Everybody Hates Riots

A satire on the current political moment

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Luke McGowan-Arnold is an African-American novelist from Rockford, Illinois. He is based in Philadelphia. He writes about Black people, American subject formation, subcultures [on and off the internet], and popular social movements.

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Well, first off, Writers like me hate riots. My name is unimportant, but suffice to say that I am a writerTM, based in the Los Angeles/NYC/Chicago/Seattle/Wherever-The-Riot-Is-Happening area.

Principally, I hate riots because they make me realize that my art is utterly useless. In the face of the wheels of history turning, as the proletariat battles the bourgeoisie's police in the streets, what use is a novel? Do my personal stories matter when the real movement to abolish the present state of things exists right before my eyes? Writers who are not like me also hate riots. Partially, this has to do with the fact that riots do not fit into a neat little box of “woke” or “not woke” in terms of what they contain. I watched a video the other day from one of the riots where somebody vandalized a NIKE store with the following message...

FUCK ICE,

FUCK TRUMP,

FUCK NEWSOM,

FUCK VANDALS,

FUCK WOMEN,

FUCK AI,

FUCK BITCHES,

FUCK LOOTERS,

FUCK TWITCH STREAMING,

FUCK WHITE PEOPLE,

FUCK CITY COUNCIL,

FUCK THE NATIONAL GUARD,

FUCK INSTAGRAM,

FUCK MY BABY MAMA,

FUCK THE POLICE,

FUCK ONLYFANS,

FUCK MEXICANS,

FUCK GOING OUTSIDE,

Eventually, he was caught by the police. He now faces decades in prison, despite the fact that, according to the ACLU, federal vandalism charges that Pam Bondi has promised to hit him with aren't a real thing. However, the political incoherence of our young vandal, common among the working classes, befuddles the writer who only thinks about politics through their Substack addiction. Riots do tend to be rather frightening, which is another reason why people hate them. Rubber bullets, Latinos calling other Latinos the N-word, random naked hippies dancing as they inhale tea gas, and badly drawn graffiti (youth illiteracy is a real problem now, even among the vandals. [apart from the guy I mentioned earlier]) are just some of the reasons one can be terrified of a riot.

And then there's always the part during the riot where I recognize a random dude from my high school walking around in a Pikachu costume chanting “free the hostages”. Eventually, I'm sure he develops a cult following as @protestpikachu on IG until it comes out that he was a Federal informant the whole time. Terrifying, indeed.

The riot also disrupts our normal lives. For instance, when people start looting the Apple Store, the blaring alarm noises of the iPhones telling the looters that they are being tracked makes it difficult for the yuppie couples to finish as they fuck sadly in their renovated lofts apartment in DTLA. Agatha, the woman in the gentrifier couple, writes a long thread on BlueSky about how their sex life was interrupted by the blaring alarms and hum of the chopper chasing the looters. Thus, according to her, rioters are actually sex negative and should be canceled. I'm glad I don't use BlueSky.

Cops (this includes ICE and the Feds), the wives of cops, or the children of cops all hate riots. And, understandably so. Who likes being called mean names and having e-scooters thrown at your face? But then again, I have heard stories about the LA County Sheriff's Office hosting annual “Who beat that leftist agitator's ass the best” challenges every year where they watch videos of beatings at a cookout at one of the Sergeant's Orange County homes. In fact, for some cops, riots are like a sport. They keep a scoreboard in the precinct to see who can commit the most incidents of excessive force. The winner gets a pizza party and a custom engraved tear gas launcher. On the other side, the anarchists hate riots too because despite all of their supposed alleged involvement (exuberance according to Pelosi), most of the time they are too busy eating out of the trash to remember to get their ski masks on and attend the demonstration. In reality, the anarchists often show up late and build poorly designed barricades with public art installations instead of burning Waymos. Their lateness leads to long call-outs on Twitter about how anarchists being late to the riot showed that they didn't really care about the spontaneity of the Chicano masses.

Black people hate riots too now. Despite the fact that back in 2020, Black people were the main culprits in the civil unrest, a new political vision has emerged. A conservative one. Though perhaps that's for the best. I guess Malcolm didn't actually mean “by any means necessary”, he meant “buy any jeans necessary”. Like the Kanye song. Instead of solidarity through struggle, Black people should just make TikToks, vote, write strongly worded essays on “the importance of Black rest” while the crackers are attempting to ethnically cleanse the country, and start businesses. That's the new political trajectory. Fuck the Black Panthers. They were broke anyway. Assata Shakur had no drip.

There's been some talk amongst Black people about how bad “illegal” immigrants are for breaking the law. It's a good thing that Black existence in the United States has never been criminalized before, though. Like, ever in history. Black people have loved and respected the law as it's always loved and respected Black people. Folks say that Black people can't unify but the fact that the ADOS/FBA guys, Black MAGA people, Black cowards, Black activists, Black Kamala supporters, and the Black women's brunch crowd (aka the 92%) all agree that the riots are not for Black people really shows how political events like these can unify our communities.

I heard recently that there's going to be a panel hosted on TikTok called “Fuck Haitian People, We're Doing Black Shit”. There have also been various accusations across the Internet between different African-Americans accusing each other of being “anchor babies” or “tethers”. It is still unclear what constitutes a Black American phenotype. I don't think the police can tell either.

I can't express enough that a lot of rioters actually hate riots. I remember bumping into a young rioter named Eduardo on the train the other day. He relayed to me that he actually hates rioting because it's taken on the form of an addiction for him.

“As soon I see fireworks or a Waymo on fire, I just get this sudden urge to like go out and get punched by a cop or hide behind a white liberal. It's been really bad. My girlfriend broke up with me cause I won't stop watching live-streams of those kids in keffiyehs in New York blocking ICE vans in solidarity with the riots here in Los Angeles.”

There's apparently a rioters anonymous group that's been meeting on Zoom since ICE invaded LA County. I wish them the best of luck.

Democrats also hate riots. But not for the reasons that you think. While you would think they would hate riots due to how they are filled with police violence, violation of human rights, unjust incarceration, and military occupations...Democrats are just mad that the current president is getting to do those things. According to a special report, Gavin Newsom was heard in Sacramento complaining how, “I wanted to send the National Guard in but now Trump's doing it and he gets to look tough on crime instead of me. Let's get Mayor Karen Bass on the phone to do a curfew, we'll show that orange maniac!”

On a related note, White liberals hate riots because they are confusing. For instance, I was talking to my friend Monica. She's a very nice well intentioned person but she was deeply confused when she saw two Latino men fight each other in front of her. One of them had a brick he was preparing to throw at the Feds, while the other man (a self described immigrant advocate) was trying to convince him not to throw it cause that “ICE agent was Raza too”. So, instead of throwing the brick at the ICE agent, he threw it at the immigrant advocate.

Monica was unsure what to do. She's told me about these white ally seminars where she listens to various different racial justice consultants about how to be a good ally. She is confused though because,

“Nobody in the training ever told me what to do when two POC are fighting each other. I thought that POC were a monolithic group with singular leaders that I could easily listen to in order to assuage my white guilt. Little did I know, a lot of POC have different opinions on how political struggle should happen. It was so uncomfortable. I hope this doesn't happen at the No Kings march,” she told me over coffee in our favorite gentrified coffee shop that had their windows smashed a couple days before.

I told her I just hate riots cause it means my favorite bougie art gallery is bombed tf out. She told me I needed to be more understanding of why some people in the neighborhood might hate art galleries as they often lead to development. She's learning, I guess.

Organizers hate riots. Mostly because once people start throwing bricks, as I mentioned earlier, it's hard to make a speech, you’re dodging police batons instead of exhorting the crowd about how, “Lenin said in 1917 that we all need to join socialist organizations in order to pursue the true revolution”. I remember I stopped attending protests because it was just a bunch of speeches by random socialists. I was going, originally, because I wanted to meet some leftist baddies, but I realized my time would be better spent chasing after artsy baddies at the SZA concert and Noname Bookclub. At least at those, you don't gotta deal with some Marxist with pig breath telling you how the Black struggle must be sublimated for working class unity.

Finally, the National Guard hates riots. Most of them are sleeping on the ground somewhere eating shitty little sandwiches. A lot of them just want to go home to they families. Some do exhibit weekend warrior characteristics, though (having angry teenagers throwing industrial grade fireworks at you at 3:06 in the afternoon seems like a bad vibe). Suffice to say, everyone, even those teenagers, hates riots. I cannot agree more. I can't wait till we get to the point where I get to return to the everyday normality of sipping 12 dollar Mochas at my gentrified coffee shop as I write my second novel, asking AI for relationship advice, reading Electric Literature reviews, complaining about trauma on IG Live and forgetting that we live in a grand historical moment. It's easier to hang out and read those Sabrina Carpenter essays everyone is upset about.

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