seangabb
Published 7 Dec 2022Between 330 AD and 1453, Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was the capital of the Roman Empire, otherwise known as the Later Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Mediaeval Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire. For most of this time, it was the largest and richest city in Christendom. The territories of which it was the central capital enjoyed better protections of life, liberty and property, and a higher standard of living, than any other Christian territory, and usually compared favourably with the neighbouring and rival Islamic empires.
The purpose of this course is to give an overview of Byzantine history, from the refoundation of the City by Constantine the Great to its final capture by the Turks.
Here is a series of lectures given by Sean Gabb in late 2021, in which he discusses and tries to explain the history of Byzantium. For reasons of politeness and data protection, all student contributions have been removed.
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September 16, 2022
The Byzantine Empire: Part 3 – The Age of Justinian – Cashing in the Gains of the Fifth Century
June 30, 2022
2020’s spike in homicides in the United States
At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander looks at the rapid rise in murders across the United States in early 2020, and considers the common explanation for the phenomenon:
In my review of San Fransicko, I mentioned that it was hard to separate the effect of San Francisco’s local policies from the general 2020 spike in homicides, which I attributed to the Black Lives Matter protests and subsequent police pullback.
Several people in the comments questioned my attribution, saying that they’d read news articles saying the homicide spike was because of the pandemic, or that nobody knew what was causing the spike. I agree there are many articles like that, but I disagree with them. Here’s why:
Timing
When exactly did the spike start? The nation shut down for the pandemic in mid-March 2020, but the BLM protests didn’t start until after George Floyd’s death in late May 2020. So did the homicide spike start in March, or May?
Let’s check in with the Council on Criminal Justice:
It very clearly started in late May, not mid-March. The months of March, April, and early May had the same number of homicides as usual.
[…]
Police Pullback
My specific claim is that the protests caused police to do less policing in predominantly black areas. This could be because of any of:
- Police interpreted the protests as a demand for less policing, and complied.
- Police felt angry and disrespected after the protests, and decided to police less in order to show everybody how much they needed them.
- Police worried they would be punished so severely for any fatal mistake that they made during policing that they were less willing to take the risk.
- The “Defund The Police” movement actually resulted in police being defunded, either of literal funds or political capital, and that made it harder for them to police.
I don’t want to speculate on which of these factors was most decisive, only to say that at least one of them must be true, and that police did in fact pull back.
[…]
Victims
Who is being targeted in these extra murders?
The 2020 homicide spike primarily targeted blacks.
(there also seems to be a much smaller spike for Native Americans, but there are so few Natives that I think this might be random, or unrelated).
Most violent crime is within a racial community, and there was no corresponding rise in hate crimes the way I would expect if this was whites targeting blacks, so I think the perpetrators were most likely also black. This was a rise in the level of violence within black communities.
A priori there’s no reason to expect lockdowns and “cabin fever” to hit blacks much harder than every other ethnic group. But there are lots of reasons to expect that the Black Lives Matter protests would cause police to pull back from black communities in particular. I think this is independent evidence that the homicide spike was because of the protests and not the pandemic.
May 13, 2022
Napoleon Took Moscow – Why He Didn’t Win The War
Real Time History
Published 12 May 2022Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/realtimehistory
After the Battle of Borodino, both sides are badly mauled. Napoleon’s army marches on and reaches Moscow, the old Russian capital. In the Emperor’s eyes, capturing the city should win him the war. But while the local Russians set fire to the city, the Tsar in St. Petersburg and the Russian army command are thinking about turning the tide of the war — and not about accepting a French victory.
» THANK YOU TO OUR CO-PRODUCERS
John Ozment, James Darcangelo, Jacob Carter Landt, Thomas Brendan, Kurt Gillies, Scott Deederly, John Belland, Adam Smith, Taylor Allen, Rustem Sharipov, Christoph Wolf, Simen Røste, Marcus Bondura, Ramon Rijkhoek, Theodore Patrick Shannon, Philip Schoffman, Avi Woolf,» SOURCES
Boudon, Jacques-Olivier. Napoléon et la campagne de Russie en 1812. 2021.
Lieven, Dominic. Russia Against Napoleon. 2010.
Rey, Marie-Pierre. L’effroyable tragédie: une nouvelle histoire de la campagne de Russie. 2012.
Zamoyski, Adam. 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow. 2005.» OUR STORE
Website: https://realtimehistory.net»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Above Zero
Editing: Toni Steller
Motion Design: Toni Steller
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: http://above-zero.com
Digital Maps: Canadian Research and Mapping Association (CRMA)
Research by: Jesse Alexander
Fact checking: Florian WittigChannel Design: Simon Buckmaster
Contains licensed material by getty images
Maps: MapTiler/OpenStreetMap Contributors & GEOlayers3
All rights reserved – Real Time History GmbH 2022
April 29, 2022
QotD: The Rooftop Koreans
We should all be ready to do our duty as American citizens and, when duty calls, each of us should embrace our inner Rooftop Korean.
The year was 1992, 27 years ago right about now, and the city was Los Angeles. Several police officers who got into a videotaped brawl with a petty criminal named Rodney King were acquitted of beating him up. The city exploded. It was chaos.
I was a first-year law student, back a year from the Gulf War, and I had just joined the California Army National Guard. My unit was the 3rd Battalion, 160th Infantry, and we got called up early the first night and were on the streets for three long weeks. Making it even more delightful was the fact that the unit was in Inglewood, which was pretty much on fire. They burned most everything around, except our armory – that would have gone badly for them – and the Astro Burger.
My battalion commander grabbed then-First Lieutenant Schlichter, and we went all over the city in his humvee as he led his deployed and dispersed troops. Our soldiers came, in large part, from the areas most effected by the riots, and they were notably unpleasant to the thugs and criminals who quickly discovered our guys had no patience for nonsense. One dummy discovered that the hard way when he tried to run over some Guard soldiers from another battalion; he had a closed casket funeral.
The city went insane. Order simply ceased to exist. It was Lord of the Flies. I remember a cop totally breaking down because everything was completely out of control.
But I had a M16A1 – a real assault rifle – and I had a bunch of buddies with M16A1s. The regular folks … not so much. The decent people of LA were terrified, and with good reason. See, the dirty little secret of civilization is that it’s designed to maintain order when 99.9% of folks are orderly. But, say, if just 2% of folks stop playing by the rules … uh oh. Say LA’s population was 15 million in 1992 … that’s 300,000 bad guys. There were maybe 20,000 cops in all the area agencies then, plus 20,000 National Guard soldiers and airman, plus another 10,000 active soldiers and Marines the feds brought in. Law enforcement is based on the concept that most people will behave and that the crooks will be overwhelmed by sheer numbers of officers. But in the LA riots, law enforcement was massively outnumbered. Imposing order took time.
And until then, our citizens were on their own, at the mercy of the mob. Betting that the cavalry was going to come save you was a losing bet.
LA’s Korean shopkeepers knew that. They operated many small businesses in some of the least fashionable areas of Los Angeles, and they were already widely hated by activists, being scapegoated for problems and pathologies that long pre-dated their immigration to Southern California. So, they became targets for the mobs.
Bad decision by the mobs.
See, most of these Koreans had done their mandatory service in the Republic of Korea’s Army. Those ROK soldiers are the real deal – the Norks are not a theoretical threat and the South Korean army does not spend a lot of time talking about feelings. They were some solid dudes. So, when the local dirtbags showed up for some casual looting, they noticed the rooftops were lined with hardcore guys packing some serious heat, including the kind of scary rifles that the Democrats want to ban.
The Rooftop Koreans.
It did not take long for the bad guys to realize that the Rooftop Koreans were not playing games – they were playing for keeps. The mob went away in search of softer targets.
There’s a lesson there.
Kurt Schlichter, “Be A Rooftop Korean”, Townhall.com, 2019-05-02.
February 28, 2022
Roman Republic to Empire 03 Inequality and Corruption
seangabb
Published 5 Feb 2021[Update 2023-03-02 – Dr. Gabb took down the original posts and re-uploaded them.]
Here is the third lecture, which describes the decay of the Roman Constitution as a result of changes in patterns of land tenure in Italy after the Second Punic War, and as a result of the flood of foreign money into Rome from military victories and war indemnities and bribes.
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December 3, 2021
Australian-American War of 1942 – The Battle of Brisbane
World War Two
Published 2 Dec 2021America shares a language and large parts of its culture with Britain and Australia. But when tens of thousands of US troops arrive in 1942, things will be far from smooth. While the alliance remains firm, their soldiers will spend almost as much time fighting each other as they do the Axis.
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November 2, 2021
Sandhurst 1975 – The Royal Military Academy
British Army Documentaries
Published 21 Feb 2021Filmed in 1975, this documentary is set at Sandhurst, the officer training academy. It follows a group of young men preparing for a life of leadership in the Army. These “managers of violence” will be expected to perform to the very highest of traditions of the British Army and be prepared to apply their professionalism on British soil should the need arise.
© 1975
This production is for viewing purposes only and should not be reproduced without prior consent.
This film is part of a comprehensive collection of contemporary Military Training programmes and supporting documentation including scripts, storyboards and cue sheets.
All material is stored and archived. World War II and post-war material along with all original film material are held by the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive.
May 24, 2021
The hard core of “mostly peaceful protest” activists
In the most recent Libertarian Enterprise, Sarah Hoyt explains why the same people seem to show up at “mostly peaceful” riots protests in so many different cities and even in the rare cases they’re arrested, are quickly bailed out again:
“antifa 8973ag” by cantfightthetendies is licensed under CC BY 2.0
One of the advantages of the collectivists is that they organize like nobody’s business, while we liberty minded … Well — pats heads all around — well, you guys are adorable, but the individualists failed to organize, okay.
Now, while many of you translate this to a paramilitary clash and panic, don’t. Most of their supporters aren’t nor will they commit violence, unless the can do it when no one is looking, sneakily, and against someone old, disabled, frail or very young.
Most of their supporters are in fact the “go alongs to get along” who just want to be “nice people” by siding with lunatics who want to put a boot on their necks. Oh, they also want to be smart because their college professors told them every “very smart” person believes in Marxism. This is why at the back of their brains every single one of the infantile “activists” thinks he or she will be in charge and not one of the lumpenpoletariat. No, they have never looked at actual communist countries, and if they did, as their panic at the Xi-flu proved, they don’t get statistics or numbers at all.
So, yeah, the people they are using and weaponized-and-paid psychopaths, whom they bus from city to city. They’re armed and well organized partly because they do this all time and are given weapons and training. They’re very fearsome FOR ONE CITY AT A TIME.
In other words they are a Potemkin army, raging across the country to intimidate the citizens. Which is why they have to punish Kyle Rittenhouse, because he pierced the paper silhouette. And why blue states refuse to arrest the rioters. They have very few of them. They’re the precious.
It does work on corporations and — apparently — Supreme Court Judges who, being in a highly social profession just buy what the news tell them and don’t investigate anything for themselves.
Look, I don’t think this bullshit will hold. And it’s part of the reason I think we’re going to have a brief, intense, localized clash.
This is not the seventies. They really had a majority of the indoctrinated youth then, and the youth then were a majority. With the attendant side effect that the youth then hadn’t been raised as little emperors, because they were the all-too-precious single offspring.
Those were the real Marxist riots. This is the Memorex. And like Chinese troops clashing with Indian troops, their rank and file are more likely to cry for their mommies, if they meet real opposition.
They have the psychos they train and bus around and which have a rap sheet long as their arm, and then they have the daft survivals of the sixties, at protests with their oxygen bottles and walkers.
And they have the get alongs. Who are useless in battle, but quite good at coordinated action on other fronts.
March 15, 2021
Target is careful to only cite economic reasons for abandoning their downtown Minneapolis headquarters
Jon Miltimore explains why the Target corporate headquarters in Minneapolis will be given up — for reasons that go beyond the claimed success of the telecommuting encouraged by the 2020 pandemic lockdowns:
A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.
Target Corporation, the eighth largest retailer in the United States, announced in an email to employees on Thursday that it will be leaving the City Center, its primary downtown Minneapolis location.
Company officials cited improved remote work opportunities and less need for space as the drivers for the decision.
“In just one year we’ve proven that we can drive incredible results, together, from our kitchens and basements and living rooms,” said Melissa Kremer, executive vice president and leader of Target’s human resources operations.
Target, the largest employer in Minneapolis with some 8,500 corporate workers, says the 3,500 employees who work at the City Center will still have a “home base,” but it will be at another Minneapolis location or in the nearby suburb of Brooklyn Park.
A Story of Capital Flight?
On one hand, there is little reason to doubt Target’s explanation for abandoning its headquarters. Many anticipated that the pandemic would lead to a normalization of remote work.
“The future of work will be distributed,” Erica Brescia, the chief operating officer of Github, told the BBC last fall. “We’re going to see a big shift from office by default to remote by default.”
Part of that shift, it’s reasonable to assume, would be corporations moving away from high-end corporate real estate. Yet it also shouldn’t be forgotten (or ignored) that Target’s decision comes less than a year after Minneapolis suffered some of the worst riots in US history, prompted by the May 25 death of George Floyd.
The riots — which broke out after a video went viral showing police pinning Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, to the ground for nearly nine minutes before he died — caused an estimated $2 billion in damage.
Though Target made no mention of the riots in its announcement, last summer I noted that an abundance of evidence suggested that the economic damage of the riots would persist long after the wreckage had cleared.
February 11, 2021
The Zionism of Albert Einstein | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! I E.11 – Spring 1921
TimeGhost History
Published 10 Feb 2021Albert Einstein may be renowned for his work in the field of science, but this season he is fundraising for a new Jewish university. Charity isn’t the only activity on the cards in the United States this season however, much more tragic events are also afoot …
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Image Research by: Daniel Weiss
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations:
– Daniel Weiss – https://www.facebook.com/TheYankeeCol…
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
– Daniel HassSources:
Some images from the Library of CongressFrom the Noun Project:
– Death by Adrien Coquet
– Ukraine by Lluisa Iborra, ES
– Immigrants by Luis Prado
– sun by MRFA
– Wine by Made
– orange By lieuchien, SG
– Champagne By Pete BakerSoundtracks from Epidemic Sound and ODJB
– “One More for the Road” – Golden Age Radio
– “Dawn Of Civilization” – Jo Wandrini
– “London” – Howard Harper-Barnes
– “Ominous” – Philip Ayers
– “Prescient” – Howard Harper-Barnes
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “Document This 1” – Peter Sandberg
– “Growing Doubt” – Wendel Scherer
– “Tiger Rag” – ODJB
– “It’s Not a Game” – Philip AyersArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
TimeGhost History
2 days ago
In the year that Buck’s Fizz is born, the USA promises to be a hotbed of funding for Albert Einstein. But for the nation’s black population, this season will brutally prove that the USA is still lightyears from any semblance of racial equality. Further highlighting this racial inwardness will be legislation to curb immigration. Clearly, America is still a long way from being the Land of the Free.Raunchy literature, Broadway and Buck’s Fizz will also make an appearance this season, tune in to find out how!
November 19, 2020
White Lives Matter More – A Summer of Blood | BETWEEN 2 WARS: ZEITGEIST! | E.04 – Summer 1919
TimeGhost History
Published 18 Nov 2020Technology promises a better and more connected world in the summer of 1919. But battles still rage everywhere over who will inherit it.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Subscribe to our World War Two series: https://www.youtube.com/c/worldwartwo…
Like TimeGhost on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TimeGhost-16…Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell and Francis van Berkel
Image Research by: Miki Cackowski and Michał Zbojna
Edited by: Michał Zbojna
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations:
Mikołaj Uchman
Spartacus OlssonSources:
From the Noun Project: bridge by Adrien Coquet, Delete by Kevin Eichhorn, Fire by Sweet Farm, Model T by Alex Valdivia, people by Anastasia Latysheva, peoples by Musmellow, revolt by Symbolon, Smoke by Krish, people by Nithinan Tatah, explosion by Aldric RodríguezArchive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
TimeGhost History
21 hours ago
Four episodes into this new series and we think it’s going pretty well. Behind-the-scenes we have been getting ahead with our planning to make make things as laser-focused as possible and we have some pretty fascinating pieces of history we want to talk about.But we know that there is always a learning curve with a new series and we care what our community thinks. It’s the TimeGhost Army who make our content possible so we’d like to hear from you what you think about Season Two of Between 2 Wars. What are you enjoying about it? Is there anything you think we should work on? How do you feel about Indy’s outrageous suits and ties?
November 14, 2020
The Decline of the Great Library of Alexandria
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 27 Mar 2019Presented by Ms History. The Great Library was a center of knowledge. Its decline was not the single cataclysmic event that may seem to think, but its slow decline is perhaps, even more tragic. It is history that deserves to be remembered.
This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As images of actual events are sometimes not available, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.
All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.
Ms. History Guy is an avid reader and former reference librarian, and reviews around 100 books per year. Feel free to follow her progress or befriend her on Goodreads where she goes by the name “Heidi the Reader”: https://www.goodreads.com/MsHistory
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheHistoryGuy
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you.
Awesome The History Guy merchandise is available at:
teespring.com/stores/the-history-guyScript by JCG
#history #thehistoryguy #library
September 20, 2020
Andrew Sullivan on the politically deranging effects of social media addiction
In his latest Weekly Dish installment, Andrew Sullivan decries the extreme polarization of the US electorate and points an accusing finger at social media for making things much worse:
An Electoral College victory for Trump, if he loses the popular vote again, would, in this new elite consensus, prove beyond doubt the centuries’ long grip of “white supremacy”. Some are already calling such a victory illegitimate, even though it would be completely constitutional, under the rules everyone has agreed to. The sickening street violence that the far left has downplayed, and permitted to run riot in major cities could be a mere taste of what is to come — along with ever-stronger white nationalist gangs instigating or responding in kind. (Trump’s toleration of this dangerous right-extremism in the past four years is as unforgivable as the left’s excuses for murderous violence.) But the upshot is the same: we will be lucky if the country doesn’t erupt in large-scale civil violence by the end of all this.
And the reason this dystopian scenario is so credible is not just the fault of these political actors. It’s ours too — thanks to the impact of social media. I think we’ve under-estimated just how deep the psychological damage has been in the Trump era — rewiring the minds of everyone, including your faithful correspondent, in ways that make democratic discourse harder and harder and harder to model. The new Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, is, for that reason, a true must-watch. It doesn’t say anything shockingly new, but it persuasively weaves together a whole bunch of points to reveal just how deeply and thoroughly fucked we are. Seriously, take a look.
The doc effectively shows how the information system necessary for democratic deliberation has, in effect, been jerry-rigged in the last decade to prevent any reasoning at all. It’s all about the feels, and the irrationality, and the moment, which is why Trump is so perfectly attuned to his time. And what’s smart about the documentary is that it shows no evil genius behind this unspooling, no sinister plot deliberately to destroy our system of government. One of the more basic motives in American life — making money — is all you now need, the documentary shows, to detonate American democracy at its foundation.
For Facebook and Google and Instagram and Twitter, the business goal quickly became maximizing and monetizing human attention via addictive dopamine hits. Attention, they meticulously found, is correlated with emotional intensity, outrage, shock and provocation. Give artificial intelligence this simple knowledge about what distracts and compels humans, let the algorithms do their work, and the profits snowball. The cumulative effect — and it’s always in the same incendiary direction — is mass detachment from reality, and immersion in tribal fever.
With each passing second online, news stories, graphic videos, incendiary quotes, and outrages demonstrate their stunning utility to advertisers as attention seizers, are endlessly tweaked and finessed by AI to be even more effective, and thereby prime our brains for more of the same. They literally restructure our minds. They pickle us in propaganda. They use sophisticated psychological models to trap, beguile, outrage, and prompt us to seek more of the same.
[…]
And online is increasingly where people live. My average screen time this past week was close to ten hours a day. Yes, a lot of that is work-related. But the idea that I have any real conscious life outside this virtual portal is delusional. And if you live in such a madhouse all the time, you will become mad. You don’t go down a rabbit-hole; your mind increasingly is the rabbit hole — rewired that way by algorithmic practice. And you cannot get out, unless you fight the algorithms to a draw, or manage to exert superhuman discipline and end social media use altogether.
But the thing about algorithms and artificial intelligence is that they don’t rest, they have no human flaws, they exploit every weakness we have, and have already taken over. This is not a future dystopia in which some kind of AI robot takes power and kills us all. It is a dystopia already here — burrowed into our minds, literally disabling the basic mental tools required for democracy to work at all.
If you watch video after video of excessive police force against suspects, for example, and your viewing habits are then reinforced by algorithms so you see no countervailing examples, your view about the prevalence of such excessive force will change, regardless of objective reality. A new study shows how this happens. Watching the videos, even more than reading text about them, raises the percentage of white liberals who believe the cops frequently or always use excessive force by around 20 percentage points. The actual data are irrelevant. The BLM movement this summer was less a racial reckoning, as we’re constantly lectured, than a moment of web-induced mass hysteria.
September 4, 2020
“They have insurance”
Brad Polumbo debunks the notion that it’s somehow “okay” to loot and vandalize businesses “because they have insurance” and that somehow means that nobody suffers.
A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.
Since the death of George Floyd in late May, violent riots and looting have broken out in many major cities, eventually overshadowing peaceful protests and calls for criminal justice reform. From Portland to Chicago to Kenosha, rioters have smashed windows, lit fires, attacked government properties, assaulted people in the streets, and looted storefronts.
In Minneapolis alone, vandals have destroyed at least 1,500 properties, many of them minority-owned businesses, and caused billions of dollars in property damage. Many people have been injured or killed during the chaos.
[…]
Even if all the affected property was fully insured — and it wasn’t — rioting has taken a vast human toll as well.
Consider that at least 15 people were killed during the initial riots after Floyd’s death, and that more have died in the unrest since. When arson and looting consume the streets, people inevitably get hurt and caught in the crossfire. That’s why the Minneapolis police found a burnt corpse in a pawn shop days after arsonists had passed through.
Insurance might fund that property’s restoration, but it can’t bring a dead man back to life.
[…]
Big companies like Walmart and Target generally have expensive, premium insurance plans. But many of the mom-and-pop enterprises and small businesses targeted in the riots didn’t have expensive insurance plans. In some cases, their more modest plans don’t cover damage from riots or don’t cover it in full.
“Situations where there’s a lot of devastation like this, a lot of times people find they’re underinsured and don’t have enough coverage,” Illinois Insurance Association Hotline President Janet Patrick told CBS Minnesota. “And so once the damage has been done, it’s too late. You can’t buy more coverage.”
According to Insurance Journal, 75 percent of US businesses are under-insured. And according to the New York Times, about 40 percent of small businesses have no insurance at all.
September 3, 2020
“[L]ooting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society.”
Not everyone on the progressive team is all-in on the “Loot your way to utopia”, as Graeme Wood (risking cancellation by his co-religionists) criticizes Vicky Osterweil’s paean to looters and looting:
Last week, NPR’s Code Switch published an interview with Vicky Osterweil, the author of In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action. NPR summarizes the book as an argument that “looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society.” If the real, lasting change you wish to effect is burning society to cinders and crippling for a generation its ability to serve its poorest citizens, then I suppose I am forced to agree. Osterweil sees an upside. Looting is good, she says, because it exposes a deep truth about the great American confidence game, which is that “without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.” She came to this conclusion six years ago, and in her book, which is written “in love and solidarity with looters the world over,” she defends this view as ably as anyone could.
Osterweil’s argument is simple. The “so-called” United States was founded in “cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist” violence. That violence produced our current system, particularly its property relations, and looting is a remedy for that sickness. “Looting rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property, the moral injunction to work for a living, and the ‘justice’ of law and order,” she writes. Ownership of things — not just people — is “innately, structurally white supremacist.”
The rest of the remedy is more violence, which she celebrates as an underrated engine for social justice. The destruction of businesses is an “experience of pleasure, joy, and freedom,” Osterweil writes. It is also a form of “queer birth.” “Riots are violent, extreme, and femme as fuck,” according to Osterweil. “They rip, tear, burn, and destroy to give birth to a new world.” She reserves her most pungent criticism for advocates of nonviolence, a “bankrupt concept” primarily valuable for enlisting “northern liberals.” Liberal is pejorative in this book. Martin Luther King Jr. is grudgingly acknowledged as a positive figure, but not as positive a figure as he would have been if he had kicked some white-capitalist ass and put a few pigs in the ICU. The “I Have a Dream” speech was, Osterweil writes, “the product of a series of sellouts and silencings, of nonviolent leaders dampening the militancy of the grass roots” and “sapping the movement’s energy.” More to her taste is Robert F. Williams, who practiced armed resistance, and Assata Shakur, who murdered a New Jersey police officer and remains a fugitive in Cuba. The violence needn’t be in self-defense — Shakur’s certainly was not. Osterweil quotes the “wisdom” of Stokely Carmichael: “Responsibility for the use of violence by black men, whether in self-defense or initiated by them [emphasis mine], lies with the white community.”
By now you have guessed that I am not the audience for this book. I have a job, and am therefore invested in building a system where you get paid for your work and pay others for theirs, and then everyone pays taxes to make sure that if these arrangements don’t work out, you can still have a dignified life. (Easily my favorite line in the book was written not by the author but by her publisher, right under the copyright notice: “The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property,” it says. “Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.”) My job sometimes entails traveling to countries recently or currently destroyed by civil unrest, and that experience has made me appreciate the fragility of peace, and has not made me eager to conduct a similar experiment in my own city.
