Via the comments, some elaboration on an Ephemera item from Friday, specifically, this feat of contrivance:

Tiktoker blames capitalism for looters and suggests we should have compassion for these criminals instead of law enforcement dealing with them pic.twitter.com/xh89bARkpE

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 13, 2025

To which, Darleen replied, 

Dicentra added, not unreasonably,

The kinds of people who enthuse about looting and rioting, and who seem to find it ideologically arousing – often progressive women – are not generally in the realm of coherent argument. Or indeed, good faith. Hence the disregard for the obvious factors mentioned by Darleen. For those like the wide-eyed creature seen above, I don’t think reality plays much part in what’s happening in their heads and then spilling out of their mouths. It’s much more about their own psychology, their own need to be perverse.

See, for instance, this. In which, Vice columnist Rachel Miller, a terminally woke young woman, attempts an indignant defence of looting and feral predation. Via which the allegedly downtrodden will be liberated and empowered, thanks to the destruction of their own local pharmacies, convenience stores, and other amenities.

And who concludes, with obvious self-satisfaction, that those who would rather not have their livelihoods destroyed and their neighbourhoods reduced to a rubble-strewn warzone – including quite a few black people – are “kinda (or definitely) racist.” Because “anti-looting discourse” is a function of “white supremacy.”

Ms Miller’s rush to denounce “respectability politics” – i.e., expectations of moral reciprocation and a general aversion to inflicting on others, arbitrarily, the kind of violation one would not care to receive – is, I’d say, a clue.

It’s not politics, it’s pathology.

One might, for instance, wonder how Ms Miller would feel were she the female Amazon driver seen being swarmed and assaulted here:

Having been assaulted and robbed, and left sprawled in the road, as if she were nothing of consequence, would she be overwhelmed with optimism and other warm feelings?

Answers on a postcard, please.

One for our ongoing series on the progressive retail experience. I believe this is part 445:

A young woman asks in a brazen voice as the destruction and theft rages behind her, “Are y’all gonna make the sandwiches or are ya’ll just gonna keep recording?” The Wawa employee responded, “Uh, it’s going to be a while.”

“No arrests were made.”

Update, via the comments:

The celebratory twerking seen in the background is, you’ll agree, a charming touch. Presumably done on grounds that trashing someone’s business and stealing their property, while exulting in mob intimidation and giving two fingers to the idea of civilisation, is all so jolly. Perhaps we can look forward to another Vice article telling us how looting is a good thing when black people do it.

After all, self-styled progressives – the people who loudly announce their supposed compassion and altruism – are famed for making weirdly contrived excuses for pathological selfishness. Say, the kind of pathological selfishness seen above and throughout the progressive retail series. Indeed, excuses for sociopathic behaviour are a staple of progressive posturing, appearing all but weekly, and with increasing moral convolution and outright perversity.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

And expecting applause. In the pages of Vice, a moral lecture, delivered from on high:

How to Talk to Relatives Who Care More About Looting Than Black Lives.

As an exercise in question-begging and dense, self-satisfied presumption, it’s quite a thing, that headline. It’s very now.

Among those of us deemed insufficiently woke and therefore suspect, questions may arise. For instance, in what way will those “black lives” be improved by the destruction of local infrastructure, local businesses, and the subsequent, perhaps dramatic, reduction in trust and goodwill? And what if the stores and homes in question – the ones being smashed, stripped of their contents and set ablaze – are owned by people who happen to be black, as has often been the case?

What if the places being looted and vandalised with abandon, indeed exultation, are depended on by people who also happen to be black, whether as customers or employees? After the razing and ruin of their places of work, should these people be pleased to be former employees? Unemployed people who now have no local grocer, or garage, or pharmacy?

Alas, such considerations appear to have eluded the keen mental processes of the article’s author, Ms Rachel Miller, a young woman who dutifully declares her pronouns and boasts of being a “Buzzfeed alum.”

If you’re not Black but want to support BLM, having fraught conversations with your kinda (or definitely) racist loved ones will likely not be fun, but it’s a very worthy undertaking.

Right from the off we’re informed, firmly, that any perceptible reservations about looting and rioting, or reservations about the Black Lives Matter movement – say, regarding its demented far-left agenda, its racial tribalism, and the stated goal of abolishing capitalism, prisons and the police – must be taken as an indicator of being “kinda (or definitely) racist.” Wokeness is not, it seems, a recipe for cognitive subtlety.

“Some people,” we’re told, “appear to be far more worried about the fate of a Nordstrom or Target store than that of the actual human lives of protesters.” Again, one might deduce that only those protesting with, shall we say, physical enthusiasm have “actual human lives,” unlike their victims, whose hopes and livelihoods can be gleefully destroyed as an act of righteous liberation. From local amenities.

Via Min in the comments,

Arlene Dávila, a professor at NYU and founding director of the Latinx Project, believes that looting, theft, and destruction are all part of this essential tapestry of protest. She writes, “Anyone surprised that protests include looting of luxury stores in Soho & elsewhere doesn’t know the 1st thing about racial capitalism & luxury consumption. Racial exploitation is at the root of consumer capitalism built on the commodification of black bodies through slavery.”

Those with a taste for adolescent nihilism tarted-up as woke theorising can head over here for more of the same. There, you’ll learn that sweatshops exist and that “advertising is one of the whitest industries in corporate America,” and that therefore – yes, therefore – people who recently found their businesses and neighbourhoods violated and ablaze should just quit complaining and suck it up, baby.

One can only hope that Professor Dávila returns home one evening to find that it too has been chosen as a target of ‘protest’ – i.e., robbed of anything valuable and merrily on fire. Possibly as a result of parents belatedly registering the kinds of people now entrusted to educate their children.

Or would that somehow be unfair? I ask because, stripped of its rote contortions, Professor Dávila’s reasoning seems to be, “I am unhappy, therefore I am obviously entitled to smash whatever I choose, terrorise whomever I choose, however arbitrarily, and to destroy the hopes and livelihoods of countless random people.”

Because – magic words – social justice.

Readers may note just how often leftism is functionally indistinguishable from sociopathy.

Update, via the comments:

Note too that Professor Dávila carefully sidesteps the countless scenes of feral violence against random people, including elderly women, even terrified animals, and wants us to imagine that the rioting and looting and arson have been neatly confined to “luxury stores” and is therefore, somehow, acceptable, even righteous. Something to applaud.

Of course, this is a lie, as hours of video footage demonstrate.

But it’s interesting how our dishonest woke educator, our teacher of other people’s children, seems to believe that the property of the owners of those stores, and the livelihoods of the people they employ, and the ongoing nightmare for the people who just live nearby or in the same smashed and burning buildings… well, they don’t matter.

A Harvard-educated sociology professor named Crystal Fleming – whose areas of expertise include “critical race theory” and “mindfulness and spirituality” – wishes to share her wisdom. Specifically, that we shouldn’t judge people who smash the windows of local stores and loot multiple pairs of trainers while the owners of said stores are distracted by an oncoming hurricane.

Because white people. 

And if you don’t understand why Everything Is Racist, Including You™ and why looting local stores for half a dozen pairs of expensive fashion items is therefore totes okay, it’s “very, very sad.” You see, “white supremacist racism” is all about “hoarding resources.”