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Order Robert Spencer’s new book, Holy Hell: Islam’s Abuse of Women and the Infidels Who Enable It: HERE.
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we had what the great Tom Wolfe indelibly dubbed “radical chic”: the tendency of rich leftists to support causes that, if they triumphed, would destroy their comfortable benefactors utterly. We’re way beyond that now. Today, rich leftists don’t just support the Marxist revolutionaries who would destroy the comforts of society that those leftists take for granted; they’re actually joining them in small criminal and anarchic acts, all while the intelligentsia cheers them on from the pages of the New York Times.
It’s all fun and games until the Marxist regime is fully in power. Then these rich leftists will realize what dupes they were, but that realization will come while they’re waiting on line in the gulag for a scrap of moldy bread and some watery soup, before they go back to splitting rocks.
And so we come to Jia Tolentino, a 37-year-old writer for the New Yorker who, according to the Daily Mail, “owns a stunning $2.2 million brownstone home in Brooklyn,” and yet “proudly admitted to shoplifting because she believes it is not ‘morally wrong’ to steal from corporations.”
This proud admission came in Wednesday New York Times article entitled “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?” It’s an extended discussion between Tolentino, the Times’ Opinion culture editor, Nadja Spiegelman, and Communist gadfly Hasan Piker, all about “why petty theft might be the new political protest.” Spiegelman kicks it off by announcing that she is “proposing a new term: Microlooting. People are taking small things from big corporations and they’re feeling justified. But is it a slippery slope? What’s going on with our moral code?”
What’s going on with our moral code is that smug, short-sighted leftists are setting it aside for their own convenience and to engage in some fashionable virtue-signaling, without realizing how much they will miss it when it’s gone.
Far from missing our moral code when it’s gone, however, Piker says of stealing from big corporations: “I think it’s cool. We’ve got to get back to cool crimes like that: bank robberies, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature. I feel like that’s way cooler than the 7,000th new cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging in.”
Asked if she would steal from Whole Foods, Tolentino answers: “Yes. And I have, under very specific circumstances. I will say, I think that stealing from a big box store — I’ll just state my platform — it’s neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest or direct action. But I did steal from Whole Foods on several occasions.”
Tolentino tells a story about how she once stole four lemons from Whole Foods, and explains: “At the time I was like, I had not been to Whole Foods. I had a bit more consumer discipline about where I was spending my money then, and I already felt like I was in the hole, even by shopping there. And it certainly felt, in a utilitarian sense, I was like, this is not a big deal. Right, guys?”
Right: For these people, it’s not a big deal, because they figure that the corporations have plenty of money, and they are Marxists in favor of forced redistribution of wealth anyway. Piker says: “I’m pro stealing from big corporations, because they steal quite a bit more from their own workers.”
These comfortable, wealthy leftists approve of stealing because it’s a small foretaste of that redistribution. It also helps them justify their support of the legal policies that have made shopping a much more unpleasant and time-consuming experience than it once was, with numerous items now displayed behind locked plexiglass cases, since the store owners have no recourse against shoplifters who steal items valued at below a certain amount. The corporations can handle the loss, you see, and deserve to do so in order to establish economic justice.
The mainstreaming of petty theft likewise helps leftists justify continuing to elect the Democrat administrations that have made our cities crime-ridden hellholes. The crime, you see, is all part of establishing that economic justice. The big corporations deserve to be squeezed. Power to the people and all that.
Sure. But one day the thieves and their allies, thus coddled and encouraged, will come to the sumptuous residences of Jia Tolentino and Hasan Piker, and will not exempt them for all their own little adventures in petty theft. They will find, to their horror, that they were The Rich all along.
Photo Credit: JD forrester, Creative Commons.
Piker is already very rich. I just saw a video today that noted the price of stuff he was wearing. Just his sun glasses and a ring were worth more than my entire wardrobe and his house is a multi-million dollar edifice in West Hollywood. BTW, I urge everyone to watch the video of these two bimbos interviewing him. They just sat there grinning and nodding at every outrageously crazy thing he said. They never asked him anything of consequence. Were I the faculty advisor of a high school newspaper and these two morons put in the performance these two did, they’d be off the paper.
American supermarkets are not examples of exploitative capitalism. They have profit margins of about 1.5%. Yet, they provide great volumes of food and other products for their paying customers to the extent that knowledge of that is a threat to the rulers various nations around the world. That was true even before there were superstores. Anyone stealing from such stores for ideological reasons is merely a common criminal. Revolutionaries and criminals often reside in the same areas of their nations to avoid apprehension. Many of them ply both lines of work.
Yet not one drop of ink about the multi billion dollar Somalian Simoleon swindle! Other than to label it a racist hoax.
With the elderly committing suicide while the young youth commit crimes around the regions, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made clear the U.S. is holding firm as tensions with Iran escalate, signaling that negotiations remain on the table — but only on Washington’s terms. “President Trump’s fortitude is unshakable, and his mission is crystal clear,” Hegseth said, emphasizing that the administration is not feeling pressured to strike an agreement.According to Hegseth, Donald Trump has consistently conveyed both publicly and privately that the U.S. has “all the time in the world” and is “not anxious for a deal.” The message to Tehran: the window is open, but it won’t stay that way forever. “Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely,” Hegseth said. “All they have to do is abandon a nuclear weapon in meaningful and verifiable ways.” If not, he warned, the consequences will intensify. “Or instead they can watch the regime’s fragile economic state collapse under the unrelenting pressure of American power.” A U.S.-backed blockade and tightening economic measures are squeezing Iran’s economy, with officials signaling that enforcement will only increase if talks stall. Hegseth framed the situation as a clear-cut decision for Iran’s leadership. “The choice is theirs,” he said. “But with this blockade, the clock is not on their side.”
Article from Fox News:
A man taken into custody after gunfire rang out at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner on Saturday was identified by law enforcement sources as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance who also said that “we need to burn down all schools and colleges and all Christians need to go to hell and I believe in satan” as he told his family and friends in Torrance, CA. before coming to D.C. to commit his crime. He wants all automobile centers and sports centers along with all schools, camps, stores and banks “blown up and burned down” as he is evil and a devil out to terrorize the world in general.
Suspect movements
Law enforcement sources told The Times the FBI is examining Allen’s electronics, his writings and spoke to family and friends since the shooting seeking to determine that he wants to “end the world” and wants all Christians to “go to hell in a handbasket” and this proves that he is a devil.
Along with his home, agents searched a 10th floor room at the Hilton in Washington D.C., where he rented a room.
Acting Attorney Gen. Todd Blanche said the suspect revealed he was targeting all law enforcement, Christians and anybody that believes in what is good and wants America to go to hell in a handbasket as the suspect is a devil himself.
Jia Tolentino is just a useful idiot, but Piker is counting on becoming the next Stalin or better yet the next Ayatollah Khomeini.
The redistribution of wealth is theft by the government. Shoplifting is simply a more direct way to redistribute the wealth.
“If a man proposes to redistribute wealth, he means explicitly and necessarily that the wealth is his to distribute. If he proposes it in the name of the government, then the wealth belongs to the government; if in the name of society, then it belongs to society. No one, to my knowledge, did or could define a difference between that proposal and the basic principle of communism….
Whoever claims the “right” to “redistribute” the wealth produced by others is claiming the “right” to treat human beings as chattel.” – Ayn Rand
The businesses you steal from are already taxed – so they get their money “stolen” too. Paying taxes have been a part of civilization since ancient times. You could say even ancient Israel had “taxes” and poverty programs (although limited….nothing like the welfare state today).
“In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance.
The question of how to implement the principle of voluntary government financing—how to determine the best means of applying it in practice—is a very complex one and belongs to the field of the philosophy of law. The task of political philosophy is only to establish the nature of the principle and to demonstrate that it is practicable. The choice of a specific method of implementation is more than premature today—since the principle will be practicable only in a fully free society, a society whose government has been constitutionally reduced to its proper, basic functions….
Any program of voluntary government financing has to be regarded as a goal for a distant future.
What the advocates of a fully free society have to know, at present, is only the principle by which that goal can be achieved.
The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the government is not the owner of the citizens’ income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income—that the nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. Consequently, the principle of voluntary government financing regards the government as the servant, not the ruler, of the citizens—as an agent who must be paid for his services, not as a benefactor whose services are gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing.” – Ayn Rand
“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.” – Ayn Rand
The unraveling of American society cheered on by the Left: large-scale looting as a form of protest, shoplifting deemed social justice, assassination in broad daylight of a CEO a hailed as a well-deserved murder, criminals idolized as “victims” of social murder, terrorists have rights, too, and so on. Where does it end?
This reminds me of Saul Alinsky’s “dine & dash” routine, with the same rationalization. I hope they keep a sharp eye on her whenever she enters a store. If charged, the Times article will serve nicely as evidence.
I watched part of that disgusting discussion group video and Hasan Piker was talking about theft that was far from petty calling for “cool theft” that should be OK including bank robbery, art theft and car theft. And the Democrat elite fawn all over this guy. Go figure.
Well, they’re sociopaths (in Piker’s case maybe something worse) so it figures.