Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Passe-partout



A sunny day last week when I visited the People's Co-op Bookstore. I didn't notice the window until I was inside. "What happened?" I asked, and was told someone broke it. But that's all they knew.

Violence against bookstores feels different compared to violence against other stores. Different because bookstores house ideas, beliefs, attitudes, opinions. But shoe stores and plumbing stores do that too, no? During Kristallnacht, it was any store owned and operated by Jews. The politics of the PCB centres those with left-of-centre ideas, beliefs, attitudes, opinions...

If it was anger that broke the window, what lay behind that anger? A libertarian capitalist broke the window because they don't like anarcho-socialism? An anarcho-socialist broke the window because the bookstore wasn't anarcho-socialist enough? Maybe it was more personal than that? Just what is it that people do to each other that makes them want to break things?

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