Vicky Osterweil

On Friday book-loving New Yorkers got a shock as the city’s largest bookstore — The Strand — announced that it risked going out of business. A post on Twitter from the company said: ‘We need your help. This is the post we hoped to never write, but today marks a huge turning point in The Strand's history. Our revenue has dropped nearly 70% compared to last year, and the loans and cash reserves that have kept us afloat these past months are depleted.’ https://twitter.com/strandbookstore/status/1319686649798905856 What followed included an appeal to the public to return to the store to ensure that the 93-year-old business could keep trading. Prominent writers and pundits rallied around, and in recent days lines have appeared outside.

Vicky Osterweil, a trans woman who describes herself as a ‘writer, editor, and agitator’ and whose Twitter handle is ‘Vicky_ACAB’ (all cops are bastards), must have been overcome with joy when rioting and looting broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s death. This is partly because she is a radical leftist and partly because she had just finished writing a book called In Defense of Looting. What a stroke of luck! It's as if I had written a book called Beware of Pandemics in late 2019. I have to salute her timing.Osterweil is the classic sort of leftist who attempts to wrap enough pretty language around violence and destruction as to ennoble it. The riots, arsons and looting of 2020 needed such a character.