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Home » The rioters: Hey, they’re depraved on account they’re deprived

The rioters: Hey, they’re depraved on account they’re deprived

The New Neo Posted on by

This piece by Seumas Milne in the Guardian is typical of the way the left looks at the riots and their causes:

…[W]here exactly did the rioters get the idea that there is no higher value than acquiring individual wealth, or that branded goods are the route to identity and self-respect?

While bankers have publicly looted the country’s wealth and got away with it, it’s not hard to see why those who are locked out of the gravy train might think they were entitled to help themselves to a mobile phone. Some of the rioters make the connection explicitly. “The politicians say that we loot and rob, they are the original gangsters,” one told a reporter. Another explained to the BBC: “We’re showing the rich people we can do what we want.”

Most have no stake in a society which has shut them out or an economic model which has now run into the sand.

Reactions to the riots have highlighted some of the major differences between left and right. To the former, (a) the poor are never responsible, even for their own bad decision and actions; (b) the rich are always responsible, even for the bad actions of others; and (c) there is no problem that can’t be solved by more social services and/or income redistribution. The right, of course, has a very different idea of personal responsibility—to them, it’s actually personal—and believes the welfare state has been part of the problem, because it helps take away the idea of personal responsibility, dampens initiative, and leads to a sense of unjustified entitlement.

The argument makes me think of this number from the 50s, the song “Gee Officer Krupke” from the musical “West Side Story”. As I watch it now, these “juvenile delinquents” seem as archaic and outdated as the term itself, and nearly as tame as a bunch of Eagle Scouts. As they mock all the excuses made for them by supposedly well-meaning authorities, I note that there are fashions in these things: the bulk of the explanations back then had less to do with not enough money being spent on them and more to do with familial dysfunction, although the song does feature the famous line “Hey—I’m depraved on account I’m deprived!,” which pretty much summarizes Seumas Milne’s article:

Theodore Dalrymple offers a corrective to reasoning such as Milne’s. He even uses that word “deprived” [hat tip: commenter “Denise”]:

The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice. It believes itself deprived (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class), even though each member of it has received an education costing $80,000, toward which neither he nor””quite likely””any member of his family has made much of a contribution; indeed, he may well have lived his entire life at others’ expense, such that every mouthful of food he has ever eaten, every shirt he has ever worn, every television he has ever watched, has been provided by others. Even if he were to recognize this, he would not be grateful, for dependency does not promote gratitude. On the contrary, he would simply feel that the subventions were not sufficient to allow him to live as he would have liked.

At the same time, his expensive education will have equipped him for nothing. His labor, even supposing that he were inclined to work, would not be worth its cost to any employer””partly because of the social charges necessary to keep others such as he in a state of permanent idleness, and partly because of his own characteristics.

[NOTE: Here are the original lyrics to the Officer Krupke song from the play, slightly different from those in the movie. Also, rumor has it that the song was originally supposed to end with “Fuck you!” rather than the rather tepid “Krup you!,” but it wasn’t allowed in those oh-so-innocent days.]

Comments

The rioters: Hey, they’re depraved on account they’re deprived — 25 Comments

  1. “Reactions to the riots have highlighted some of the major differences between left and right. To the former, (a) the poor are never responsible, even for their own bad decision and actions”

    Weren’t you the one who linked to the Dawkins piece suggesting the absurdity of punishing anyone for anything?

    The “Null hypothesis” (as the scientifically minded progressivist crew like to say) is that we are all fleshy machines.

    Now, we don’t kick machines, a car for example, for acting in ways we don’t like, nor do we punish them for behaving as if they had misdirected an imaginary faculty the superstitious continue to call “free will”.

    Get with the program please … it’s a new paradigm.

  2. Here’s a headline you’ll probably never see: Riots in Singapore!

    Gotta be a lesson buried in there somewhere …

  4. This is one reason I left the Democrat party many, many years ago. I do not envy someone because they have more than I, nor do I pity someone because they have less. We all must play the hand we’re dealt. Some of us start with a better hand some of start with a worse hand, and some of us play our hand better or worse.

    What many people fail to understand though, is that this anti-rich class warfare is played to every rung of the economic ladder. While you are looking up the ladder and thinking those people above me are “rich,” someone below you is looking up at YOU and thinking that you are “rich.”

    So when the left is talking about taxing the rich and redistributing their wealth, make no mistake, they’re talking about you and your wealth, however modest it may be.

  5. I linked to the Officer Krupke lyrics. Sondheim did an excellent job on the lyrics, as did Bernstein in fitting a tune to the lyrics.

    I believe I saw West Side Story in movie form only once- and never the musical. That decades later I can come close to reciting the lyrics, though I haven’t heard the song that much since then, is testimony to the power of the Officer Krupke lyrics.

  6. I note that there are fashions in these things: the bulk of the explanations back then had less to do with not enough money being spent on them and more to do with familial dysfunction

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    becuase then the goal was destruction of family, AFTER that changed when stalin noticed the liberated and feminist stuff caused genocide, he switched it.. and so we switched… we then tried to make new soviet woman, who can do it all, be political, etc..

    you can read it at the links i gave to the wiki on it
    but why bother?

    Everyone wants fantasy, not reality…
    even those claiming to want empiricism and merit…

    also, the idea that its FASHION would be to say that nazism was a faddish thing from fashion, and not constructed by steeping the people in a weltanschauungand forming the zeitgeist for them..
    an applying Gliechshaltung methods within academia!

    as in the links i gave, they point out that this negative action, has a definite outcome… and known for a long time…

    whose IDEAS are these?
    if they are original, why do they parallel the direction of the communism of the time and not their own thing?

    who wrote West Side Story?
    Jerome Robbins…

    what do you know about him? as much as you knew about nina simone and her desire for a totalitarian state?

    All about Jewish theater website review:
    From Stravinsky to the Sharks – Jerome Robbins :His Life, His Theatre, His Dance.

    Jerome Robbins :His Life, His Theatre, His Dance.
    By Deborah Jowitt.
    Illustrated. 619 pp.
    Simon & Schuster. $40.

    She does, however, trenchantly reveal Robbins’s relationship with his own beliefs.

    Between 1943 and 1947 he was a member of the Communist Party.

    As for many American Communists, the aftereffects of that participation were more significant than the party itself. When Robbins was scheduled to appear on Ed Sullivan’s television show in 1950, its sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, forced him to cancel. Robbins went to the F.B.I. to clear his name; the tactic failed, and Ed Sullivan publicly urged the House Un-American Activities Committee to subpoena Robbins, who fled to Paris.

    so is it any wonder that he knew the FASHION to insert into things? all you have to know about the facts here is that the CPUSA then was claimed to not be under russias control… we later found out that is false.

    so AGAIN… you can find direct ties to the successful

    makes you wonder if they are successful because they are what they are, or are they socialist affirmative action projects? where the fame is constructed… as in payola?

    the idea that these ideas can be read in papers having to do with the “the jewish question”, “the woman question”, and the question of how western civilization would be deconstructed by doing what to the women who keep the culture fires going?

    Robbins named the person who had recruited him into the Communist Party, and also gave the names of various actors, playwrights and critics who were party members. Committee members thanked him for his cooperation; as Jowitt writes, one of them, Gordon Scherer, said he ”was going to see ‘The King and I’ that very night and would now appreciate it all the more.” In this instance, Jowitt does well by elucidating the facts without commentary. None is needed. This horrific information, imparted with effective restraint, becomes the turning point of the narrative — as it was of Robbins’s life.

    Years after giving those names, Robbins wrote: ”It was my homosexuality I was afraid would be exposed I thought. It was my once having been a Communist that I was afraid would be exposed. None of these. I was & have been — & still have terrible pangs of terror when I feel that my career, work, veneer of accomplishments would be taken away (by HUAC, or by critics) that I panicked & crumbled & returned to that primitive state of terror — the facade of Jerry Robbins would be cracked open, and behind everyone would finally see Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz.” What he had sensed of himself at 16 had been borne out.

    But the former Jerry Rabinowitz was a desperate man. When he won two Academy Awards for the film of ”West Side Story,” he put the Oscars in his basement and declared that the coveted statuettes had ”no faces, no fingers . . . no nothing. . . . They’re bland like Hollywood, they’re gold and glued over.” Jowitt makes clear that Robbins did not think much more highly of himself.

    anyone care to compare him to obamas mentor and potential abuser? ie. when they were done with him, what happened?

    his last work, remained unfinished and featured communist show trials…

    Jerome Robbins never finished ”The Poppa Piece.” In 1992, six years before he died, he wrote, ”Maybe I can’t — will never find a satisfying release from the guilt of it all.”

    Mamet at least had a chane to change
    so did langston huges… and richard wright
    and bella dodd, and, well, who cares, no?

    still think its FASHION to compromise your work for the partly line… and then wonder, was it the party, or you for the rest of your life?

    was it the party or the talent of frank Marshall Davis?
    how about others?

    he was just following the party line that heterosexual family was the cause of all the ills… and racism too..
    ligitimized thorugh shakespeare.

    but like obama’s nobel prize, did he win because how good it really was, or did he win because everyone in the know, knew to do for the cause what they did in their own lives?

    is this why there are very few actors and directors and such who are on the right of the political spectrum?

  7. and before you say something

    Arthur Laurents

    Although Laurents remembers his undergraduate years with little affection, they were formative. As assistant editor and drama critic of the Daily Sun, he wrote regularly about topics that interested him. As a member of the liberal-socialist American Student Union, he gained firsthand experience with progressive politics and red-baiting. He also met Fannie Price ’37, the frizzy-haired Young Communist Leaguer, whom he would later make the model for Katie Morosky, the heroine of his film The Way We Were. In 1937 Laurents attended the peace strike organized by the Young Communist League, which featured placards calling for “Peace at Any Price, Except Fannie Price.”

    remember the innocents clubs were about using those opposed to X to get them with stalin?

  8. “”someone below you is looking up at YOU and thinking that you are “rich.”
    T

    Exactly

    I bet the typical Hatian would like to choke the **** out of our blackberry totin, x box playin, air condidtion addicted, obese poverty stricken.

  10. Party in crisis (1956—1989)
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA

    The 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Secret Speech of Nikita Khrushchev to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

    20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_Party_Congress

    criticizing Stalin had a cataclysmic effect on the previously Stalinist majority membership CPUSA

    Many of these critics were elements on both U.S. coasts who would come together to form the Progressive Labor Movement in 1961. Progressive Labor would come to play a role in many of the numerous Maoist organizations of the mid-1960s and early 1970s. Jack Shulman, Foster’s secretary, also played a role in these organizations; he was not expelled from the CP, but resigned. In the 1970s, the CPUSA managed to grow in membership to about 25,000 members, despite the exodus of numerous Anti-Revisionist and Maoist groups from its ranks.
    See also: New Communist Movement and Progressive Labor Party

    The Progressive Labor Party (originally the Progressive Labor Movement and often referred to as PL) is a transnational communist party based primarily in the United States. It was formed in the fall of 1961 by members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) who felt that the Soviet Union had betrayed communism and become revisionist and state capitalist. Founders also felt that the CPUSA was adopting unforgivably reformist positions, such as peaceful coexistence, turning to electoral politics and hiding communist politics behind a veneer of reform-oriented causes.

    An overview of the Communist Party’s current ideology can be found in the near-definitive report, “Reflections on Socialism”, by Sam Webb, the Party’s national chair. The article explains the Party’s support for a democratic, anti-racist, anti-sexist, immediate left-wing change for the United States. The report also covers the fall of the Socialist Bloc, claiming that democracy was not sufficiently developed in these countries. The report states that, “On the one hand, socialism transformed and modernized backward societies, secured important economic and social rights, assisted countries breaking free of colonialism, contributed decisively to the victory over Nazism, constituted by its mere presence a pressure on the ruling classes in the capitalist world to make concessions to their working classes and democratic movements, and acted as a counterweight to the aggressive ambitions of U.S. imperialism for nearly fifty years.” The report stresses its dedication to revolutionary struggle, but states that Americans should look for peaceful revolutionary change. Webb says that capitalism cannot solve problems such as economic stagnation, racism, gender discrimination, or poverty. The report explains that there will be many transitory stages from capitalism, to socialism, and finally to communism. On the issue of markets in a socialist society, Webb states, “Admittedly, market mechanisms in a socialist society can generate inequality, disproportions and imbalances, destructive competition, downward pressure on wages, and monopoly cornering of commodity markets — even the danger of capitalist restoration. But this is not sufficient reason for concluding that markets have no place in a socialist economy.”

    and to note as far as beliefs now:
    While some governments run by people calling themselves Communists have been responsible for horrible acts of violence and repression, notably the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, much if not most of the violence often blamed on revolutionary governments and parties is actually the responsibility of the conservative, reactionary, capitalist governments and parties. … Many revolutions have been relatively peaceful, including the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Vietnamese Revolution of 1945 . The bloodshed comes when those formerly in power initiate a civil war, or foreign armies invade, trying to reestablish capitalist, feudal, or colonial power. …While we think that an objective, detailed analysis of most situations over the last century would conclude that capitalist and reactionary governments and parties are responsible for most of the violence, it is true that Communists have engaged in armed struggle, are not pacifists, and that some who called themselves Communists have engaged in repressive tactics. CPUSA FAQ. Accessed online 29 August 2006.

    its amazing how what we are living through now was talked about and designed and you can even read it…

    but i guess no one wants to know how the story ends so they wont read and spoil the movie… play…

  11. there is a reason why the academics bear the brunt of being selected for their ideas, and raised up for them to create the appearance of consensus…

    Pointy-Headed British Liberals Side With the Rioters

    [W]hile Mothercare burned to the ground and female fire-fighters were dragged from their vehicles and punched insensible, a number of leftist anti-cuts groups announced their “solidarity” with the thugs, thieves and predators.

    “London,” we learn, “is the world’s biggest Black Bloc.”

    While student “activist,” chronic liar and Independent blogger Jody McIntyre was busy using his new media profile to urge further rioting and arson. No doubt the Indie, the Guardian and the New Statesman will be swollen with pride at the doings of their latest protégé.

    But remember, people.

    As the Guardian’s Priyamvada Gopal told us recently, setting fire to occupied buildings – resulting in this – isn’t “real” violence. Not when compared to “hypocritical language.” …

    Outside of the delinquent left, it’s hard to see gangs of predatory vermin – robbing passers-by, setting people’s homes on fire and assaulting the people trying to put those fires out – as particularly sympathetic or deserving of indulgence. …

    Nevertheless, readers may have noticed just how readily and persistently many of our leftist commentators have tried to hammer their default narrative onto events, regardless of the fit.

    Our glorious state broadcaster spent three days referring to muggers and arsonists as “protestors,” until finally embarrassed out of doing so.

    I heard one reporter asking a besieged resident, “Is this about the cuts? It’s about the cuts, isn’t it?” When the resident disagreed, the disappointment was audible.

    Those actually doing the thieving offered more revealing explanations.

    As one pair of female looters put it while drinking stolen wine: “Chucking bottles, breaking into stuff, it was madness… good though. Good fun. Free alcohol.”

    Obligingly, with prompting, the duo added a political dimension, of a sort: “It’s the government’s fault. I dunno… the Conservatives… yeah, whatever, whoever it is. We’re showing the police we can do what we want.”

    In the Guardian, the comical Nina Power – yes, her – once again wheeled out her rickety Marxist boilerplate.

    For our academic radical, the causes of the riots are “clear.” And they just happen to correspond with her own doctrinaire outlook.

    And so, eagerly, she casts the muggers, thieves and arsonists as the “dispossessed” fighting against “entitlement” and therefore deserving of our “understanding,” which in her case means projection, excuses and flattery.

    Yet these “dispossessed” souls seemed for the most part quite well kitted out and intent on possessing more. Say, by beating up pensioners, punching women and robbing children of their clothes.

    nation.foxnews.com/sites/nation.foxnews.com/files/styles/dv1/public/636_London_riots_strip.jpg

  13. Feds Called in to Curb Eastside Crime
    stlouis.cbslocal.com/2011/08/11/feds-called-in-to-curb-eastside-crime/

    The public housing complexes on the east side of the river might just be the deadliest places in the country, but efforts are underway to secure the area.

  15. file this under, people who hate the economy and want it to fail to prove a failed prophet from 1850, are not who you want in command positions to save the economy

    Europe Considers Ban on Short-Selling
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/business/global/europe-considers-ban-on-short-selling.html?_r=1

    how long before they cant pay the entitled enough or raise the cash for them and they go from doing stuff media can pretend to hide, to stuff no one can hide?

  16. Just wanted to note, as the author is one of my favorite bloggers, that Art’s last lengthy post is taken from http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2011/08/the-riots-summarised.html#more (Art, I assume you just forgot to include the citation.)

    I find myself increasingly depressed by the reactions of most of my left-leaning acquaintences. The British ones, in particular, seem unable or incapable of seeing past their seething hatred of the Tories; it is an article of faith amongst them that the riots are a protest against the current government and their cruel and unnecessary cuts (for it is also an article of faith that, whatever the financial situation of the UK may be, “the rich” could easily set it right, if only they were properly forced), and that if there truly is something wrong with British society, the fault lies, in some vague and unspecified way, with Thatcher.

  17. I think Iain Murray nailed it here:

    “…I think what we are seeing in Britain is a conflation of two liberal dreams – that of the 1960s, in which parenting and tradition went out the window, and that of the 2000s, in which self-help was replaced by easy credit, benefits, and an all-mighty “health and safety” bureaucracy – together with the unfinished nature of the Thatcher revolution. Mrs. T enabled economic Thatcherism but was unable to finish the project of what I termed social Thatcherism, whereby a free society recognized the importance of what once were called manners. The result is a feral underclass without any understanding of tradition from right or left….”

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/274118/londons-burning-iain-murray

  19. I think Milne’s question was good. His answer sucked. It is certainly not wealth alone that divides society into winners and losers. In fact, I would suggest that it is a lot of the cultural and academic elite who mock the traditional values of society who do the most damage to the young. When I was a kid, I’d heard of the Rockefellers and later the Kennedys, but they didn’t control my school curriculum or the TV programs I watched. Their wealth had no effect on the values I learned from my family, nor did it keep me from watching Lassie and Old Yeller.

    Today’s kids have to contend with sport and entertainment idols who tell them what is cool, and the newspapers (all those underpaid journalists) tell them about the latests fashions. It is not the super rich. How about the humble public servant John Kerry, who warned the young to study hard so they wouldn’t end up in Iraq? How about the educators who tell kids their country is exceptional mainly in its sins and thus should be oppsosed on all fronts. Then let’s not forget Obama and his friends at ACORN, who have long played the victim card.

    You can’t wipe out all of a culture’s traditional values and then place the blame on some geek who invented a new widget. But you can question all those who made fun of Palin’s college. And you can even question Bernstein for helping make the Panthers acceptable in “polite society,” thus launching the whole acting white BS.

    These people have been trying to buy indulgences for their sins with your money and mine.

  20. Most Americans would be surprised how unemployment benefits work in Britain. In the U.S. you must have been employed for some length of time before you qualify for unemployment benefits. Then they have a limited length of time. Normally that is 26 weeks. Currently there are some areas where benefits now run 99 weeks.

    In Britain you qualify for benefits as soon as you leave school, having never worked. The benefits continue indefinitely. This means that young people get in the habit of government checks very early and they feel no pressure to work. Their standard of living is directly tied to government decisions.

    In the U.S. there is a subtle movement towards a European system of unemployment compensation by the Democrats. They want to extend benefits indefinitely. That is a very bad idea.

  21. Artfldgr: actually, I know a great deal about Jerome Robbins and his politics.

    And when I wrote about Nina Simone and focused on her music, it was because I like her music, not because I was ignorant of her politics. I was not only aware of her politics, but I had personal experience of them. I mentioned in the Nina Simone post that:

    I saw her in concert a couple of times, and the last time (during the late 70s??) she expressed so much anger that the audience became visibly uneasy.

    Since the post was not about her politics, I didn’t go into the details of what that anger was about. It was about politics and racial anger. It was so unpleasant and disturbing and divisive that I never went to another concert of hers.

    Just because I don’t write about something or focus on it does not mean I am unaware of it.

    As far as the lyrics of “Gee Officer Krupke” go, I think it’s especially interesting that they express, in a general sense, what one could call a conservative or right-wing point of view. That is, the young men are mocking those who make excuses for them; it’s clear that they themselves don’t buy the excuses. And this despite the fact that the people who wrote “West Side Story” were on the left (Leonard Bernstein was known for his “radical chic” stupidity). I’m not sure about I have never read anything about the politics of Stephen Sondheim, who actually wrote the lyrics to that particular song, but it’s likely that he’s a liberal as well.

  22. West Side was written for popular consumption. It was a huge hit and made Bernstein and Sondheim lotsa bucks. One generally does not make lotsa bucks by selling what few want. Even Leftists get that. That was then, a cultural and political aeon ago. Progressive incrementalism takes the sand from the beach one grain at a time, so here we are today, with a barefoot hiphop party at the White House for Barak Hussein Obama, while Mormons, a Democratic surrogate for white middle class America, are demonized.

  23. “… when I wrote about Nina Simone and focused on her music, it was because I like her music, not because I was ignorant of her politics.”

    If we choose to focus on the ‘politics’ of actors, artists, composers, musicians, and so forth we deprive ourselves of much of art, theatre, and music. What a drab world that would be.

    I enjoy the music of Stephen Stills. If I judged his music by his politics I would be refusing to listen to the beauty of Blue Bird: http://tinyurl.com/3rdsrvc

    The love of my life has blue eyes and this is my favorite tune of all times. Dig the layers of guitar!

  24. George Pal Says:
    August 11th, 2011 at 4:07 pm

    DNW Says
    ‘Now, we don’t kick machines, a car for example, for acting in ways we don’t like,’

    Oh don’t we? ”

    Speaking of which, you would obviously enjoy, if you haven’t already seen it, Cleese’s “Clockwise”.

    In my estimation, it holds up, unlike say, the old Monty Python episodes.

    The scene where he tries to take his frustrations at running late out on the car he has driven into the middle of a muddy farm field in an attempt to gain time by taking a shortcut, is hilarious in the same way.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjeq0Fovno4

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