Author defends looting in NPR interview, says it gives ‘an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure’
“Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police,' the author claimed.
By Adam Shaw | Fox News
An author of a new book defending looting is sparking outrage after an NPR interview in which she said looting gives people “an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure."
“Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police,†author Vicky Osterweil said in the interview. “It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also, it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be. And I think that's a part of it that doesn't really get talked about -- that riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory.â€
Riots and looting have torn through American cities since the death of George Floyd in police custody in May. They were reignited again in Kenosha, Wis., after the police shooting of Jacob Blake Sunday. There also was looting in Minneapolis this week after a suspected gunman killed himself as police neared.
While the looting has taken its toll on local businesses and economies already hit hard by the coronavirus crisis, Osterweil said it also works as a “political mode of action.â€
“Importantly, I think especially when it's in the context of a Black uprising like the one we're living through now, it also attacks the history of whiteness and white supremacy,†Osterweil claims. “The very basis of property in the U.S. is derived through whiteness and through Black oppression, through the history of slavery and settler domination of the country.â€
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