The New Neo

The other day I was talking with friend, comparing the present feeling of unrest to the turmoil of the late 60s. We agreed that both times were tumultuous, but she thought things were worse now. I said I wasn’t sure; maybe they were just different. Remember the assassinations and the cities burning with riots and racial tension? Much of the time it seemed like a major conflagration was imminent, although this turned out to not be true.

As you might imagine, we never resolved the issue. But I thought of the conversation again when I read about the riots in London.

Everyone is trying to figure them out. Are they racially-inspired, class-inspired, or just an eclectic bunch of destructive and marauding youths having a fine old time?

The rioters aren’t telling. The original riots began as an outgrowth of peaceful protests in Tottenham, a neighborhood in which 29-year-old Mark Duggan had been killed by police, but they escalated to seemingly random violence in Tottenham and many other areas around the city, in a bunch of copycat actions that appear to have been helped by coordination through social media.

But the fact that no one knows why this is happening doesn’t stop the left from analyzing the psyches of the rioters and telling us what’s really bothering them. Mary Riddell, for example, says it’s not a race thing:

The second alleged culprit is ethnicity. But, as David Lammy, Tottenham’s MP, has said, these are no race riots. The Eighties uprisings at Broadwater Farm, as in Toxteth and Brixton, were products, in part, of a poisonous racism absent in today’s Tottenham, where the Chinese grocery, the Turkish store and the African hairdresser’s sit side by side.

Perhaps that’s true; many have pointed out the diverse nature of the neighborhoods involved and of the rioters, although this writer draws attention to a history of racial unrest among Tottenham’s “Afro-Caribbean population.” Like many on the left, Riddell is blaming income inequality; the following statement—especially the phrase “creamed off”—expresses her assumption (typically shared by the left) that income is a zero sum game:

In the bubble of the 1920s, the top 5 per cent of earners creamed off one-third of personal income. Today, Britain is less equal, in wages, wealth and life chances, than at any time since then

Then there’s this by Nina Power, who mentions “the division between the entitled and the dispossessed.” “Dispossessed,” of course, implies that members of the underclass have had what should have rightfully been theirs confiscated by others. Her solution: Britain isn’t leftist enough; more income redistribution is needed.

Of course, as is so often the case with urban riots, the perpetrators aren’t doing what you think they’d do if Power’s thesis (protesting income inequality) were correct—although I suppose that stealing and looting is a crude form of income redistribution. But these “youths” are burning their own neighborhoods, which is so often the modus operandi for riots.

To many, these riots appear to be an expression of nothing more or less than lawlessness and mob vandalism. Labour MP Diane Abbott—who happens to be black, and who therefore might have more dispensation to tell the truth—called it this way:

Cuts don’t turn you into a thief. What we saw was people thieving for hours. Mr Umunna [another black Labour MP] said the violence in London was “totally opportunistic and utterly unacceptable.”

Although opportunistic, the rioters are quite organized all the same, getting in touch with each other by Blackberry and Twitter, and wearing masks to protect themselves from being identified later:

A…tweet said “come we go rob Mare Street Primark” while another said: “JD Spots [sic] Mare Street giving away tracksuits. Help your self..”

One user of the microblogging site wrote: “Chaos on Mare Street: police stand by doing nothing, whilst ”˜protesters’ steal from local shops. You should both be ashamed of yourselves.”

It’s not clear whether those police standing by are armed or not; some London police do bear arms, as the original provocation of the Duggan shooting demonstrates. But although firing on a crowd would be a shocking and extreme act (although some people in the comments section of British newspapers are angry enough at what’s occurring to advocate it), what’s wrong with tear gas or other similar crowd control techniques?

This article describes the police as powerless and outnumbered:

Many of the areas targeted last night seemed to have little police presence. But the violence and looting thrived even where riot officers were deployed as police appeared largely outnumbered and powerless to act…

Residents accused the police of abandoning them. Matthew Yeoland, 43, a teacher from Peckham, where property was set ablaze, said: “It’s like a war zone and the police weren’t doing anything. There were too many people and not enough police.”

The riots are so widespread that the police seem overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. Whether their hands are also tied by policy restrictions, or inadequate training, or both, is unclear from reports I’ve read. What is clear is that their response has failed to get the violence under any sort of control, and that law-abiding citizens are furious:

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, heard during a visit to Tottenham that locals felt police had deserted them. “There was nobody there to protect us,” one resident told him…

Police have already admitted that they had no choice but to allow looters to steal from high street shops on Saturday evening as they had to focus their attention on the dozens of burning buildings and rioting in Tottenham.

Former Met commanders said the riots were unprecedented in their sporadic and spontaneous nature.

Brian Paddick, the former deputy assistant police commissioner who was a sergeant during the Brixton riots in the 1980s said: “We have not faced this situation before.”

The general sense is of thing falling apart, the center not holding. I’m quoting the poem “The Second Coming” by Yeats, which I’ve quoted many times before here. It seems especially apropos now, so here’s the whole thing—again:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[ADDENDUM: They’re considering employing water cannons to subdue the crowds. But the London police are not trained in their use.]

[ADDENDUM II: This sort of thing reminds me of the following:

[ADDENDUM III: As always, Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club has much of interest to say.]