Don't Steal This Book - Reporting by Matt Taibbi

Tweet Don't Steal This Book - Reporting by Matt Taibbi: On "In Defense of Looting”



Excerpt (article at about link):



On Thursday, August 27th, the same day Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination, National Public Radio aired an interview with Vicky Osterweil, author of a book called In Defense of Looting.

The white trans daughter of a science professor, Osterweil told a credulous
NPR interviewer that looting was justified because it “strikes at the
heart of property, of whiteness and of the police,” and also “provides
people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure.” She added
riots reveal how “without police and without state oppression, we can
have things for free.”

I was so sure the Osterweil book was satire — a clever comic doing a Marxist Andy Kaufman routine — that I bought it. It’s not a joke! In Defense of Looting is supposed to be the woke generation’s answer to Steal This Book, another anarchist instructional published in an epic period of unrest. But the differences between the books are profound.