Is The Organized Looting A Political Statement?

twitter |  I'm starting to think that organized looting may represent a deeper ambition to make a political statement against capitalism and "the system."

Sharing some reactions to my thread on boarded up SF below.

(A 🧵, 1/x)

First - the thread. It has reached about 15 million impressions - driven primarily by critics and trolls.

Here are the stats just of the first tweet.

Linked here:

Unroll available on Thread Reader

https://twitter.com/michelletandler/status/1465393612577853440?s=20

I went through a few hundred of the replies and quote tweets yesterday morning.

It was a painful read.

The tweets are filled with anger and hatred. If you are easily triggered do not read this thread. I was very disturbed reading these.

If you want to see my notes they are linked in this Notion Doc.

However - to summarize there were a few categories of critical responses:
1. You are evil
2. Rich/businesses/property is evil
3. Gov/System is broken
4. This is justified
5. Misc/other

First up - "you are evil". The primary arguments were:
+ You just want to shop for luxury goods
+ You just care about money/things looking good
+ You are white (and have benefited from racism)
+ You are racist

A few more from "you are evil" theme (note - there were hundreds of these):

The second theme was that the rich/businesses/ property are evil (1/2)

More on property/businesses as evil (2/2)

The primary arguments re wealth/businesses are evil were:
+ they aren't providing for people's needs
+ luxury brands engage in wage theft, sweatshops, etc.
+ property is theft
+ land is stolen
+ big biz pushing out poor/middle class (on purpose)

The next category of critique was "the government & system is broken". There were many mentions of:
+ Housing crisis
+ People don't have a future worth living for
+ SF isn't actually progressive & was built for the rich
+ Police aren't doing their job and are overpaid

A few more examples here:

The next category of responses was essentially "This is justified/deserved/let them loot". Key arguments:
+ Until necessities are provided for/root causes
+ People were pushed out/lives ruined
+ Keep stealing as a form of protest
+ Inequality

A few more:

A few more:

Then there were a lot of posts saying "this isn't worth paying attention to"
+ There are worse problems
+ Stores are still open/have insurance
+ Crime is down
+ It was just a bottle of perfume