Rob Smith: Those ‘romanticizing’ looting for liberal audience rarely live in damaged communities

Smith made the comment reacting to the author of a new book who defended looting and sparked outrage after an NPR interview in which she said looting gives people “an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure."

“Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police,” author Vicky Osterweil said in the interview. “It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also, it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be. And I think that's a part of it that doesn't really get talked about -- that riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory.”

“This is absolutely ridiculous,” Smith, an Army veteran, said on Monday.