Поперечена

Melanie Phillips 
A recent podcast produced by The New York Times suggested that petty theft might be “the new political protest”. The paper’s culture editor, Nadja Spiegelman, coined the term “microlooting” for the phenomenon of people stealing small things from big corporations like Whole Foods. This was described as political resistance against “immoral laws” — namely, that some people become billionaires.
Agreeing that he would “pirate”, ie steal, “music from an indie band”, the immensely influential radical Hasan Piker said he was “pro-piracy all the way”. On whether he would steal from the Louvre, he opined: “We’ve got to get back to cool crimes like that: bank robberies, stealing priceless artefacts, things of that nature.
In Britain, the Greens’ leader Zack Polanski said something similar. People living in poverty were forced to steal, he declared, because they “had no other option”.
There’s now a shoplifting “resistance” movement, Take Back Power, whose adherents steal food from supermarkets and give it to food banks. Activists claim that “liberating” produce is “non-violent action to resist the super-rich”. But being cool doesn’t end at freeing the carrot.
In December 2024 Brian Thompson, the chief executive of United Healthcare, was shot in the back and killed in a New York street. Piker said many “understand” Luigi Mangione, the man charged with murdering him, because Thompson himself was guilty of “social murder”.
Many others cheered Thompson’s killing, expressing their hatred of the “corrupt” health insurance industry. On social media, Thompson was mocked and vilified while Mangione was elevated to folk-hero status. Girls wore “Free Luigi” T-shirts at his pre-trial hearing, while “Cougars for Luigi” and “Latinas for Mangione” sprang up.
The frightening thing is that so many people either support or are indifferent to such monstrous nihilism. Piker has an enormous following among the young. This month, the influencer, who has lamented the fall of the Soviet Union, produced roaring applause when he told the Yale Political Union that the “American empire” is fading fast and “we must end it”.
Other statements that have made Piker such a hero include: “America deserved 9/11”; on landlords who don’t rent out their property: “Murder those motherf***ers in the streets, let the streets soak in their f***ing red capitalist blood”; on Senator Rick Scott, who headed a hospital chain that pleaded guilty to fraud but who was never charged with any crime: “If you cared about Medicare fraud, you would kill Rick Scott”; and much more in this vein.
Yet Piker is lionised by the Democratic Party, whose midterm candidates are campaigning with him by their side. The Democrats and political extremists are morphing alarmingly into each other.
Cole Tomas Allen, who allegedly set out to kill Trump administration officials at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday evening, has reportedly echoed in his social media posts the incessant demonisation of opponents and calls for violence that increasingly emanate from the Democratic Party.
Last year, Lenawee County Democrats in Michigan denounced Donald Trump and immigration officials as Nazis and said Trump supporters should be hanged. Michigan Democrats displayed a sign that equated Maga supporters with Nazis and reproduced a coded sign for murdering Trump.
Allen is a graduate of the California Institute of Technology and was “teacher of the month” at his tutoring service. In a dismal finding, the American Political Perspectives Survey has shown that those with graduate degrees are twice as likely to support political violence as those with a high school diploma or less. Support for political violence is also highest among those identifying as “very liberal”.
The two are connected. The education system is dominated by the ideological left, which has always been attracted to violence. Mainstream liberal politics is now moving in the direction of intimidatory and violent street mobs demonstrating over the “omnicause” of Gaza, climate change and capitalism.
These baleful developments are the result of several things. The rule of law is based on the consent of the people. That consent is being eroded because of a loss of faith in the democratic system and the political mainstream.
Education, meanwhile, has increasingly imploded into anti-West propaganda and the implicit approval of political violence. Among many of the educated young, Nietzsche is a pin-up. His tragic warning against nihilism has been reimagined as an endorsement.
Religion has been junked for a supposed age of reason. But reason has given way to imbecility.
In Britain, the Polanski agenda — pro-wealth tax/prostitution/nationalising Donald Trump’s golf courses, anti-Nato/landlords/national borders — would embarrass a politically savvy 14-year-old.
Morality has been replaced by ideology. Thus the rich can do no right and the poor no wrong. Stealing is justified if it poses as concern for the oppressed. Morality no longer consists of rules to constrain selfish appetites but means taking positions against what personally offends you.
So for another New York Times podcast participant, Jia Tolentino, getting iced coffee in a plastic cup or taking a plane flight for pleasure was selfish and immoral, but blowing up a pipeline should be legal. As Spiegelman sighed: “It is so hard to live ethically in an unethical society”.
You could die laughing. Representative democracy and the law-abiding order it upholds are in serious trouble.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/political-violence-all-rage-left-clhrhzxj2