Ross Clark, in the Spectator, remarks on the irony inherent in revolutionary looting as a collaborative activity involving the National Elite Establishment and the urban canaille. Of course, what we are seeing here is, when you come right down to it, the active physical manifestation of everything today’s democrat party stands for.

That LEGO set or Louis Vuitton bag you’ve always wanted can be yours free if you just wait for the next black suspect to die in police custody. That’s the lesson so far from the riots in Minneapolis, Portland, Atlanta and elsewhere following the death of George Floyd. Arson and luxury looting are not the most obvious ways of fighting racism or police brutality, but at this point riots are a ritual. ‘Antifa’ means bourgeois bolshevism — college-educated mock revolutionaries performing to a predictable script.

This is the most sterile rebellion any country has ever seen. Far from terrifying the establishment, it reflects exactly what is taught in schools and preached over the airwaves and in respectable op-eds. Academics and celebrities have taken to Twitter to assure these wonderful young louts that riots really do reform politics and the civil rights movement was about violence from the beginning. Don’t worry: you’re saving black lives by throwing that brick through a window and lighting a liquor store on fire. You’re just like the Boston Tea Party — only not racist.

This is what significant portions of the opinion-forming classes in America actually believe. There is a spectrum, of course. Some thought leaders cavil more than others about the uncouthness of it all. But even the most delicate of pundits isn’t as bothered by the firebombs and pillaging as he is by Donald Trump’s next tweet: that’s real violence.

RTWT