June 2, 2020

"The looters tore off the plywood that boarded up Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square, swarming by the dozens inside to steal whatever they could find before being chased down by the police."

"Others smashed the windows at a Nike store, grabbing shirts, jeans and zip-up jackets. They crashed into a Coach store, vandalized a Barnes & Noble, ransacked a Bergdorf Goodman branch and destroyed scores of smaller storefronts along the way. The eruption of looting in the central business district of Manhattan — long an emblem of the New York’s stature and prowess — struck yet another blow to a city reeling from the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak....  On Tuesday... Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized the city’s response, saying, 'The NYPD and the mayor did not do their job last night.' Beginning Monday afternoon and growing wilder as night fell, small bands of young people dressed mostly in black pillaged chain stores, upscale boutiques and kitschy trinket stores in Midtown Manhattan, as the police at first struggled in vain to impose order. Within hours, the normally vibrant center of wealth and upscale retail had descended into an almost clichéd vision of disorder: Streets were speckled with broken glass and trash can fires. Bands of looters pillaged stores without regard for nearby police officers....  'Stop doing this!' one distraught woman yelled, her friends holding her back as she lunged toward the looters. 'George Floyd’s brother said not to do this! That is not what this is about!' Several reporters and photographers for The New York Times witnessed numerous scenes of people setting upon storefronts all across Midtown.... Even as rows of police vans flanked the surrounding streets, the looters seemed to know that they were winning the game of cat and mouse...."

The NYT reports.

A highly rated comment over there:
This is what it looks like when a social movement dies in real time. The coverage in the NYT doesn't do justice to the sheer utter destruction in significant parts of the city - when you see it, it looks like war. People sitting comfortably in the suburbs have no problem justifying the criminality while playing woke on Twitter, but I'd love to see their reactions when its their communities that are being overrun, their neighbors' businesses are being looted and their streets are left burning. The protests are over and the message has been heard; at this point its just enabling criminality.

75 comments:

Birkel said...

How many Democratics like the results their leaders are delivering them.

You were warned.

BUMBLE BEE said...

2 Million+ stolen at the Rolex Store.

Dave Begley said...

All I can say is that the National Guard needs to be on the streets of NYC tonight and with a very large and heavily armed contingent. 5,000 troops.

chuck said...

That is not what this is about!

Reality begs to differ.

Tregonsee said...

Funny that they never loot a library or bookstore. Burn, yes.

http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/

jeremyabrams said...

How far can the rest of the country go to rescue New York from its own political choices? And wouldn't such a rescue carry the moral hazard of preventing New Yorkers from undergoing a political education necessary to their self-governance?

bagoh20 said...

Look how fast New York City rose from the embarrassing mess it was before Giuliani, and how fast it deteriorated all over again under Democrats. Any people with half a brain would never elect Democrats again, but it's too late now. You completely fucked up with that tiny act of voting Democrat when the choice was obvious.

MayBee said...

I agree.
People are trapped at home with babies and illnesses and fear and the government which has been playing "we'll keep you safe" for 3 months is nowhere to be found.

Gk1 said...

It brings me no joy to see frightened liberals cowering in their upscale apartments in Oakland wondering where the police are but WTF did they expect? They have fed and encouraged the Morlocks to take over the street and are now reaping the whirlwind.

YoungHegelian said...

This is just such a walloping big expose' of what losers Democratic governance is.

This is, ya know, Thomas Hobbes/John Locke basic 101 of governance --- the government cannot permit a fraction of its citizens to rob, pillage, & burn out another fraction of its citizens.

This shit'll stop when a couple of these clowns takes a bullet through his center of mass & doesn't get up again. Oh, the liberals will wail & moan about "Police violence" & oppressed minorities & crying mothers on the tube, but, quietly, they'll be happy to have their town back again. And every clown who's doing this law-breaking is hoping that it won't be him who catches one of the first bullets that indicates that the game is now being played for keeps.

I'm sorry, but hard lefties & criminals play by the same maxim -- "Push ahead until you meet steel."

rehajm said...

...but I'd love to see their reactions when its their communities that are being overrun, their neighbors' businesses are being looted and their streets are left burning.

Watch that video where the Antifas in the Mercedes stopped on a suburban street to switch out the license plates and were confronted by a resident. Political terrorists find it very difficult to find the necessary anonymity in the burbs...

Bay Area Guy said...

Question: How far does the famous Althouse "cruel neutrality" extend?

On trivial matters, it's a good idea.

But as Elie Wiesel once said: "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”

It seems to me that the anger and sadness over the Floyd killing, has now morphed into violence, looting, arson and the shooting of several cops. The "oppressed" have become the oppressors, the tormented the tormentors.

Anyone strongly disagree?

Sebastian said...

Althouse, I know you are just "observing," including more "hostile defacement and damage."

Are you drawing any conclusions yet, about the performance of Dem officials, or what's to be done, or whom to vote for?

MayBee said...

People who were told they could not visit dying loved ones in nursing homes, or sit next to someone while they received chemo, or couldn't have a funeral are now being held hostage in their own homes because mayors and governors don't want to look racist by shutting down looters.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Mr. Pants is an executive in a marketing and strategy agency and 95% of his coworkers are panicked beyond description right now. They and their clients are abjectly terrified of saying the wrong thing and also of saying nothing. We live in Clown World (to borrow the late great Angle-Dyne’s phrase) and in many quarters criticizing destruction and looting gets you in Woke Twitter’s crosshairs and could result the destruction of your brand and/or the loss of multimillion dollar contracts. I was seeing this on a personal level too, before I logged out of my social media for the duration: if you’re not saying anything you’re “complicit;” if you’re saying something it’s the wrong thing to someone.

I don’t know what to do other than ignore as much as possible and wait for it to blow over.

tcrosse said...

Kristallnacht.

MayBee said...

One of my yoga studios is shutting down. It didn't make it through COVID. The studio owner wasn't allowed to run his business and so the business is closed. Why? To keep us safe. But all of that is suddenly unimportant, because it's easier to riot without social distance rules.

Dad29 said...

Yah, well, Macy's issued a standard Roll Over and Take It Without Vaseline statement on the riots only a day or two earlier. They got exactly what they asked for.

Michael K said...

Sounds like that person commenting is a new gun buyer.

Mike Sylwester said...

Maybe the state of New York will be in play in the 2020 Presidential election!

This might turn out like the 1972 election, when the Democrats won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Leland said...

Just remember, it was Democrat politicians that let many of these people out of jail supposedly to avoid getting COVID. Now it is Democrat fundraisers promising to post bail for these looters.

D.D. Driver said...

They just want to be more like Denmark. How many times do they need to explain it to you dummies!

Where does arson fit into the Green New Deal? What kind of carbon emissions are we looking at when we need to rebuild our cities from ashes?

bagoh20 said...

"The message has been heard..."

It was sent loud and clear by the video itself. Protests have not done anything helpful.

Everything useful that can be done was done without the need for protests, and certainly without the need to destroy innocent people and burn cities. As with the pandemic, most damage was done in the name of "doing something", not the right thing.

TD said...

I walked 40 blocks up 5th this morning. Broken and boarded up windows. Graffiti. But, the most impressive part; almost all the glass was swept up and plywood put up over the windows before 9:30. entire blocks are covered with plywood. Capitalism works.

There were probably 100 broken windows. yesterday I was told each window is between $5-10,000.

The looting was only obvious from scattered hangers on the sidewalk.

The graffiti was thin. Not much there. But there was typical. FTP, FU_K 12. a few BLMs and one George. Pitiful. i sense a waning ideological commitment from the comrades. The cadres need to need to step up their game.

Neighbor from Chelsea

RMc said...

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized the city’s response, saying, 'The NYPD and the mayor did not do their job last night.'

And so it begins...

Temujin said...

I listened to a couple of national sports talk guys today talking about this and how they are all on-board with the athletes and the protests. But they made the ridiculous point that there are thousands of peaceful protesters and only a small number- a handful- of bad incidents. These sports commentators were saying the media (of which they are a part) is spending too much time covering the bad things and should spend their time covering the peaceful protests.

I disagree. I think the media is whitewashing the bad things so that the narrative does not lose it's place. CNN reporters, while standing amidst the looting and in front of fires, keep repeating the mantra that these are mostly peaceful protests. While the fires range just beyond their heads.

Well- there are dozens of people who have been physically brutalized. Hundreds of businesses robbed and vandalized. Some of these businesses are just coming out of government impose closures that had them hanging on by finger nails as is. Now with the riots, they are closed again, or destroyed and some will not have the heart, stomach, or means to rebuild yet again. And as for the national and international brands being looted and destroyed, those companies will keep going. But some of them will not reopen in locations that are looted. They may be done. Or they may rebuild, but the employees sent home because the stores were closed for covid, are once again told to stay home because the stores have been destroyed.

Every person in this country knows what happened was wrong, evil, and needs to change. We need to stop this. But the protests have nothing to do with it now. And frankly, change is not going to happen by screaming and ranting and waiting for your congress person to make yet another law. Change happens when we get back to life and start interacting with each other based on what we all agree on today. When we start to change how we view people during the run of our daily lives. We have to make the change in how we act, and what we do from today, on. It starts with the one. Each person. So...its time for the protest show to end. We know what must be done.

Any other protesting from here on is just antagonizing the majority of citizens and hurting the chance to move forward. The message is clear. As an old sales person, I can tell you, don't oversell it. Don't talk too much. When the deal is done, shut up and close it. Well- this deal is done. Now shut up and let the rest of us get on with the hard work that needs to be done.

Sebastian said...

"at this point its just enabling criminality"

Enabled by Dem officials, fueled by the far left, nice liberals standing by saying OMG, racism is terrible.

Wince said...

This is what it looks like when a social movement dies in real time. The protests are over and the message has been heard; at this point its just enabling criminality.

Unfortunately, this is now a politcal movement, and the people pulling the strings actually want to necessitate people being shot.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Nothing says "I'm here to honor George Floyd" like looting and stealing and breaking stuff.

Good news- others will be blamed.

Mark said...

There are no more "peaceful protesters."

By your very presence, you are a provocation, you are a threat. In the midst of others engaging in destruction, by your presence in the area, you are aiding and abetting, you are giving them cover. It does not matter that you do not share their specific intent, you are an accessory by standing with them.

Because of you "peaceful protesters," police must be deployed and they must devote their attention to you rather than "the real agitators."

There are no "peaceful protesters" in the middle of rioting and burning and looting. You are encouraging them. And you are posing a threat to others yourself.

Ken B said...

Is it dying? The movement *is* playing woke on Twitter, and everywhere else. Burnt offerings to the appropriate gods.

The tell is that there is no one on the other side. No one is defending how Floyd was treated.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

vandalized a Barnes & Noble,

I noticed they didn't loot the books.

Ahahahh.

FullMoon said...

I blame the parents. Or, single parent households?
Typical responses to news of young people doing bad things. Kinda missing in the internet comments lately.

Oh, and virus gonna kill 'em all.

mandrewa said...

From Triggernometry

"YouTube caught red handed censoring lockdown scepticism: our interview with respected journalist Peter Hitchens is hidden from you because he dared to criticise the lockdown. Technically they haven’t deleted it but the video cannot be found by search.

Big tech companies CANNOT be allowed to decide which opinions are/ not valid.

Link to the interview in comment."


If YouTube is censoring discussion and information about the coronavirus epidemic (and this censorship happened yesterday), just imagine how much they are censoring about Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and their acts of terrorism.

chuck said...

What message has been heard?

GatorNavy said...

So it is now get woke and get broken into? Not get woke, get broke anymore?

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Just do what Inga and her leftwing masters in the media do. Deny it's Antifa. Lie and blame someone else.

Not admitting your own side is the problem is how the left manage their lives.


Not Sure said...

...black pillaged chain stores

The Times can now wrap up the 1619 Project. The descendants of slaves have become the Breakers of Chains.

Kai Akker said...

It doesn't have anything to do with George Floyd any more, if it ever did. Different George. [ah.... Soros .... CHOOO]

Tom T. said...

Macy's bowed to the mob early on in Trump's campaign when it stopped selling his ties. Didn't seem to save them.

rhhardin said...

Online retailing is looking good to fresh capital.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Disband the police. They can’t or won’t do their job, so eliminate their job.

Annie said...

So why didn't Cuomo get on the phone and ask Diblasio, WTH?, and arrange to bring in the National Guard? This guy is again, asleep at the wheel. Or perhaps both of them want this to happen because they can't be that dumb.

traditionalguy said...

Organized Smash and grab armed robbery is not a form of protest. It is a military attack to capture resources and loot for the Army. Tecumseh Sherman perfected it.

wendybar said...

Progressives ate their own. It was bound to happen. Just wait for Obamagate...because it's coming...Will the rioting stop, or will they go crazier???

Achilles said...

This is what it looks like when the thin veneer of Civilization is pierced.

You all in charge better shut this down fast.

Or we will.

Birkel said...

How dare that person call out Royal ass Inga so directly!?!

Bilwick said...

I just read on Instapundit about the merchant in Dallas who was killed by a mob while defending his property during what those reactionaries insist on calling "a riot." His next-of-kin, however, probably console themselves that he was actually killed in a peaceful protest, by protesters being peaceful.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Or you can pull and Inga and say "it's all boogalooo!"

gbarto said...

"I'd love to see their reactions when its their communities that are being overrun, their neighbors' businesses are being looted and their streets are left burning."

How heartless do you have to be to watch the ANTIFA types do this to already struggling predominantly black neighborhoods and cheer, only realizing how wrong it is when it's lower Manhattan or Michigan Avenue in Chicago destroyed? Of course, those most wronged are the poor upper classes in Beverly Hills who will have to see other people carrying Gucci bags and wonder if the person carrying them are of their number.

Rick said...

Cop is beaten by rioters on the streets of New York as looters defy curfew to ransack Manhattan stores again and another officer is run over on seventh night of unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd

Some events are carefully omitted.

Kai Akker said...

"wouldn't such a rescue carry the moral hazard of preventing New Yorkers from undergoing a political education necessary to their self-governance?" --jeremyabrams

Which is one big reason I think Trump hasn't budged. NYC has a bigtime mayor and a bigtime governor. Let the voters see what they elected. This is what you wanted, folks. Take a good, lonnnnggggg look! Maybe one more night of destruction will be enough to motivate Trump, not sure. There is still Cuomo to act, if he ever would. I know only a few liberals will get it, but even 10% at the margin can make a big difference in future elections. Plus they would talk to their liberal relatives and former friends. The multiplier effect.

Eventually Woody Allen remakes Atlas Shrugged.

daskol said...

There’s a JCPenny basically across the street, but even the looters didn’t give it much notice, which is why it’s heard for another bankruptcy. My office is also right there, but it’s in probably the best guarded building in NYC, so don’t anticipate a lot of problems there. Of course, very few people are at the office these days, the better to sit home, signal virtue and ignore the end of the world as we knew it.

tcrosse said...

In 1938 the Nazis used the killing of a minor official at the German embassy in Paris as a pretext to go on a spree of vandalism, looting, and burning which we call Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. The police stood by while the Hitler Youth and Storm Troopers went wild. Sound familiar?

Drago said...

Dave Begley: "All I can say is that the National Guard needs to be on the streets of NYC tonight and with a very large and heavily armed contingent. 5,000 troops."

Not gonna happen, and now even Cuomo is attacking Deblasio directly.

The little worms are turning on each other because, in the end, they have to blame someone and Trump is operating within their OODA loops and not playing their games.

FullMoon said...

Which is one big reason I think Trump hasn't budged. NYC has a bigtime mayor and a bigtime governor. Let the voters see what they elected. This is what you wanted, folks. Take a good, lonnnnggggg look! Maybe one more night of destruction will be enough to motivate Trump, not sure. There is still Cuomo to act, if he ever would.

Trump says ready to go if Cuomo asks for help. Just like with surge hospitals and ventilators, all ya gotta do is ask. Until then, it is on the dems in charge. Dems all thinking "last night was last time, all better tonight". Normals thinking
"Keep hope alive"

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

MayBee said...

One of my yoga studios is shutting down. It didn't make it through COVID. The studio owner wasn't allowed to run his business and so the business is closed. Why? To keep us safe. But all of that is suddenly unimportant, because it's easier to riot without social distance rules.

MayBee you just got to look on the bright side! In ten days to two weeks, either:

a) There will be no mass outbreak of COVID and all the Karens, DemocRATS, and the media will be proven wrong...

OR

b) The Karens, DemocRATS, and the media will be proven right, but there will be a mass die off of Antifa.

Win-win, I'd say!

daskol said...

Cuomo, like everyone else in NY govt, can’t stand deBlasio, who is stupid, lazy and shameless, and poses a huge risk to anyone who works for or with him on anything. That’s been true since before deBlasio won the mayor’s race: deBlasio came up with Dinkins and cut his teeth with Clinton, meaning he came through neither Schumer’s nor Cuomo’s machine. About the only amusing thing in the last decade or so of NY politics has been watching Cuomo humiliate deBlasio in every confrontation. Not that funny now, but trust me, it’s usually hilarious.

Freeman Hunt said...

"justifying the criminality while playing woke on Twitter"

One hundred times this. This has been the big fad where I live, hundreds of miles from any danger. It's pathetic.

Michael K said...

How heartless do you have to be to watch the ANTIFA types do this to already struggling predominantly black neighborhoods and cheer, only realizing how wrong it is when it's lower Manhattan or Michigan Avenue in Chicago destroyed?

I does take a heart of stone not to laugh at all the cop haters crying "Where are the police ??" Just like the column in the LA Times yesterday.

Krumhorn said...

Expanding on Freeman Hunt's point, https://tinyurl.com/ybl6b5mk this is what happens when the action gets closer to home. Diversity does not include viewpoint diversity. I wonder if anyone is making a survey of social media post of others on the various writing staffs of his shows who are antifa supporters/activists being all woke and all.

When I try to imagine what it would be like to be governed by these folks, I start to pack a kit for my inevitable trip to the re-edukation kamps.

- Krumhorn

Roy Lofquist said...

Temujin: "But they made the ridiculous point that there are thousands of peaceful protesters and only a small number- a handful- of bad incidents."

It's just terrible what they said about the "good Germans".

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

We're all tough on Inga and God knows she's an easy target, but just imagine the cognitive dissonance going on in what passes for her mind.

Here she's firmly believed all of her life that Liberal equals Good and Right-Wing equals Bad. Now her side is throwing Molotov cocktails, murdering old ladies like her, as well as cops and little kids. They're gleefully and pitilessly destroying lives because they want to destroy America and make it into a Communist Utopia.

Of course, she has to deny what any sensible person can see with her own eyes. She has to desperately search for fringe right-wing groups nobody ever heard of before because she is too proud and stupid to ever admit she was wrong.

Pride is the worst of the 7 Deadly Sins.

Yancey Ward said...

I note it wasn't the highest rate comment. What was?

Yancey Ward said...

As for those comfortable in the suburbs, they likely will continue to be, but not because of the virtue signallers who live there- they will live peacefully in this time because many of their neighbors are armed to the teeth who will defend their businesses, and won't be harassed by the local police for doing so.

One think I hope gets through the thick numbskulls of the city-dwellers- the police and the people they elect won't protect them when push comes to shove- you have to be prepared to do it yourself along with the cooperation of your neighbors. Buy a fucking gun. Buy more than one. You don't want to be the poor schmuck with a floppy piece of plastic trying to fight off 5 ferals beating your middle-aged wife in front of your store in broad daylight.

tim in vermont said...

I did something similar at Barney’s in February, but it was all legal and we paid nominally for the stuff in their going out of business sale. It did have a vibe of taking advantage though.

I keep thinking about that guy who blessed the people looting his restaurant and I wondered “How good exactly is business these days in a restaurant and wouldn’t the insurance money be a better deal?” Then I realize that the guy was obviously driven by higher and more altruistic motives.

I am sure that Macey’s doesn’t look at an insurance claim on stuff they can’t sell as a blessing in a thin disguise either.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Never have so many Black folks worked on a Republican's re-election campaign.

Michael K said...

I didn't see Howard there. Were you really a Marine?

Yancey Ward said...

That is what all the city dwellers need to be doing right now- buying guns. It might help stop this in the future. Just a few looters getting shot in the head by store owners would be salutary- its benefit would be magnified a hundredfold.

rcocean said...

The other stores were looted but Barnes and Noble was only VANDALIZED. The copies of Woody Allen's bio and Toni Morrison novels are still on the shelves. Un-looted and safe.

Narayanan said...

Kai Akker said...
Eventually Woody Allen remakes Atlas Shrugged.
-----------===========
are we not actually watching Atlas Shrugged in living colors ?

n.n said...

"it's all boogalooo!"

Bugaboo!

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

rcocean said...
The other stores were looted but Barnes and Noble was only VANDALIZED. The copies of Woody Allen's bio and Toni Morrison novels are still on the shelves. Un-looted and safe.

6/2/20, 7:40 PM

What do barbarians want with books? Gimme those Nikes, man!

Aggie said...

There was a jarring twitter posting last night showing a Rolls Royce Culligan SUV - a $350,000 starting-price vehicle - rolling up to a busted-out luxury storefront looting opportunity in NYC. Another of kids in a nice Mercedes sedan handing out bricks in another city (and an outraged lady putting it back into the car and tellign them to get the hell outtahere). Madness. Last Days of Rome.

Bilwick said...

The urban lumpenproletariat left the Manhattan bookstores unlooted when they discovered they no longer carried the works of Iceberg Slim.