Free Republic

Vigilante Oregon homeowners are threatening to shoot and kill looters who try to take advantage of wildfire evacuations, according to a series of street signs. “You loot, we shoot,” read several of a series of large hand-painted signs caught by KPTV journalist Devin Eskew as he covers the devastation. “We won’t call your family. Your body will never be found!! Bang bang!” reads another sign, with many warning that the homeowners have stayed behind in areas that have seen mass evacuations.

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that there is a belief “on the far left,” that property destruction “is sort of a justifiable way of protesting and it’s a form of reparations.” And warned that while the belief exists on the far left, beliefs have a tendency to migrate. Maher said, “When lululemon is saying ‘resist capitalism’ and there’s a book called ‘In Defense of Looting’ and then we had a primary where there was a candidate, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were talking a lot about a wealth tax and a lot of wealth...

hardcover copy of "In Defense of Looting" will run you 21 bucks at Amazon and 28 bucks at Barnes and Noble. That’s just how capitalism works for the distribution and sales of a product from one of the biggest publishing companies in the world that’s part of the Lagardère empire. Why is the largest publishing company in France pushing what Publishers Weekly called, “a provocative, Marxist-informed defense of looting” to Americans? Because it makes money. Learn why private property is just a social construct for only 21 bucks. "In Defense of Looting" quickly ended up a major topic of conversation...

"Real Time" host Bill Maher blasted the media Friday night, claiming they offer various justifications for looting and rioting amid the civil unrest that has taken place in cities across the country. During the show's panel segment, Maher began with a warning about the "craziness out there," pointing to the controversial book "In Defense of Looting" that was given a spotlight by NPR and "a lot of articles in the press" echoing a similar sentiment. Maher explained that in "binary times," the "fringe" will always be associated with one party or the other, later insisting that this time around, Democrat...

Who knows what the 2020 election will bring? But after surveying Kenosha, I'm convinced Trump won't lose Wisconsin. If I were a betting woman, I'd say he won't lose the White House. He doesn’t seem well. In fact, he sounds exactly like every person I’ve encountered on their deathbed. These thoughts ran through my mind Thursday while I watched Joe Biden breathlessly address Kenosha community leaders through his surgical mask.Aside from the former vice president’s extortionate call-to-action that if you don’t vote for him, racism and riots will reign forever, my primary takeaway from his remarks was that Biden is...

Can the residents of Seattle whose property and businesses were destroyed, vandalized, or shut down in June, when the city for three weeks allowed and approved of the “autonomous zone,” now sue the city? Two such lawsuits have in fact already been filed in federal court; and in one of them, seventeen different persons and businesses are seeking direct compensation from the city for actual losses suffered. Ironically, these lawsuits, which attack what legal immunity cities may have in setting the policies and practices of their police forces, occur in conjunction with the vigorous national campaign by Black Lives Matter,...

Vicky Osterweil, the author of “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action,” is getting her 15 minutes of fame thanks to a segment on NPR in which she said some really mind-bogglingly dumb, indefensibly evil and fascinatingly reactionary things. SNIP Destroying businesses is an “experience of pleasure, joy and freedom,” she writes. Osterweil also insists it’s a form of “queer birth,” and that “riots are violent, extreme and femme as f – – -.” Looting isn’t wrong, she claims, but rather a form of “proletarian shopping.” “Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of...

In an effort to contrast himself with Trump, Democratic presidential nominee former Vice-President Joe Biden ventured into riot-torn Kenosha to show off his "healing" technique. He started out by blaming Trump for the violence tearing apart the city and other cities throughout America. "Turn on any TV station and you'll find commentators condemning Trump for dividing this country," Biden said. "The opinion is almost unanimous that Trump is a divider and not a uniter. In virtually every city people are crying out for racial justice, but police are slaughtering black men in numbers that defy belief. Struggling to be heard,...

A few days ago, NPR’s Code Switch interviewed antifa agitator Vicky Osterweil about Vicky’s book, In Defense of Looting. To call the interview ‘friendly’ would be a disservice, implying that NPR was favorable toward Osterweil from a sense of general benevolence. But that is not what the segment was. It was de facto propaganda ... ‘Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police,’ Osterweil said. ‘It provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be. And I think that’s a part of it that doesn’t...

Law enforcement officers have to consider if looters “needed” the stolen merchandise before charging them, according to new guidance issued by leftist lunatic Diana Becton, the first-term Contra Costa County District Attorney supported by George Soros, the far-left, anti American billionaire. Just to show how whacked out she is, when a couple painted over the Marxist Black Lives Matter (BLM) message on the street in front of the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse, the office of the District Attorney in Contra Costa County, Becton, charged them with a “hate crime.” Stealing is fine so long as the thief needed what he stole,...

No, you idiots, insurance will not even begin to cover the short- and long-term damage inflicted by riots in Portland, Kenosha, Chicago, and elsewhere. In fact, as business owners whose shops were destroyed or badly damaged during the Minneapolis riots are finding out, the cost of recovery is far greater than their insurance payouts. “Dozens of owners whose Twin Cities properties were severely damaged in the May riots have been stunned to discover that the money they would collect from their insurance company for demolition won’t come close to the actual costs of doing the job,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune...

The twisted logic of author Vicky Osterweil’s new book, In Defense of Looting, would be laughable, were it not so dangerous. Yet it is being taken seriously by NPR and other media outlets that should know better. In her interview with NPR featuring no pushback from the taxpayer-funded network’s interviewer, Osterweil says of looting: “You're mass shoplifting. Most stores are insured; it's just hurting insurance companies on some level. It's just money. It's just property. It's not actually hurting any people.” *snip* I also suppose Ms. Osterweil doesn’t consider the death of retired St. Louis police captain David Dorn to...

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., have spoken out against violence that has plagued cities across the country amid protests against racism and police brutality, but others in their party have lagged behind, either qualifying their reactions or failing to address the matter altogether. President Trump and his campaign have accused Biden of being "too late" with his response, but the former vice president has sought to speak out more forcefully on the issue, with his latest statement coming after a man believed to be a Trump supporter was shot in Portland. He also...

GOP lawmakers want probe into financing, organization of riots. Conservative pressure is mounting on Attorney General William Barr and his Justice Department to ratchet up investigations of violent rioters across the country, specifically to identify those funding and organizing the mayhem.Rep. Ken Buck, R-Calif., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, made weekend appeals for DOJ to take action to cut off funding and logistical support for the groups of rioters that have terrorized and destroyed American cities for months.“Law enforcement needs to look at the funding of violent criminal activity like this. And national Democrats need to confront it. It’s organized....

We are living in truly dangerous times. In the midst of a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 180,000 Americans, protests, riots, looting, vandalism, and violence have gripped cities across the country for months.The most recent example occurred on Thursday, following President Trump’s Republican National Convention speech.Attendees of the address, including several convention speakers and members of Congress, were ruthlessly harassed and threatened by a mob of left-wing radicals as they exited the White House.Among those most in danger were Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., his wife, and two of their female friends. Just one block from his...

Meet the privileged, university credentialed white chick who thinks rioting and looting in the name of ‘social justice’ is cool and should be advocated because, well, white privilege. “A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy” Recently NPR gave Ms. Vicky a platform for promoting zer post-communist platform: Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police. It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine...

Every morning when he unlocks the door to his New York City wine shop, the brown plywood covering one of its windows reminds Shermon Peters of the night nearly three months ago when looters smashed the glass and stole an expensive bottle of cognac. “It reminds me, ‘Oh, someone looted me,’ ” said Mr. Peters, 48 years old, who has owned Rosetta Wines in Manhattan’s Financial District since 2010. “I have to think about this struggle to get it fixed. And on top of that, business is down.” Some storefronts remain boarded up in cities across the country, even in...

In the early hours of Aug. 10, caravans from across the city ransacked high-end stores in and around downtown after rumors circulated on social media that Chicago police had shot and killed a 15-year-old Black boy on the South Side. Police did shoot 20-year-old Latrell Allen, who is Black, the day before. Police allege Allen fired gunshots at them, but officers were not equipped with body-worn cameras, and no other footage of the incident has been made available. Allen is expected to recover. Images of people walking in and out of department stores with their hands full of products transfixed...

Law enforcement officers have to consider if looters “needed” the stolen merchandise before charging them, according to new guidance issued by leftist lunatic Diana Becton, the first-term Costa County District Attorney supported by George Soros, the far-left, anti American billionaire.

The angry mobs are mixed-race and they’re terrorizing mostly white people. The mobs are doing this under the umbrella of Black Lives Matter. The keyword in that sentence is Black. The white kids in Portland and Seattle who are rioting every night are defining themselves as FOB, friends of black people. The BLM movement is framing black people as racist, immoral and violent. This is the total opposite of the Civil Rights Movement. Black people are losing the public-relations war. Anderson Cooper, Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and the rest of the mainstream liberal media won’t inform...