Narratives have always been the foundation of politics. From philosophical accounts of human nature to emotional appeals to the American dream, narratives build a common language around who we are and what we need from our government. Yet these narratives are not always neutral; often, they are tools that leaders utilise to elicit certain reactions from the population, and the fiction of looting is a particularly effective tool.
Looting is not, in and of itself, a myth. There are numerous instances of small-scale looting during protests and natural disasters, and some examples of large-scale looting. However, the narrative of looting often disproportionately dominates media coverage and policy decisions. From Hollywood films to government offices, officials debate whether they ought to tell the public the hard truth out of fear of inducing mass panic, violence, and crime. Yet in her 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit describes how in crises such as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, the public was not a liability but an asset. Ordinary citizens have repeatedly proven that they are almost always courageous and capable in the face of disaster.
Solnit’s book examines how these allegations of mass looting and violence, for which there was very little evidence, turned a natural disaster into a social catastrophe, and she prompts us to look more critically at how this pattern of exaggeration emerges and its effects. I hope to further the analysis by examining how these myths distract from the failures of the government, discredit the victims, and even incite violence against them using the case studies of Hurricane Katrina and the 2020 George Floyd protests.
Before that though, it is important to consider what it means for looting and violence to be fictionalised. Solnit’s work is just one part of decades of research proving that violence and looting are rare in the wake of disasters and that prosocial behaviour is significantly more likely to occur than anti-social behaviour. This is not to say looting never happens but rather that the incidents are often isolated and represent a small fraction of the post-disaster reality. Yet these narratives are so prevalent in the public consciousness that the WHO has labelled it a ‘disaster myth’.
There was looting and some violence in the 2020 George Floyd protests; the instances are well documented. However, a study from Princeton University found that out of more than 10,000 racial justice protests, less than 220 were violent. That means that the vast majority— 93 per cent—were peaceful. It is harder to determine the extent of looting in Katrina given the massive amounts of storm-related property damage. Additionally, given thousands of people were forced to wait days for assistance and basic provisions, there is a strong argument for the case that the theft of necessities such as food, medicine, and diapers ought to be discounted. Despite these challenges, experts say that reports of looting were greatly exaggerated and there is no evidence that homicide or mass rape occurred in the Superdome, the arena where citizens were housed after fleeing their homes, despite numerous rumours.
Despite these facts, politicians often perpetuate exaggerations and even outright falsehoods surrounding looting and violence. Local politicians and government officials such as police chiefs have a unique opportunity to shape the narrative during disasters because they are perceived as being the most informed and are largely taken at their word. Therefore, any falsehoods they tell or footage they share get picked up by major news outlets and are given credibility. Videos of burning stores and stories of babies being raped in the Superdome (a claim made by the New Orleans Chief of Police on the Oprah Winfrey Show) have a shock factor that captures the public’s attention and can dominate news cycles. But by shifting the conversation toward rare instances of crime, politicians can obscure their own responsibility for disasters, whether that be a lack of an evacuation plan or instances of police brutality. Officials can position themselves as against violent opportunists and rioters, something most people support, rather than being held accountable for their role in the victims’ suffering. Particularly in the George Floyd protests, highlighting looting and violence served as a way to portray police forces in a more positive light and as a necessary aspect of the community, distracting from the systemic issues within them.
The distractions do not last forever. In the dozens of articles and retrospectives published for the fifteenth anniversary of Katrina, looting is rarely mentioned. When it is, it is often a passing comment about reports being greatly exaggerated. Instead, criticisms of the abandonment of victims and the prison-like conditions within New Orleans are the focus. These topics were included in the initial 2005 coverage, but they shared the space with dramatic and sensationalised stories of snipers stationed on the roof of the Superdome that were more likely to capture public attention. What the lasting impression of the 2020 protests will be remains to be seen.
It is worth noting that when looting happens, it is often not carried out by the victims or the protesters. Disaster researchers point out that often it is those outside the community, including those ostensibly brought in to help, who loot. For instance, there is photographic evidence of police officers and members of the National Guard stealing TVs and cars during Katrina. In addition, during the Black Lives Matter protests, many of the police officers said that some of the looting was carried out by individuals who were not interested in the cause of social justice. In fact, these individuals were often criticised by those within the movement. Yet Katrina’s victims and the BLM protesters were usually the ones blamed, leading to negative portrayals of the groups as a whole and discrediting their cause and needs.
In the case of Hurricane Katrina, portraying victims in a particularly unsympathetic way made it easier to shift some of the blame for the suffering onto them. It raises a variety of questions: had there been no looting or crime, could the government have done more? Why didn’t these people evacuate when the order was given? However, these questions distract from the reality that New Orleans Mayor Nagin chose to end search and rescue efforts in an attempt to prevent looting, which was minimal, and many residents did not have the time or resources to evacuate with such short notice. When people are treated as violent criminals rather than as victims, they are seen as the problem and their choices are more widely criticised.
As Solnit notes in the forward of the book added in 2020, it has become far less common to discredit victims of natural disasters by accusing them of looting. However, they are often still portrayed negatively, from being judged for not evacuating during Hurricane Ian and other storms to a 2018 article in the Guardian that said Hurricane Michale victims were ‘reaping what they sowed’ for electing climate change deniers. Arguments that imply or state outright that victims of natural disasters are in some way deserving of their suffering lack basic empathy and unhelpfully reframe the disaster as a series of poor choices made by individual victims. This means that any concerns or issues they raise are taken less seriously, and it becomes easier for governments to blame their population for the inadequacies of their responses and they might be less likely to receive the donations they desperately need.
This does not only affect the public though. The myths can also be used to discredit those perceived to be their allies. The 2020 protests are a quintessential example of this. Republicans consistently linked the looting and violence with the Democratic party, which has been far more supportive of the movement for police reform and ensuring racial justice. Republicans have historically attacked Democrats for being ‘soft on crime’ and they used the 2020 protests as evidence for that claim. The effects of this discrediting can last for years as just two months ago VP-elect JD Vance attacked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for ‘actively encouraging rioters who burned down Minneapolis.’ In this way, exaggerating reports of violence and looting can serve as a weapon to delegitimize political opponents at the expense of ordinary citizens.
Distracting the public and discrediting the victims clearly serve the interests of those in power, but when narratives of crime incite violence, everyone suffers and often this happens in a very foreseeable way. Presenting victims as violent and needing to be controlled implicitly justifies violence against them, both by their governments and by their fellow citizens. A Paradise in Hell documents how allegations of looting often lead the government to overreact and authorise police officers or soldiers to use deadly force. She finds evidence for this as early as 1906 when, following the San Francisco earthquake, the mayor publicly called for anyone engaged in looting to be killed on sight. This occurred in New Orleans as well and there are documented cases of police officers shooting unarmed civilians that were not engaged with looting. The most infamous was the Danzinger case where two civilians were killed; one was a minor and the other was mentally disabled.
Similar rhetoric was deployed during the 2020 protests. Most notably, Donald Trump tweeted that ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’ encouraging law enforcement to punish theft with death. Data from 2020 indicates that law enforcement was more likely to use force than protesters (in about 5 per cent of protests police deployed tear gas and rubber bullets versus the 3 per cent of protests that were violent. For comparison, this occurred only 1 per cent of the time in other demonstrations). It is difficult to directly attribute this difference in police treatment to the narratives of looting, especially considering the protests were directly tied to police brutality. However, it’s highly unlikely that it played no role, considering the way law enforcement was encouraged by the president of the United States to respond forcefully to looting. If officers believed that violence was much more widespread than it was, they might have been more prone to pre-emptively respond violently.
Yet it is not only the police who these allegations affect. Fear-mongering about looting also encourages vigilantism. Solnit chronicles how some New Orleans citizens stockpiled weapons, nominally to protect them and their property from looters. She found that in the weeks after Katrina, many of these people openly bragged about shooting other people who they believed to be looters, despite admitting that they had very little evidence for that assumption. Similar behaviour can be seen during the George Floyd protests, the prime example being the Kyle Rittenhouse case where a minor armed with a semi-automatic weapon shot and killed two men at a protest in Wisconsin. He was later acquitted but said he had bought the weapon in order to protect private property.
Stories have power and when lies and gross exaggerations are allowed to flourish there can be devastating consequences. This is only exacerbated during crisis periods. In 2005 and again in 2020, politicians often benefited from narratives of mass looting and violent crime because they distracted from their own shortcomings, at least temporarily. However, it is at the expense of victims and protesters who are discredited and sometimes experience violence as a result of these exaggerations. While looting and violence do sometimes occur in disasters, they are the exception, not the rule. Beware the next politician that cries looter.
Image Credit: Koshu Kunii/Upsplash
This article was originally published in OPR’s Issue 14: Fictions and Narratives.