05:09 PM1/1/21
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Vicky Osterweil, the author of “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous
History of Uncivil Action,” is getting her 15 minutes of fame
thanks to a segment on NPR in which she said some really mind-
bogglingly dumb, indefensibly evil and fascinatingly reactionary
things.
We’ll come back to her in a moment.
One of my weird mental pastimes is to look at the world as if I
were a visitor from the past. But rather than think of how a
time traveler might marvel at the new technology and tall
buildings, I like to wonder: What would someone from 500 or
1,000 years ago recognize as familiar?
Some things are obvious: a mother breastfeeding a baby or an old
man tending a garden. “We do that too!” a time traveler might
say on first sight.
But if you were a sophisticated and knowledgeable time traveler,
you might recognize some deeper similarities.
My favorite example is North Korea, which is often called a
“communist” or “Marxist” regime but would be instantly
recognizable to a temporal tourist as an absolutist monarchy,
even though the regime doesn’t use the word “king.” Divine power
is passed down to the male heir of the previous ruler. Every de
facto monarch is said to be of quasi-supernatural origin and
endowed with superhuman abilities and wisdom. North Korea also
has a hereditary aristocracy that lives off the hereditary
peasant class, which is born into de facto serfdom.
I bring this up because sometimes we get too hung up on words
and lose sight of the things underneath. And that brings me back
to Osterweil.
“Looting is a highly racialized word from its very inception in
the English language,” Osterweil said in the NPR interview.
“It’s taken from Hindi, lút, which means ‘goods’ or ‘spoils.’ ”
How this is relevant, or even evidence that the word is
“racialized,” is a mystery, given that maybe two in 10 million
people know its etymology. Other words with Hindi origins:
pundit, guru, khaki, cashmere and pajamas. The horror.
This is a good example of confusing words and things. Looting —
mobs grabbing stuff that doesn’t belong to them — is an ancient
practice dating back hundreds of thousands of years, before we
even had the concept of dates. Pillaging, ransacking, theft —
call it what you like — is how tribes acquired stuff before the
invention of trade.
In short: Osterweil thinks she’s making some powerful neo-
Marxist argument on the bleeding edge of theory, but what she’s
discovered is tribal barbarism and put a fresh coat of paint on
it.
She is fluent in all the latest buzzwords and campus jargon. The
“so-called” United States of America, she writes in her book,
was founded in “cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist”
violence. (I’m getting my quotes from Graeme Wood’s excellent
review in The Atlantic, as I have no desire to saddle Osterweil
with the guilt of profiting from her work.)
Destroying businesses is an “experience of pleasure, joy and
freedom,” she writes. Osterweil also insists it’s a form of
“queer birth,” and that “riots are violent, extreme and femme as
f – – -.” Looting isn’t wrong, she claims, but rather a form of
“proletarian shopping.”
“Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of
the police,” Osterweil explained on NPR. “The very basis of
property in the US is derived through whiteness and through
Black oppression, through the history of slavery and settler
domination of the country.”
Nope. Notions of private property can be found in ancient China,
the Islamic world and, well, everywhere.
Even the Korean grocers targeted by looting have it coming,
according to Osterweil, because they’re working in the white
man’s system of “ownership.” And ownership is “innately,
structurally white supremacist.”
What Osterweil is really describing is revenge based on
collective guilt. A Viking or Gaul from the past would instantly
recognize it. So would countless non-white barbarians of yore,
because that’s what humans used to believe. “Your ancestors did
something to my ancestors, and so you have this coming.”
Books could be written about how wrong — historically, morally,
logically — Osterweil is. But there is one place where she’s
right. Rioting and looting are fun, which is why young people do
it from time to time. Mobs are thrilling, which is why they’re
so dangerous and evil. (Presumably rapists and murderers feel
“joy” too, that doesn’t make them good; it illuminates their
evilness.) That’s why civilized societies try to prevent them.
Barbarians come up with clever word salads to defend them.
Twitter: @JonahDispatch
https://nypost.com/2020/09/06/the-evil-idiocy-of-in-defense-of-
looting/
History of Uncivil Action,” is getting her 15 minutes of fame
thanks to a segment on NPR in which she said some really mind-
bogglingly dumb, indefensibly evil and fascinatingly reactionary
things.
We’ll come back to her in a moment.
One of my weird mental pastimes is to look at the world as if I
were a visitor from the past. But rather than think of how a
time traveler might marvel at the new technology and tall
buildings, I like to wonder: What would someone from 500 or
1,000 years ago recognize as familiar?
Some things are obvious: a mother breastfeeding a baby or an old
man tending a garden. “We do that too!” a time traveler might
say on first sight.
But if you were a sophisticated and knowledgeable time traveler,
you might recognize some deeper similarities.
My favorite example is North Korea, which is often called a
“communist” or “Marxist” regime but would be instantly
recognizable to a temporal tourist as an absolutist monarchy,
even though the regime doesn’t use the word “king.” Divine power
is passed down to the male heir of the previous ruler. Every de
facto monarch is said to be of quasi-supernatural origin and
endowed with superhuman abilities and wisdom. North Korea also
has a hereditary aristocracy that lives off the hereditary
peasant class, which is born into de facto serfdom.
I bring this up because sometimes we get too hung up on words
and lose sight of the things underneath. And that brings me back
to Osterweil.
“Looting is a highly racialized word from its very inception in
the English language,” Osterweil said in the NPR interview.
“It’s taken from Hindi, lút, which means ‘goods’ or ‘spoils.’ ”
How this is relevant, or even evidence that the word is
“racialized,” is a mystery, given that maybe two in 10 million
people know its etymology. Other words with Hindi origins:
pundit, guru, khaki, cashmere and pajamas. The horror.
This is a good example of confusing words and things. Looting —
mobs grabbing stuff that doesn’t belong to them — is an ancient
practice dating back hundreds of thousands of years, before we
even had the concept of dates. Pillaging, ransacking, theft —
call it what you like — is how tribes acquired stuff before the
invention of trade.
In short: Osterweil thinks she’s making some powerful neo-
Marxist argument on the bleeding edge of theory, but what she’s
discovered is tribal barbarism and put a fresh coat of paint on
it.
She is fluent in all the latest buzzwords and campus jargon. The
“so-called” United States of America, she writes in her book,
was founded in “cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist”
violence. (I’m getting my quotes from Graeme Wood’s excellent
review in The Atlantic, as I have no desire to saddle Osterweil
with the guilt of profiting from her work.)
Destroying businesses is an “experience of pleasure, joy and
freedom,” she writes. Osterweil also insists it’s a form of
“queer birth,” and that “riots are violent, extreme and femme as
f – – -.” Looting isn’t wrong, she claims, but rather a form of
“proletarian shopping.”
“Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of
the police,” Osterweil explained on NPR. “The very basis of
property in the US is derived through whiteness and through
Black oppression, through the history of slavery and settler
domination of the country.”
Nope. Notions of private property can be found in ancient China,
the Islamic world and, well, everywhere.
Even the Korean grocers targeted by looting have it coming,
according to Osterweil, because they’re working in the white
man’s system of “ownership.” And ownership is “innately,
structurally white supremacist.”
What Osterweil is really describing is revenge based on
collective guilt. A Viking or Gaul from the past would instantly
recognize it. So would countless non-white barbarians of yore,
because that’s what humans used to believe. “Your ancestors did
something to my ancestors, and so you have this coming.”
Books could be written about how wrong — historically, morally,
logically — Osterweil is. But there is one place where she’s
right. Rioting and looting are fun, which is why young people do
it from time to time. Mobs are thrilling, which is why they’re
so dangerous and evil. (Presumably rapists and murderers feel
“joy” too, that doesn’t make them good; it illuminates their
evilness.) That’s why civilized societies try to prevent them.
Barbarians come up with clever word salads to defend them.
Twitter: @JonahDispatch
https://nypost.com/2020/09/06/the-evil-idiocy-of-in-defense-of-
looting/
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