Why do protesters loot and burn

[Bigworldoutthere]

Disclaimer: not a comment on the awful event leading up to it but on rots/ protest in general. Watching the situation in Minneapolis it struck me that in almost all protest situations there are people —young men— who burn things that are useful to them and there community, loot shops that are useful for them and their community and damage/smash the same. I can understand anger s as d shouting but why actually damage the area you live in?

Yanbu the looters are selfish and aren’t doing it because they’re ‘protesting’. It’s just they’ve now got an excuse to damage other people’s property and steal from businesses and frighten locals because there’ll always be those who defend them. They don’t need defending because those aren’t the people protesting.

Yanbu

Pixieblu

Spot on.

Too many black lives have been lost. I agree.
And some damage and all people want to talk about is things, material possessions not human life. I do, in a context of general riots, across the eras, cultures and races not just one or relating to one issue.

I do, in a context of general riots, across the eras, cultures and races not just one or relating to one issue.

Ah, okay. Well you mentioned Minneapolis in your first post, so I guess people were going off recent events.

You've mentioned Drumcree and that's something I have a bit of knowledge of. I'm from what you'd probably call a loyalist area and I know that buses were arranged to take people from my area to Drumcree, 50 odd miles away, to join the protests. And buses were taking people to other parts of N Ireland to mount burning road blocks and bring the country to a halt. So they weren't necessarily trashing their own area. I knew plenty of people who participated in those protests, often quite respectable middle aged men, people who viewed authority as God given, and it was like a collective madness took hold of them. I remember my boyfriend and me looking out of the attic window of our house in Belfast and seeing the city burning all around us and instead of being scared, as frankly we should have been, we found it really exciting. We had no interest in the politics of that particular situation, having no interest in loyalist parades, but it was very exhilarating and I can almost guarantee that if it had been an issue we felt strongly about (such as, let's see, policemen murdering people with impunity) we'd have been down there joining in. It's very hard to explain unless you've experienced it.

Big cities are also more "anonymous". I think if there was a riot in a small town in America (not sure if there ever is?) then you'd have more people concerned about "Fred's cafe" or "Bill's butcher shop" and where their families were going to live afterwards.

From memory, after a "local derby" football match (not recently) where there was rioting afterwards, the team that lost trashed their own town.

Racism from anyone isn't acceptable. Racism from those who are in power is a billion times more serious because who do you go to then? Anyone talking about "Blacks killing blacks" is vastly missing the point.

@SoVeryLost As a brown man who has spent a fair amount of time in the US I couldn’t disagree more.

Quote function isn’t letting me quote :(

Because society often values money, property and pleasure over the rights of other human beings.

I think it’s too easy and dismissive to say that the looters and rioters are coming from outside and are just looking for a reason to be violent.

People are commenting that the incident that has set it off is bad, but rioting shouldn’t be happening. Instead of saying rioting is bad, but unarmed black people shouldn’t be murdered.

It’s showing that possessions and property is considered more valuable than a life.

Thesamething fair enough. It reminded me of a previous conversation is all. Thanks to the hive mind - displacement, paid agitators, undercover police, adrenaline.

OP

You read all that and your take away is yes "material possessions matter"

It must nice to be able to compartmentalise the police sanctioned murders of black people and focus on "things".

Why bring up Minneapolis as your opening example if this is not about race?

As far as I'm concerned black people have every right to destroy a country they built on that 400 year long internship (not that they should) and that still treats them like shit and kills them for absolutely no reason.

I don't think any monetary damage is more important than any human life. Money and things can be replaced, people cannot.

@RubieRose

I do find it interesting that people are more willing to speak about the 'looting' and express upset/ anger about that, then black men being murdered by the police.

Why is that?

I don't think that's necessarily the case. I'm angry about the murder of George Floyd and all the other black people (don't forget the women) killed by the US police.

That doesn't prevent me from wondering about the reasons for violence and looting during protests. It is an interesting subject. Is it an expression of anger and frustration? Is it opportunism from otherwise law abiding people? Is it people who would normally be committing crime anyway? Or a combination?

@Palegreenstars, I think @LadyofTheManners means Mark Duggan.

Imo it's a good idea to have the basic facts right before spouting opinions. They just come across as ill-informed shite otherwise.

@Pixieblu I took that away from the general discussion of a range of riots not of one specific one centring on one specific issue. The points you raise aren’t all transferable to the Suffragists, the Derby, to name a few but they all (thanks to PP who updated my knowledge of Drumcree) have elements in common which is what my OP was asking about, a specific question to a range of riots over time and cultures

Smilethoyourheartisbreaking

So true.

Bigworldoutthere
undercover police

"Jacob Pederson Is Not the AutoZone Umbrella Man, St. Paul Police Say."
www.newsbreak.com/minnesota/minneapolis/news/0PBV5x9l/jacob-pederson-is-not-the-autozone-umbrella-man-st-paul-police-say

More likely to be 'Momentum type' activists.

People who are angry smash stuff up. The anger about racism spills over to general injustice and inequality. Looting probably feels like revenge on the haves.

Also I lived in the middle of the looting and rioting a few years ago and sat watching out of my window as organised gangs from around London showed up to go steal stuff. Young kids were being sent by older guys to steal stuff and bringing it back to pile into a load of 4x4s. So definitely exploited by criminals as well.

is what my OP was asking about, a specific question to a range of riots over time and cultures

No, you first asked about Minneapolis. So we commented on that specific situation.

When in the grip of rage, it's so easy to damage things that are important to you. It isn't rational behaviour, it's primitive and primal. I was dealing with intense emotions resulting from memories coming back of my childhood SA at the hands of my F. At one moment, I kicked our bath panels once and broke them. (I was alone in the house, I hasten to clarify.) I was raging at a man who was dead.

The protesters are not acting whilst thinking about it, it's a case of reacting to that horrific racist murder of George Floyd. That anger is totally justified and there was always going to be violence in their response. Crowds always have the tendency to be volatile as well.

There will of course be criminals who appear too to take advantage of the situation. But that fact shouldn't detract from the justifiable rage that the black community will be feeling and it definitely shouldn't distract us from the cause, which is that vile racist murder which provoked it in the first place.

There is also always looting, sadly. People loot bomb sites, but it's the bombers who are ultimately responsible for the carnage.

@LakieLady I kinda assumed that. Oh to have the confidence to speak so ill of the dead ‘drug dealing skuzz’ when you can’t even get their name right. The two people are so far from comparable,

Pixieblu - I hope that nobody thinks that material possessions matter more than people. In the same way as a burglary in your house is just "things" it's also an invasion of where you live and your safety even if you were out at the time.

If you live in a small town and you know the people who own the shops/cafes etc. then if they got destroyed it's not just "material possessions", it's personal. The mindshift is in seeing that what the looters are doing is not in any way personal, it's a way to be heard.

It is to bring the issue at hand to mainstream media. Look at the Civil Rights protests of The 1960s. Had they not been destructive it would never have attracted world news. It is what made JFK finally stand up and take notice and act

It's a disgrace that things are still not that far removed from the 1960s.

Oppression is a funny old thing.

@Clavinova Of course the police will deny it was one of their officers. They claim he had an alibi yet there is no proof. Read the comments in my link.