The oligarchs are overplaying their hand.
Noone expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.
Notice some other things: Kettling doesn’t work against prepared protesters. They broke the kettling attempts with bolt cutters. Notice the masks. These people have put some thought into what they’re doing.
Next step, next riots, if they keep thinking things through, will be systematic destruction of the CCTV system, taking out police stations, and occupation of the financial district.
Another quote:
In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”
“Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”
Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’
There are communities all over the country that nobody paid attention to unless there had recently been a riot or a murdered child. Well, they’re paying attention now.
What was that quote from someone whose named started with J? Something about those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable?
Don’t think this isn’t a big deal. This is a major capital. London is one of the world’s great cities and a hub of the financial system. And the rioters are showing it can be done, that if people fight the police rather than sitting passively, the police suddenly aren’t all-powerful.
Oh, and don’t take hope, a future and respect away from young men in large numbers. Smart oligarchies/aristocracies understand that you have to keep a certain number of the violent classes employed. Not for their sake, but for the oligarchs.
Mandos
Runaway first link.
I’m moving to Euroland real soon now. It may only be short-term. I won’t be directly in a major hotspot, but it will be interesting. If I manage to stay there longer, who knows how little my middling salary will be worth, or whether major xenophobia will arrive, and so on.
Ian Welsh
I think it’ll still be fun for you to live in Europe. We don’t get to choose the times we live in, but Europe will still be Europe.
Mandos
Yes, it will be fun, regardless of whether I have to high-tail it out of there at some point. At least I will get to see whether the foofy weakling pinkos of Auld Yurp live the impoverished lives projected upon them by right-wing talk radio…
Ghostwheel
The elite speak:
“Speaking from his Tuscan holiday villa, Prime Minister David Cameron – who has finally decided to return home to take charge – declared simply that the social unrest searing through the poorest boroughs in the country was “utterly unacceptable.” The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’”
How did it come to this?
Here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKFTtYx2OHc&playnext=1&list=PL29D6F135FBB29C46
Morocco Bama
I’m still in observation mode on the London “riots.” I’m combing through the news reports from all sources and withholding an analysis until more facts are gathered. As we saw in Toronto, violence during these protests is generally contrived as a false flag by the police, or those associated with the police, and in coordination with the police. I’m not saying that is the case here, but it’s prudent to consider it a possibility until all accounts have been gathered.
Lisa Simeone
Casting my lot with Morocco Bama.
I think you have to be careful in these situations and consider that there may be several things at work here. I’m not saying people aren’t legitimately angry, I’m not saying there isn’t a political element. But let’s not forget the possibility of what I call, for lack of a proper sociological term, the “asshole factor.”
There are people who like to fight. There are people who like to burn shit. There are people who like to punch other people. There are people who like to destroy. The fact that we have no problem acknowledging this when we’re talking about police brutality means we already know this. So let’s at least acknowledge it here.
soullite
Lisa, that may be true of some of them. However, the so-called ‘asshole factor’ you allude to just isn’t enough to cause something like this. In order for it to work, they have to be a minority of the group using the rest of them for cover. Otherwise, they would hold riots every weeked just for the lulz because they would have the numbers and incentive to do that every weekend.
If this is primarily the work of random assholes, why doesn’t it happen more often? Assholes don’t need reasons. Normal people need reasons.
Morocco Bama
Gotta love this:
http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/08/09/rims-blackberry-blog-hacked-after-it-cooperates-with-police-over-london-riots/?awesm=tnw.to_1AIlx&utm_campaign&utm_medium=tnw.to-other&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_content=twitter-publisher-other
Ian Welsh
The point is that the riots would not have happened if those people hadn’t been abandoned and fucked by society.
The non violent folks have ruled the roost for decades, and things have just gotten worse, what they think is less and less relevant. These people aren’t asking your permission.
Morocco Bama
I will reiterate my view, and that is, for me, the jury is still out until all the evidence is in on this one. I agree with you, Ian, that there will be repercussions for the pain the Elite are inflicting, and this may very well be one of those repercussions, but let’s also consider that what is going on in London is also very useful to the Elite. It could very well serve as a basis for enforcing a Police State, and this is precisely what the Elite want, and need, when they are gathering the last of the Golden Eggs. Remember the Reichstag fire and how it was used as a pretext to crack down and up the ante? I’m not saying that’s the case here, but it could be, and we have to be open to that possibility. Also, it doesn’t preclude any other natural “insurrections” from manifesting now, or in the future. If this is provoked from within the Deep State, they have to know there is an element of risk involved, meaning it could go native, and a tipping point is reached, a rubicon is crossed, at which point they no longer have control. A sure sign of that will be when the “rioters” burn Buckingham Palace to the ground and put a dagger, one of many that will be needed, through the heart of the Windsors, once and for all. We all know the saying, in fact you mentioned it several posts back, and that is that when you play with fire, at some point, you’re going to get burned.
Morocco Bama
News just in. Obama will announce shortly that the U.S., in conjunction with NATO, will provide air and ground support to the London Rebels for the very same reasons he did so in Libya….and will soon do in Syria, as well.
Morocco Bama
Oh my.
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/08/shoot-on-sight.html
Ian Welsh
They have been increasing the police state for decades. You use excuses to move up the timetable of what you wanted to do anyway.
Ian Welsh
If they start using real bullets, then the reaction of some of the rioters will be to go underground and come back with real explosives and real bullets.
Z
These London riots are great news and more important to the u.s. in regards to domestic policy than the Arab revolutions or the Greece riots. But we are a lot less cohesive than the Brits are and we are nowhere near as progressed in defying the elites as they are. We aren’t just in need of a spark, we don’t even have the kindling arranged yet.
Z
Petro
@Z:
Not saying you’re wrong, but often the appearance of kindling is just as surprising as the source of the spark…
Petro
@Z:
I will say this, though – with our armed 30-percenters, I’ll bet the PTB on this side of the pond can count on some civilian pushback. The FOX/Tea Party propaganda has that crowd angrier now than those “silent majority” hardhats that clashed with the street back in the ’60’s, and it would be easy to manipulate them into scapegoating the DFH’s once again.
Badtux
People who have something to lose don’t riot. You don’t see riots starting in The Hamptons. Just sayin’. Something the UK oligarchs apparently forgot. And which ours seem to have forgotten too, in their confidence that Americans are too soft, too weak, too cowardly to ever do something like that.
If the current reliance upon the Austerity Fairy (see photo on my blog) to provide jobs continues, however, they may learn different. When there is a sizable population with nothing to lose, nothing good happens.
– Badtux the Pragmatic Penguin
Morocco Bama
When there is a sizable population with nothing to lose, nothing good happens.
That’s my nightmare vision of the future. A large population with both, nothing to lose and nothing to gain.
Z
Petro,
Oh, there’s plenty of kindling. The point that I was trying to make was that it’s not arranged … coordinated …. yet to set off a bonfire. The Brits had already had some large, civilly disobedient demonstrations prior to these riots (Hell, they even got reasonably close to Prince Charles). I haven’t seen anything like that yet in the u.s.
But, then again, maybe the once the spark is hit, the kindling will come.
Z
Petro
Ah – the “Field of Dreams” hypothesis. 🙂
Morocco Bama
Ah – the “Field of Dreams” hypothesis. 🙂
Burn it, and they will come.
I predicted that misdirected violence would rule the day, and that is quickly what the London protests have devolved into. It makes no sense, accomplishes nothing positive, and in fact only hurts yourself, to vandalize and loot small businesses in your own haunts. The irony is that the Elites have condemned a generation, with its recent cuts, to this very same fate. Using Groo’s Zoo analogy, now they will get their popcorn and sit back and watch the comedy because it’s not affecting them in the least. The violence is self-inflicted. They couldn’t ask for anything more.
Hey idiots, instead of burning the corner liquor store and the charity down the street, why not Buckingham Palace for a change?
Notorious P.A.T.
How hilarious it is that part of Britain’s austerity program was to slash funding for police and other first responders.
http://gocl.me/pX7aVI
But at least budget-cutting turned their economy around. Errr…..
Ken Hoop
Don’t confuse race riots with anti-government or class riots, because if they are, the UK white working class will ultimately arrive at some very non-American prog PC solutions. “Ultimately” might mean a while away and after significant loss, but it will come.
Fortress Around Your Heart
Yeah, Ken, gotta watch out for those Limeys. They woulda put Stephen Hawking to death if he’d been born there, doncha know.
StewartM
That says it all, doesn’t it, about the effectiveness of the “show up and protest” strategy?
Though I agree with Morocco Bama:
I hate to say this, but this is what happens when the leadership of “the left” swears off forever the use of violence no matter what. Eventually the rage breaks out as violence anyway, but when it does it’s directed at the nearest targets or opportunity, people who are usually victims too. Or it gets turned against traditionally unpopular minorities of one ilk or another. It ends ups as mindless violence because there are no minds directing it.
I wholeheartedly agree that such violence is counterproductive. It turns popular opinion in favor of more repression.
But on the other hand, burning a few banks could have quite a different effect. To be effective, such violence would have to be directed so that only the guilty are affected or get hurt and ordinary people would be spared. That’s what I believe the Right really fears, because popular opinion might cheer it rather than condemn it.
StewartM
StewartM
Notorious P.A.T:
Happening in the US too. I have noticed that too.
What, don’t the elites realize that those with lots of property need police protection more than those without?
-StewartM
skuppers
I read an article this morning in the Norwegian paper, Aftenposten, that described the spark for the unrest as a peaceful protest after the shooting Mark Duggan, father of 4, by the police last Thursday. I then read the Wash Post article on it this morning where they described Mark Duggan, a black man, was shot by police in a shootout. And I though, wtf, bunch of race-baiters! How does adding “black man” add anything to the story? The sub-text, in my opinion, is that black man + shout-out equals justified killing and the uppity black protesters are just pissed that one of their degenerate lot got offed, so they burn and loot. Sure enough, the comments section didn’t disappoint and t was full of the race-haters and bigots: “ah yes, multiculturalism.” “multiculturalism at its finest.” and “THEY ARE IN LARGE NUMBERS,BLACKS AND NORTH AFRICAN MUSLIM ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. ” Some of the screeds are just atrocious. The WP has since scrubbed the story and removed the “black man” description.
The german papers, norwegian, swedish, even the bbc describe him as a man, full stop. So I guess that my point is why the hell must we, in the U.S., view every social issue through the lens of race, and why are we such a racist bunch of mother fuckers.
Badtux
Skubbers, don’t think that Britain is any bastion of racial harmony. Whilst it is now illegal to discriminate upon the basis of race thanks to EU Parliament dictates finally placed into law, it is a law observed more in theory than in practice. Brits still don’t have any problem with a spot of Paki-bashing after their local footballers lose (substitute racial group of choice for Paki in the prior). It’s considered rather sporting in certain (thuggish) circles, actually.
For Britain to fix the issues that led to this rioting would require either a) a time machine to go back and un-elect Margaret Thatcher and her fixing of the class stratification in Britain into stone, or b) much hard work resolving those issues today, which would require Brits who are not of the lower classes to admit that class is a significant issue and that opportunity must be provided for all or the results will not be good (note that Britain is the only 1st world nation with less opportunity than the United States — in every other 1st world nation, you have a greater chance of arriving at the middle classes if born in the lower classes). But in my experience talking with ordinary middle-class Brits about class, the typical reaction is “tosh, you know those lower classes simply lack the drive / intelligence / whatever to succeed.” Apparently the Netherlands, Norway, etc. have more intelligent lower classes? That’s all I can conclude based upon such comments…
– Badtux the Class Penguin
Ken Hoop
Fortress
I’m not a fan of Darwinian evolutionists anyway. And Jack London, who meant well.
The segment of the multicult Left which helped drive the working class of our founding ethnic core into the Reaganite camp, not so much.
An English analogue.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/07/blue-labour-rapid-rise-and-faster-fall.html