5 Feet of Fury

Brazil’s Barbarians at the Mall

Jim Goad writes:

This led to at least a half-dozen malls in São Paulo obtaining court orders to block such future events, allowing them to station police and security guards outside who could bar entry to unaccompanied minors. This naturally led to cries of racism, discrimination, and accusations that Brazil was an “apartheid” state. Just as America’s civil-rights movement shat upon the idea that business owners should have the freedom to refuse service to whomever they choose, it was deemed a crime against humanity that wealthy mall owners should refuse to open their glass doors to hordes of ghetto rats who may not possibly have the best of intentions.

Once again: The “poor” are the rich Jesus warned you about — or just rich people with no money:

Its soundtrack is Funk Ostentação (“Ostentatious Funk”), a hip-hop hybrid that eschews gangsta rap’s criminality and measures social status according to how many designer labels you’re wearing rather than how many rivals’ corpses you piled up. It is music for poor people who pretend they’re rich, or who at least aren’t ashamed to admit they want to be rich. Thus, according to Marxist strictures, this would be a reactionary movement of the wannabe bourgeoisie. But just as with the hip-hop mindset, if they don’t score the Lamborghini and the dozen silicone-injected hos in bikinis, they can always blame a racist and oppressive capitalist system. It’s a tidy, self-contained loop that allows you to be an entrepreneur if you succeed and a socialist if you fail.