This prompts several hot takes on my part. One is that these broad strokes are probably unhelpful in characterizing the full nature of looting: since it’s indictments, it’s sampling a very specific population of people who are caught. Two is that intent is somewhat tangential. https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1386821474820968453

To expand on the last one, this is a common feature of what can be called subaltern resistance: resistance by those excluded from traditional power structures. Take, for example, peasant poachers of the king’s lands somewhere in the 1700s. Were they engaging in political action?

It’s hard to distinguish, because yes, on one hand it *can* be just a peasant hunting a rabbit in “The King’s” forest just because he can, and in that sense he can lack any sort of political intent. But that’s not the whole picture.

First, the act itself *can* be fundamentally read as either self-interest or political advocacy — again, with poachers, it can be the implicit assertion that royal claims on land are fundamentally illegitimate. In some ways, the two are inseparable.

But, second, when we’re talking about collective action, the political aspect starts to jump out at you. Sure, maybe some folks *are* in it for pure material gain — but how do they fit into the wider community? Is it shunned or accepted?

If you’re a cop investigating this, will these people’s neighbors make your job easier or harder? Will they cooperate or shun you? When it came to peasant poaching, it’s precisely this aspect that gave the phenomenon political undertones, and I think this may be quite similar.

Or take, for example, cases of desertion from military forces — one may be tempted to conclude that deserters are out to save their skin, and that’s undoubtedly one of the reasons it’s happened, but many an army has been brought down by mass defections.

And when we have cases of soldiers protecting deserters (or, say, fraggers in the Vietnam war), this also lends a sharp political lens to the issue.

Not to speak of the fact that simple acts of crime and theft can include an individualist political interpretation.

Stealing something *is* taking stuff, sure, but it is also violating a very particular system of property rights that exists within a very particular political system. And, even if the actions themselves are undertaken without political intent, in a sense, it *is* political.

And that’s sort of the mess of subaltern politics — chaotic, often *purposefully* anonymous, without manifestos to back it up, operating outside of existing political structures — outside of the usual rules and procedures, outside of parties and representation.