Justifying the Rioting

sdRather than denounce the shameful lawlessness demonstrated by many “protesters” demanding “justice” in the wake of the grand jury decision about Officer Darren Wilson, progressives are doubling down by posting rationalizations for the rioting.

Marc Lamont Hill, for example, author of a book on “hip hop pedagogy” who hilariously describes himself as “one of the leading intellectual voices in the country,” tweeted, “The story of ferguson tonight is way bigger than looting or violence. People are angry. People are hurting. They’re killing us with impunity.” This is nonsense. People don’t loot and burn down neighborhood businesses because they are angry and hurting; they do so because trumped-up racial controversies give a criminal element the cover to commit crimes against business owners who had nothing to do with the controversy. Rioters steal big-screen TVs and Nike sneakers because they’re hurting? Ridiculous. They steal them because they are opportunistic thieves.

The hugely popular Gawker site, in an article claiming that “riots are good,” actually argues that “rioting is economically efficient”: “Since state authorities are always and everywhere most concerned about capital and business interests, threatening to impose costs on them via rioting should have a similar impact on police incentives” – by which it means that destructive rioting now supposedly discourages the police from shooting innocent black males later. What it really dissuades economically is businesses starting up or rebuilding in a neighborhood devastated by looters. The costs it imposes are not on the police, but on the victimized local business owners and their employees. But then, celebrity gossip is Gawker’s strong suit, not economics or common sense.

Perhaps the most unintentionally comical defense of rioting is from Mask Magazine, “an online style + living magazine for antagonist youth.” With a title that could have come straight out of the satiric site The Onion, “Hey, Step Back with the Riot Shaming” explains irrationally that “[People of color] are criminals because we are seen as criminals.” [emphasis in original] So, simply being viewed with suspicion causes people to commit crimes? The writer argues (actually, he doesn’t “argue” anything; he just spews a lot of whiny victimhood) that blacks don’t “own” neighborhoods; there are black-owned businesses, he concedes, but in the next breath he claims that “we don’t have shit,” and so apparently it’s all right to loot and burn the black-owned neighborhood businesses that he says blacks don’t have.

Even before the grand jury decision, as early as August right after the shooting of Michael Brown, a site called the New Inquiry put up a piece with the straightforward title, “In Defense of Looting.” It was Marxist, racist agit-prop written by a guy whose bio identifies him as “a member of the punk band Vulture Shit.” Here’s a sample: “Only if you believe that having nice things for free is amoral, if you believe, in short, that the current (white-supremacist, settler-colonialist) regime of property is just, can you believe that looting is amoral in itself.” Here’s another: “Looters are only stealing from the rich owners’ profit margins. Those owners, meanwhile, especially if they own a chain like QuikTrip, steal forty hours every week from thousands of employees who in return get the privilege of not dying for another seven days.” This sounds like easily dismissed, Occupy lunacy, but unfortunately it is representative of the “thinking” of a depressing percentage of young people.

Also in August, the radical Salon.com posted a piece “in defense of black rage,” in which the writer states about rioting, “I refuse to condemn the folks engaged in these acts, because I respect black rage… How dare people preach and condescend to these people and tell them not to loot, not to riot? Yes, those are destructive forms of anger, but frankly I would rather these people take their anger out on property and products rather than on other people.”

But what Salon and other riot apologists refuse to acknowledge is that those products and property don’t exist in a vacuum; they belong to people who had nothing to do with the controversy and yet whose lives are seriously damaged, and in some cases ruined, by the looting and burning of that property.

In addition to these intellectually insupportable attempts to justify rioting, other progressive voices took the opportunity to simply fuel the fire. In apparent response to tweets that the rioters should “go back to Africa,” The Atlantic’s popular Ta-Nahisi Coates, perhaps best-known for his recent article supporting slave reparations, tweeted, “Not how this works. We are here to run you out, not the other way around.” If he’s saying that blacks are here to run whites out of the country, then that’s a rather militantly racist admission.

Another militant, UPenn’s willfully illiterate Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies Anthea Butler – whose unhinged response to the George Zimmerman verdict I have previously written about – posted an equally unhinged response this time, an inflammatory article asserting that Michael Brown was a “sacrifice to the god of white supremacy.”

In all fairness, not all the progressive voices attempted to whitewash the rioting or fan the flames. Charles M. Blow of The New York Times, for example, kept a relatively even keel in his Wednesday op-ed:

No one of good character and conscience condones rioting or looting or any destruction of property. Those enterprises aren’t only criminal, they’re fruitless and counterproductive and rob one’s own neighborhood of needed services and facilities and unfairly punish the people who saw fit to follow a dream and an entrepreneurial spirit, and invest in themselves and those communities in the first place.

“But people absolutely have a right to their feelings,” Blow continues, “including anger and frustration.” Of course. But what the riot apologists won’t acknowledge is that violent rage is not justice or justification.

*

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  • Joe The Gentile

    “People don’t loot and burn down neighborhood businesses because they are angry and hurting; they do so because trumped-up racial controversies give a criminal element the cover to commit crimes against business owners who had nothing to do with the controversy. Rioters steal big-screen TVs and Nike sneakers because they’re hurting? Ridiculous. They steal them because they are opportunistic thieves.”

    I love it. I think I’ll learn it off by heart and ‘spontaneously’ rant it all out at the right moment at a party, give Mark Tapson no credit for it and hope that I get away with it. :)

  • http://www.apollospeaks.com/ ApolloSpeaks

    YESTERDAY WAS THE SHAMEFUL DAY BARACK OBAMA TURNED THE PEOPLES’ WHITE HOUSE

    into a black house of blood thirsty, race obsessed, lynch mob leftists wanting to turn justice on its head-just as he has the Constitution, the economy, healthcare, border security and US foreign policy.

    ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

    IMPEACH THE CRAZY RACIST NUT!

    AND PUT HIM WHERE HE BELONGS:

    THE PRESIDENTS’ HALL OF SHAME

    http://www.apollospeaks.com

    • laura r

      wont happen.

      • ratonis

        Right. Black skin privilege.

        • laura r

          NWO priv

      • http://www.apollospeaks.com/ ApolloSpeaks

        Unfortunately you’re right. But impeachment or not Obama’s headed to the Presidents’ Hall of Shame-he’s already got half his body through the door.

    • PhillipGaley

      Yea, well, tell me there were enough decent USA citizens to have kept him, and Bill Ayres, and Valerie Jarrett, and Nancy Pelosi, and Barbara Boxer, and Harry Reid, and Boehner, and John McCain, and about a zillion other creeps away from the public trust, and I’ll show you where you’re a liar, . . . y’leave food out and go to sleep, and the cats will be all over the table!

    • JTQ

      Yeah, man, ’cause us nutbags on the right needs us anuddah thing ta bitch about, man. We have IQs in the 70′s, man, just below “idiot” and “moron.” That’s us, the right wing, full of crazies and nutcases and asswipes. Thanks for playing along, dip$hit.

      • http://www.apollospeaks.com/ ApolloSpeaks

        If what you say about the Right is true then what does that say about the president whose policies and leadership lost both Houses of Congress? And who’s being abandoned by Democrats in droves?

  • Biff_Maliboo

    Keep it rills, yo.

    • http://johnnyangeladvocacygroup.net JohnnyAngel Advocacy Group

      Biff…are you buffed,how’s your head :-)

  • http://johnnyangeladvocacygroup.net JohnnyAngel Advocacy Group

    Fire with Fire. These anarchists and their hate of America begins from the top down. ObaPutin should be impeached and the FBI should be investigating Farrakhan and his ilk for starters. Sharpton ,the Rainbow Coalition and Occupy should be infiltrated,arrest the leaders and stop the traitorous actions of the few. Then…re-organize HOUSE UNAMERICAN COMMITTEE to investigate subversive involvement in the print media,film industry and broadcast stations. The need to remove Communist Jihadists is NOT illegal when they are attempting to destroy the country !! Otherwise, get ready for civil war and the gulag if patriots don’t win. Say goodbye to your reality and AWAKE AMERICA before it’s AMERIKA !!!

    • Sheik Yerbouti

      It’s weird how so many are getting away with things that would have white people behind bars in a matter of hours. The whole nation has been totally polluted with this sense of coddling and correctness. I’ve had people say things like “you can’t say that anymore” and only because some truth I uttered might have hurt someone’s feelings.

      It’s so much like the killer in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He banked on his victims fighting their basic instinct to survive just to be “polite”. It enabled him to subdue, torture and murder his victims. Sound familiar?

  • BS77

    Sharpton belongs in jail for incitement, tax evasion, embezzlement and fraud. Oh, I forgot, he is part of the VICTIM class…..cannot be touched.

  • Scar

    No matter how many meetings Obama holds at the White House, no matter how many fraudulent federal investigations Holder orders, no matter how much money the feds throw at “racial issues,” and no matter how many “racist” white cops they vilify and unjustly accuse, nothing will change within the dysfunctional black sub-culture.

    I have lived in several “diverse” areas in my life–from Oakland, CA, to an Indian Reservation–and the biggest racists I’ve met are blacks and Indians. The hatred towards white people is often so strong you can feel it. Conversely, most whites I’ve known would bend over backwards to show everyone that they’re not racist! Yet the whining, the accusations and the threats go on generation after generation.

    The truth is simple: There’s a lot of crime in the black communities because many of them refuse to take advantage of the opportunities in this country and be legally self-reliant. And there’s a higher percentage of the black population in prison because they commt more crimes. Period. And the activists want the morons in this country to believe that white cops kill black people like they’re hunting deer, while the so-called victims are doing nothing but minding their own business. Anyone that has an IQ above their belt size knows that this is a bunch of crap.

    Examples of black success are everywhere, yet the sub-culture continues to scream “racism” and blame whitey for their failures. As long as the welfare state and the pandering continue, nothing will change…check that, it will get worse. And by the way, Marc Lamont Hill, whom I’ve had the displeasure of listening to on many accasions, is an idiot.

    • Veritasortruth

      “Anyone that has an IQ above their belt size knows that this is a bunch of crap.”
      Agreed, but there is a substantial number of these people out there. They may even be a majority. We elected Obama twice so what more proof do you need.
      And I agree about Marc Lamont Hill. But he’s even worse than an idiot.

    • JTQ

      What a great laugh, the ‘conversely’ b.s. Jesus H. Christ — how full of yourself can you get? Surely not any more than you already are.

      • SCREW SOCIALISM

        Thank you for your insightful comment.

        /sarc

        • A Disqus User

          “Multiculturalism” is a program that is FORCED upon EVERY & ONLY White countries.

          “Multiculturalism” is a program to turn EVERY White country into a non-White country.

          This IS geNOcide. WHITE geNOcide.

          If you are White, and you object to your own geNOcide, you are called a RACIST!

          Well guess what, my people, White people, are catching on very quickly to the following two things:

          1 – Multiculturalism is a code for White geNOcide.

          2 – Anti-racist is a code for anti-White.

      • cjkcjk

        Interesting how you find truth funny in this case. I find it extremely sad.

  • s;vbkr0boc,klos;

    Congratulations, Democrats! I have gone from a leftist-progressive 60′s radical to someone who actually, the other day, Googled for the whitest places in the U.S. to live in.

    • Bibliophilist

      What did your research reveal?

      • s;vbkr0boc,klos;

        Portland and Seattle with all the Lefties and $4 lattes on every corner are some of the whitest cities in the country. Vermont, most socialist of all states is… the WHITEST state. There is a lesson there somehow.

        • cjkcjk

          That lesson would be hypocrisy. It’s easy to pontificate and tell others how wrong they are and what they should do when the reality of it all is far from you.

          • s;vbkr0boc,klos;

            I’d rather live in my integrated neighborhood of working class people than in Portlandia.

  • nomoretraitors

    Glad Fox dumped this twit

    • cjkcjk

      Well I guess so, but the fact that he was ever even seriously considered to be hired in the first place speaks volumes.

  • truebearing

    Lamont Hill. Another racist, black Marxist. He has no credibility on race related issues, and neither does any other Marxist, since racial divisiveness is their core strategy to bring down America. His whining is equivalent to a General Motors dealer badmouthing Ford’s vehicles. He thinks he is so damn smart, but he hasn’t figured that out yet.

    As for Coates, a racist par excellence, his comment that blacks plan to run whites out of America should be taken literally. That is the agenda of ALL of the black nationalist movement, including Obama. It is really quite simple: blacks hate whites. They claim it is because of slavery but the real reason is that they can’t compete with whites, or any other race, in a modern society, but they can compete in barbarism — violent tribalism. Their hatred is based in envy and their inability to compete intellectually, so most have given up trying and have resorted to violence and crime.

  • ratonis

    Mark Lamont Hill is one of the most pretentious (“intellectual” — GMAB) no-minds around. Every time I see him on TV I’m thinking “what an idiot.”

  • FedUpWithWelfareStates

    Marc Lamont Hill is definitely on the list!

  • bob e

    at a future time, when being a tv race pimp don’t pay no mo’
    lamont be havin’ ta’ return to his ole job of hosin’ down the
    inside of sh*t trucks ..

  • Schmitty

    Liberals love using grand terms in place of solid facts. Impunity is a phrase being tossed around by everyone. At a quick glance impunity makes you picture thousands being hunted down but it never actually attaches itself to a figure. Mush heads here these phrases and go burn a store.

  • Peter Castle

    The very people who justify violence in the name of justice falsely accuse peaceful Tea Party members of being terrorists. This is race-based, political, and ideological. Not justice.

    See “I’m Black: Truth Does Not Matter” at http://wp.me/p4scHf-5t.

  • hitz

    Do the people who regard the Fergusan mau-maus with disgust also have a right to their feelings?

  • JTQ

    What a piece of trash “journalism” – or worse, ‘thinking.’ And all the satire from commenters here about how fantastic they are compared to blacks. Heroes in their own minds.

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      Make mommy and daddy proud. Be a Hero and move to Ferguson and live in the hood. Let’s see how things work out for you.

  • BenZacharia

    “In Defense of bustin’ a cap on da __________.”

  • KyraNelson

    Sheesh! I was (not) surprised when the Gov of Missouri didn’t even say “violence will not be tolerated, and we will uphold the rule of law”. Any mom would tell that to her 2-year old toddler. Something is rotten and festering in this country & I’m not sure it can be cured.

  • DontMessWithAmerica

    Up until Ferguson, I kept saying that Obama has set back American race relations by 50 years. Now he has progress to setting back black progress by 100 years. When this is all over America will be ready for Apartheid …and with justification.