STEAL THIS BOOK! Cockburn looted the looting book:

So, to get into the spirit of things, Cockburn pirated a PDF of the book, which was surprisingly easy to do. He also fired off this email to Bold Type Books, Osterweil’s publisher, to ask how they’d feel if the public ‘looted’ their book:

Dear Sir or Madam,

We at The Spectator have successfully pirated a copy of In Defense of Looting from the internet. Beats paying for it! We’d like your permission to republish the entire book on our website free of charge as an easily downloadable or shareable PDF file — in order to spread the message far and wide. Assume that’s fine? Please let us know if not.

So far, Bold Type hasn’t gotten back to us. Suddenly, they don’t seem too enthusiastic about subverting racist ideas like ‘you should pay for things you want.’ How strange!

When Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism was published in 2009, many bookstores hid their copies of it, simply based on the name and cover illustration of a smiley face with the tiny toothbrush moustache.  I wonder how proudly bookstores in malls are displaying In Defense of Looting in riot-torn 2020?

(Classical reference in headline.)