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Stores like Apple, Nike ‘cannot be reasonably presented as a social good’

Just in time to coincide with what is happening in Los Angeles (and elsewhere), a lecturer at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research wonders if destroying others’ property is a “reasonable and articulate expression in itself.”

For R.H. Lossin, a Harvard postdoctoral fellow and “leading scholar of the theory and practice of sabotage,” the very concept of property is violence — as it’s “created through a combination of state-sponsored expropriation and exploitation and it is defended by various forms of state-sanctioned violence.”

Thus, it’s simply retributive when any actions taken against it, especially by historically aggrieved communities, occur.

“We need to remember,” Lossin writes in The Nation, “that large portions of our national wealth was created through the violent expropriation of land from Native Americans that was subsequently made productive and profitable through the forced labor of stolen Africans.”

Lossin adds “even apparently sympathetic explanations of theft and destruction” may imply that “people of color are reacting from feelings rather than carrying out reasoned, calculated acts with their own perfectly legitimate political logics.”

“Pathologizing” rioters’ actions pathologizes the rioters themselves, she says.

From the piece:

Offensive as it is to liberal sensibilities, property destruction may be integral to the success of the current uprising. At the very least, it is what marks it as different from the many other waves of protests against police brutality that have occurred over the past decade. Not because property destruction has any moral or political value in itself, but because it is coercive. It is an actual threat to order and a very real threat to capital. …

Disavowing property destruction and even theft because of a spurious attachment to a reified notion of nonviolence is a mistake. It is a disavowal of power. It leaves police and politicians in charge of an important aspect of the narrative.

Lossin (pictured) also says “corporate behemoths” such as Verizon, Apple, and Nike “cannot be reasonably presented as a social good,” and as such it’s no big deal if their stores get trashed.

So-called “mom and pop” stores are due a bit more sympathy, but they’re still “one means by which a capitalist ruling class launders itself.”

“[W]e should be wary of how [mom and pop shops] are instrumentalized in the service of protecting a wealthy minority,” Lossin says.

According to her Harvard lecturer bio, Lossin’s “The Point of Destruction: Sabotage, Property, and Speech in the Progressive Era” looks into issues of “property destruction, the suppression of radical politics, and the limits of free speech in the United States.”

MORE: Harvard research director: Right-wing is using video to create narrative of ‘lawless rioting’

IMAGE CAPTION & CREDIT: A woman appears skeptical; Shutterstock.com. INTERIOR IMAGE: Harvard U.

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