[Origen]

To threaten property, therefore, is not to threaten mere things; it is to threaten the prerogatives of owning classes’ most deeply held beliefs about themselves as autonomous, self-governing individuals. The visceral reaction to the destruction of real property in the course of protests is not an aversion to violence as much as it is a reaction to the existential implications of such an incursion. Its mere suggestion brings with it the threat of a wholesale disruption of the very basis of our current private-property- and market-centered system of political economy. A police station or a storefront is not property in and of itself, but it’s a synecdoche for property rights; a violation of those physical spaces is a reminder that the right to exclude can be traversed. It is also a reminder that private property itself is violent. Not metaphorically violent, but violently produced and violently enforced with violent consequences.