Protests have taken over the streets all across the world, and the media’s attention seems to be taking a very specific stance. Protests have turned violent, and movements have turned to riots and looting. While it is easy enough to condemn this violence, it is also important to understand the logic and political theory behind these acts and see it from a different perspective.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Tra i Leoni or Bocconi University. We’ll continue the conversation on Saturday with a piece offering a different perspective on the same topic. Stay tuned!
Protests have taken over the streets in so many cities, it’s become hard to count. France, Belgium, Albania, Italy, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, and India – did the movement cross borders? Or were the seeds already planted?
In Milan, the average monthly salary after tax is approximately 1900 euros, and the cost of living including rent averages at 1600 euros. In Paris, the average monthly salary after tax is 3150 euros (don’t think of moving there just yet), and the average cost of living comes up to 2000 euros, give or take. The stark difference in the two cities is no joking matter. The protests in these cities, motivated by these stark differences that manifest themselves in so many dimensions of societal life, have reached stunning levels – or as my friend put it “from zero to a thousand in a matter of two days”. The violence and destruction of property in recent days has been a trend that doesn’t seem to be backed by any reasoning, and has been condemned across the world by all kinds of people.
The problem is not condemnation, it need not even be condoning the acts. The issue is a lack of understanding of the act itself and what it entails. Ask yourself: What if this destruction is more than kids losing control? What if it is not an emotional reaction from an angered crowd, but rather a reasonable and articulate expression in itself? The reality is that the vandalism is too widespread to attribute it to a few bad actors, like the so-called “maranza” in Milan, and too symbolically potent to be attributed solely to an opportunistic “criminal” element.
Before getting into the idea that vandalism, rioting, and looting is in fact a valid and important form of protest and justice, let’s talk a little bit about the political theory behind this. We can all agree that a protest or a movement becomes successful when they are able to influence public opinion, when they are able to promote their ideology and make it an acceptable alternative to the public. But when does this happen, if it does at all?
In the West, there exists an apparent incivility crisis – politics that the public are dissatisfied with, as they disrupt and do not conform to the current status quo; movements and protests never gain the influence they seek. But there exists another argument. Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, theorized the relations of power in society. In Foucauldian theory, dominant ideas are created and maintained by those in power. They not only control discourse in society, but also get to decide what counts as civil and what does not. They define boundaries, label dissidents and as a consequence, invalidate those who do not conform to their politics. So, when you apply it to our daily lives, it means that the way we perceive behaviour and what we use to label it is heavily dependent on the power structures that we live in. We perceive those who conform to the politics of the state as good, righteous, and peaceful. On the other hand, we perceive those who do not conform, and actively oppose the state, as bad, violent, and undemocratic. What happens when labels are dictated as we have seen, is that members of society get marginalized. Specifically, small sects of society that have been labelled as dissidents get their voices taken away more than others do. Of course, there is a sociological tangent as to why these members of society act in a way dependent on these labels. But, more importantly, the avenues in which these members of society can participate politically, if they have any anymore, are greatly reduced. They now have to resort to alternative forms of participation, forms that will not conform to our idea of “good”. Take for example the movement for women’s suffrage, or more recently, that of the LGBTQ+ community. When they first started to gain traction, they were globally labelled as uncivil, as violent, and as a reckless attempt to topple the peace that society enjoyed. Now? Now, these same movements are considered normalized and applauded.
If your voice has been taken away, and you must now resort to alternate forms of protest, can we say that vandalism is a valid form of protest? Vandalism, fundamentally, aligns with the ideology of a passionate protester; it is but means to an end that we are so desperately trying to reach. To further justify this idea, I will use some historical examples, two specifically – one from the times of American liberty, and one more recent from the times of George Floyd.
One can argue that targeted destruction and vandalism can be a legible form of political action that highlights an injustice that is being perpetrated. Take for example the Boston Tea Party. Way back in the 1700s, during the American Revolution, the Parliament of Great Britain passed an act that allowed the East India Company to sell Chinese tea in their colonies without having to pay taxes. Angered by this inconsiderate act by their colonizers, residents of those towns launched a protest. As a result, thousands of them initiated a standoff with the British forces, but more importantly, hundreds boarded the ships containing the problematic tea and threw them overboard, leading to losses valued at over 1.7 million modern US dollars. This tension eventually kicked off the war between the colonies and the British Empire, ultimately leading to their independence just a few years later.
For a more recent example, rewind just 6 years back, to England. In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, protesters worldwide erupted into protest. In Bristol, Black Lives Matter activists toppled a historic statue – that of Edward Colston, a 17th century slave trader. Prior to throwing it into Bristol Harbour, protesters were seen kneeling on the statue’s neck, just as the police kneeled on Floyd’s neck. The perpetrators of this apparently heinous crime were eventually acquitted. Why? There seemed to have been an understanding that too many lines were crossed, too many innocent people lost their lives, too many communities over-policed and otherwise neglected to expect anyone to react “reasonably.” So, what changes now?
Residents in Spain are protesting against a housing crisis and illegal evictions, Belgians are opposing the rising living costs and budget cuts, and in Albania the Flamingo Revolution is fighting unemployment and corruption. French students took to the streets to fight the crumbling education infrastructure in their country, and Italians are occupying public spaces to oppose rising living costs and government neglect. Rather than meeting protesters with reason and paving an avenue to negotiation and eventual resolution, respective governments have deployed an abusive and violent police force. Now, with riots and vandalism spreading like a pandemic, it is important to make it clear – villainizing the act means to villainize the actor; the line between the two is very blurry. It is also important to understand that “[Vandalism] is not the sudden, spontaneous expression of a disordered and irrational mob but the clear enactment of a political position, the fulfillment in some small but concrete way of the central demand being made by protesters across the country.”
Yet another fallacy in the condemnation of vandalism, and one that I find personally troubling, is the conflation of inanimate objects with an importance equivalent to that of a human being. Plexi-glass and bikes are not humans. The loss associated with broken windows and burning cars simply cannot be compared to the loss of human life, to the loss of human rights and individual dignity. The violence of state-sanctioned murder cannot, in any way, be compared to the violence that breaks glass panes. As author R.H. Lossin stated, “Plateglass windows don’t bleed. They don’t die and leave loved ones grieving. They don’t contribute to the collective trauma and terror experienced by their communities. They just break, and then, at some point, they are replaced by identical sheets of glass.” The aftermath of vandalism shows who society and the government want to protect, which these days, is anyone but the common people and the working class. Why is the media establishment more concerned about the destruction of glass and concrete than they are about the loss of human rights in their own country? In the south of Italy, supermarkets shelves and refrigerators remain empty, gas stations are dysfunctional, and even if these weren’t issues, the common man cannot afford these necessities. Yet, the media chooses to portray the violence in Milan, rather than cover the real crisis that the people of the South are facing. It almost seems like violence is shown almost exclusively to manipulate public opinion.
Then there is the issue of looting. Martin Luther King Jr., the father of modern civil rights movements, believed that looting was not just an opportunistic way of building wealth, rather it was a politically educated form of action, centered around disenfranchisement and exploitation – “Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking.… Alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights.” The looting of luxury stores in Milan, such as Hermes, or even other stores like Mango, Foot Locker, and Champion, is the most textbook example of the gross inequality that we face in our everyday life. The problem of small or medium-sized businesses is another matter, and even then it is a nuanced issue that we must study carefully. Society, at this point especially, tends to conflate a small business with a human being – destroying its property is a direct and equivalent attack on the individual. Of course, there exists a distinction between vandalizing a mom-and-pop store and a Zara boutique, and this is not to say that small business owners are deserving of political violence. But, it is important to note the role that such businesses play in the grand scheme of capitalism, and more so the way that they are instrumentalized in protecting the agenda of the wealthy. In the US, during the George Floyd protests, many small business owners rejected the idea of them being used as fuel for hate towards protesters. “If this is the price we have to pay for human rights, so be it,” said Salih Mothana, a Yemeni immigrant whose store was destroyed amid protests. “I understand why it happened, and it’s OK…. It’s not like I have to blame someone for this. I understand why this happened. If it sends out the message, it doesn’t matter to us.” Zahalea Anderson, another business owner, thought that property destruction was politically necessary and continued to support the protests in spite of her personal losses. “I think we’ve tried a lot of ways to be heard,” she said. “People riot because they can’t speak it no more. They just have to show you.” Missy O’Reilly, the owner of a karaoke bar, said that the damage to her establishment “sucks” but it is “only broken glass and stolen booze,” which is “an easy fix compared to what people of color are dealing with in this country.”
The efficacy of nonviolent protests and movements has historically been disproven and remains an ineffective way of addressing societal problems. Why then do we continue to believe that it is the only way to make change? To the abusive police force deployed on the streets with batons, tear gas, and stun guns, a violent protest is no different than a nonviolent one. Both are attempts to topple societal order. This is why it can be argued that vandalism and riots are in fact integral to the success of a political movement. It represents a very real threat to the status quo, it is a tangible and visible consequence of public dissatisfaction, and may very well be the change that those in power do not want us to see. Property is itself an injustice. Lossin says that it is created through a combination of state-sponsored expropriation and exploitation and it is defended by various forms of state-sanctioned violence. The very ability to destroy this property is in itself a source of power. The ability of a mass movement to create tangible change in the structure of society is nothing but a refusal to accept the current power structures.
Acts that have been historically labelled as criminal have proved to provide marginalized people with real economic and political power. This is why they were criminalized to begin with. Theft and vandalism may not be revolutionary acts in and of themselves, but they most definitely are powerful forms of political expression in the midst of a mass movement. Refusing to incorporate acts of destruction into the political acts of protests at the magnitude we are seeing today, is taking away the very real power of these acts. Peaceful protests are important, but so is exercising a form of power that constitutes an actual, material disruption of the status quo. Before being so quick to condemn those who vandalize your city, attempt to understand the trauma and indignity that led to such acts.
Dubai-born Indian currently studying politics full-time at Bocconi. More often than not, I find myself debating various political controversies, and each time I wish I had a pen and paper to write about it. My head revolves around politics, football, beer, and the culinary world, so essentially your average Joe.
