Property is theft. ‘Microstalking’ is all the rage.
When does showing up at someone’s house to take pictures become an act of political protest? The Washington Free Beacon is calling this microstalking, and it describes the phenomenon of people accosting pampered elites outside their fancy homes and asking them to explain why they openly justify criminal acts—from shoplifting to murder—in the name of social justice.
On Thursday, a Daily Mail reporter and photographer camped outside the $2.2 million Brooklyn brownstone belonging to Jia Tolentino, a 37-year-old author and New Yorker staff writer. Tolentino lost her cool when asked about her comments during a New York Times gabfest with Hasan Piker, the radical beefcake influencer. The discussion centered on why shoplifting and other crimes were appropriate acts of political protest.
“I can’t believe you came to my f—king house!” Tolentino seethed when the Daily Mail reporter approached outside her five-bedroom house in the desirable Clinton Hill neighborhood. The Daily Mail journalist, who was also engaged in a popular new form of political protest, described the encounter as “exceptionally hostile.”
Tolentino refused to comment on the Times interview, in which she bragged about stealing from Whole Foods on “several occasions” and “didn’t feel bad about it at all.” She also praised “property destruction” as a valid form of “direct action” to protest injustice and appeared to downplay the severity of Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who Tolentino argued was “universally understood” to be guilty of “social murder” and “structural violence.”
Whereas shoplifting or other forms of theft were not “very significant as a moral wrong” in her view, Tolentino argued that drinking iced coffee from a plastic cup was “profoundly selfish” and “immoral.” She went on to suggest that blowing up oil pipelines should be “valorized” rather than condemned. The privileged homeowner also said private schools should be “mostly illegal” and promised to “cheer on” thieves who steal priceless artwork from the Louvre.
The Times interview, published under the headline “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I,” generated widespread backlash from across the political spectrum. Liberal journalist Jill Filipovic said the conversation made her “incredibly sad” because it glamorized the “total breakdown of any moral code.” Contrarian podcaster Katie Herzog noted that she also used to shoplift and considered it a “good and righteous thing” until she “turned 15.”
The author of two best-selling essay collections, Tolentino purchased the magnificent four-story (plus basement) brownstone with her husband, architect Andrew Daley, for $2.2 million in 2023. The property has a current estimated value of $2.8 million. Tolentino has yet to weigh on the moral righteousness of burglarizing or vandalizing her home to make a political statement about income inequality or the hypocrisy of urban elites. She also owns a cabin in upstate New York, public records show.
Piker, who also condoned theft and expressed sympathy for Mangione in the Times interview, bought a five-bedroom pad in Los Angeles for $2.7 million in 2021.
According to many experts, showing up outside the home of a wealthy urban leftist who supports crime and asking them to explain themselves is a bit of harmless fun that anyone can enjoy in their spare time. It’s on the verge of becoming a trend. Earlier this year, New York Post journalists confronted Cea Weaver, the controversial housing aide to Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.), outside her Brooklyn apartment.
Weaver, who has called homeownership a “failed public policy” and “weapon of white supremacy,” broke down in tears when asked about the $1.6 million home her mother, a professor at Vanderbilt University, owns in Nashville. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and New York University, Weaver wrote in 2018 that the goal of elected officials should be to “impoverish the *white* middle class.”
If your primary motivation for political protest is irrational hatred of corporations, another morally acceptable form of direct action would be stealing copies of the New Yorker—or Vogue, GQ, Glamour, Vanity Fair, and so on—from a local independent bookstore. Those publications are owned by the media conglomerate Condé Nast, which is overseen by Anna Wintour, the notoriously pretentious fashionista and longtime Democratic donor who raised more than $500,000 for Barack Obama’s reelection campaign.
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