In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action

Excellent, thorough work on topics simultaneously prescient and historical. I would recommend to anyone interested in diving deeper into the violent history of police and the liberating nature looting can have. Subverting the property relationship in America- a relationship that begins with the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans and the genocide and displacement of indigenous groups- is necessary if we ever want to see a world worthy of the label “free.”

I read this book, then the Antifa book immediately after. Both show that, if you actually look at history and not media bloviation or your own biased opinions, violent action is sometimes (not always, not every time) justified in responding to injustices. We don't know this history because our media and textbooks are full of anti-revolutionary propaganda. Our 1960's history has been Disneyfied like Grimm's fairytales. We think MLK marched and then boom all the racism just up and vanished. This whitewashing of history is intended. It is purposeful. It is to prevent more radical, grassroots revolutionary action from disrupting the status quo. Learn your history. If there's one overarching lesson I've learned from reading all these books, it's: LEARN YOUR HISTORY before passing judgement, before making assumptions, before claiming you know everything needed to know about a subject. The saddest part about this book is that the version I had came out right before the George Floyd protests got big, which became the largest movement in US history. I'm sure the author will release a revised version that provides more historical contextualization of that movement.