Looting is an expression of anarchistic philosophy, wherein ‘property’ is defined as ‘what you can take and defend for yourself.’ Most Americans know that property acquisition is typically through the financial system, protected by the police and military. However, one could argue that capitalism is just one method owners use to claim property. They defend it through paid capital defenders, the police. But looters engage in a similar game, taking property by force. Property is already being defended through force, isn’t it? Two wrongs make a right.
This perspective appears extreme to the right, as they may fail to see how their existing property was also acquired through force and defended similarly. The right views property ownership as inherent in the trade system, requiring protection by default. But why? If property owners must pay the police to safeguard their property, then when ‘looters’ rebel against this system, they are playing the same game but with a strategic advantage. Anarchists, though anarchists relying on the police to legitimize their property, rely on themselves or on voluntary albeit temporary group efforts. They perceive the police not as defenders of legitimately acquired property but as tools used by property owners to protect their assets because they can, not because it is just. The police protect private property for owners because owners can pay for this service. Anarchists seize property for themselves, whether through looting or destruction, because they can also.
When considering rioting and looting from an anarchistic and fascist perspective, it may help to explain the underlying dynamics coming to the fore of our artificially generated social media depiction of current events.
Anarchism arises when capitalism fails to ensure equal opportunities through government regulation vis a vis corporate hegemony and monopolies. Individuals at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder then take it upon themselves to exercise their ability, not just their rights, to acquire and defend property. As a collective, they unite to protect each other’s right to take what they desire. To an anarchist, the establishment is playing the same game, but they have deemed their system legitimate and the way it should be. Anarchists see this as an artifice, an arbitrary will to power which can and should be challenged.
Capitalism is merely an agreement everyone has accepted even though it fails just as much as the economic systems capitalists love to vilify such as socialism or communism. Granted the economic systems have failed many times, but more likely due to extremism and unintelligent implementation.
When looters and rioters emerge, they alter the terms of this agreement, asserting, ‘This property is ours because we can take it and defend it, just like you.’ Those who believe in the legitimacy of the established system, without questioning its foundation, are taken aback by street protests involving looting and rioting. If the police fail to control this development, people who are, themselves, suffering in near poverty, are willing to take up arms to defend the goods and services of massive corporations who would never repay a person for their efforts. Anarchism serves as a wake-up call for the establishment, reminding them that they cannot be the sole beneficiaries of a system that allows them to take and defend what they want. Anyone can participate in this game, consciously or unconsciously. It is essential to note that big corporations have taken more from many people than all the looters in American history have ever stolen or destroyed. Economists argue that corporations provide goods and services in exchange for money earned through work as a fair and valued work ethic and medium of exchange, but they often overlook how the government primarily safeguards corporate wealth and values it more than the well-being of millions. The 2008 S&L calamity is evidence of this bias. The US Government serves the people who own all the land and the businesses, proffering them as much protection as they wish since they have all the resources and the poor do not. They treat anyone who opposes this unfairness as a criminal threat to be violently stopped and put away. Even those who suffer without all the resources they need to thrive will side with the police on this, missing how their situation is not just because they did not work hard enough, smart enough, it is because they did not start out rich. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is just a capitalist myth. If you are born poor, you will never become rich. Since the only work you can get is mindless grunt labor or retail service roles, you will be stuck renting everything you need in life and borrowing endlessly just to have the basics. You will always be on the cusp of homelessness, jail, hospitalization, mental asylum. Mental health facilities are made for the poor. You can be a perfectly healthy person, but spend enough years stuck in poverty despite all your efforts, soon jail or the inpatient psychiatric care may very well be a better outcome for you than working dead end jobs all the time with nothing to show for it other than more debt. If you are always going to be poor no matter what you do, then why bother? But to ask yourself this question and to go where the answer leads you, is to go to places just as bad or worse. This catch 22 is enough to drive a man insane. While the rich steal everything from you with impunity, you go to jail for stealing a pair of shoes.
As anarchism progresses, fascism gains momentum too and reacts with its own extreme traditionalism. Anarchism and fascism all cyclically play a part in the entire process. However, anarchists inadvertently justify and fuel the rise of fascism the more they resist their oppression. Fascists, seeking law and order, a rigid top-down hierarchy, a patriarchal society, and a warrior class, take extreme measures, surpassing the violence, the theft, the destructiveness a group of anarchists might employ. Fascists deploy their full arsenal to suppress anarchists, anarchists they have created and, once they have eradicated them, continue to treat any resurgence similarly. New enemies are then fabricated to perpetuate fascism. Suppressing a socioeconomic underclass as innate criminals and threats to the fascist state’s security generates more conflict, justifying increasingly violent measures aimed at purging and purifying the nation to bring it back to some legendary period of greatness and utopia that never really existed. This process is akin to the collective unconsciously projecting its shadow onto a scapegoat, turning them into martyrs. There is nothing a blood hungry sadist loves more than a martyr.
Thus, while achieving law and order, fascism leads to limited diversity and an artifice of freedom, freedom for those who follow the ideology strictly. Most fascist movements exhibit varying degrees of racism and oversimplified vilifications of groups they perceive as threats to their extreme vision of law, order, and traditionalism. They aim to militarize society and enforce a traditional nuclear family structure where men hold authority, and women and children are subservient. This macho, militaristic patriarchy naturally perceives people who do not conform to traditional gender and sex roles as a growing threat, while creating the very threat it strives to eliminate. The more one group suppresses another group, the more that group will resist, the more they may even do things out of spite more than any natural sense of self.
I view looting and rioting as manifestations of anarchism. Many participants engage for diverse reasons. Some feel oppressed and threatened due to their ethnicity and financial class. It is worth noting that contemporary American fascism often justifies perceived wrongs by comparing them to historical groups that did not demand special treatment while maintaining their solidarity and position in the world despite oppression. For instance, the comparison between African Americans, whose ancestors came to America as slaves, and Jewish people during WW II illustrates this argument. African Americans, who argue that white people are responsible for their present socio-economic challenges, are often met with this comparison.
Others engage in looting and rioting for more thought-out philosophical and political reasons. Anarchism operates similarly to the establishment, which often forgets its history of using force to acquire and to defend property rights of respectable thieves and murderers.
Anarchists highlight this through looting and rioting, taking the law into their own hands. In response, fascism emerges as the opposing force.
While the United States may not be headed toward a Nazi or Italian fascist state, it is leaning towards an American version of fascism. It has no pagan history so monotheistic fundamentalism will become the style of government. We can already observe some elements falling into place: media regulation, hyper-nationalism, emphasis on warrior citizens, and the demonization of the left. American fascism often adopts a macho, simplistic worldview based on symbols and a quasi-state religion. Although Christianity may not align perfectly with fascist ideals, certain right-wing Christian conservative groups interpret the Bible to justify a punitive, legalistic, and militant form of Christianity. These groups perceive God as angry and judgmental, opposing homosexuality, accusing innocents of racism, condemning welfare recipients, and blaming ethnic minorities for crime. They view atheists, postmodernists, and those challenging racial biases in American history as undermining the nation, heading towards decadence. These reasons may contribute to the softening of American fascism, although it remains speculative.
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