People are so concerned with condemning or condoning looting. Yes it’s politically unwise. It’s also basically inevitable in a highly stratified and punitive property-based social order that’s waning in legitimacy, bound to happen during momentary tears in the fabric of consensus

You make people work alienating jobs producing and protecting stuff for most of their waking hours or prohibit them from working at all and then show them endless images of life-completing, happiness-giving things they can’t really afford... looting is an obvious middle finger

If these were demonstrations meant to advance a concrete agenda the looting would be a huge tactical error. In that case there would also probably leaders who could call it off or at least condemn it. But that’s not what’s happening here. Gotta contend with this on its own terms

I of course hope that organized and strategic movements emerge from this. And I believe that the spontaneous mass unrest we’re seeing is evidence of the raw material for precisely those kinds of movements. For now I know whose side I’m on