Disentangling criminality from social protest
August 10th, 2011 § 5 Comments
by Wasseem El Sarraj
Satnavs, big TV’s and box-fresh trainers it was all up for grabs. Blackberry’s lit-up alerting peeps to the free shit they could get. Yeah, free shit!
Free shit, smashing shit-up and saying fuck da police. Mental.
Why? Why do people chose to do this? Why does this happen in England and not Sweden? Why were they smashing up big-stores and not political institutions? Why is the most serious disturbance of public order ever seen in England happening now? Do riots just happen? Is inequality a permanent feature of our society?
The Tories will say it’s not the cuts. The Labor party will say it is the cuts. Both will remain impotent to market forces. Boris will want more policemen. Middle England will want to ship the vermin to Somalia. The Police will want better weapons and more equipment. The left will revel and, unlike the looters, leave empty handed.
As citizens we must not remove or extricate ourselves from the realities of our society and communities. If we want to live in a safe, inclusive, dignified and fair society we have to first think about what that means, we have to ask for it, and we have to be willing to make sacrifices for it. We cannot just wish it from the comfort of an organic cafe.
Our collective responsibility in the aftermath of the last few days is to disentangle criminality from the consequences of living in an unfair, unjust and unequal society.
Wasseem El Sarraj is a British/Palestinian writer who has written for Foreign Policy, Huffington Post and Open Democracy.
“Why were they smashing up big-stores and not political institutions?”
Perhaps because, as in America, the big stores (corporations) ARE the political institutions that wield oppressive power over the rest of us.
Symbolically I’d agree with George’s comment. But I don’t think the looting is a conscious ‘fuck-you’ to corporations and big business. It is however a product of the powerlessness that has been a major feature in most of these youths lives. This looting is beautiful, not in the sense of it’s criminality, but as social protest. Good post, making that distinction is important. These people, youths, whomever, are taking back the power into their own hands. Let them make some decisions for once. Democracy died in the West a long time ago (if you aren’t counting Election days- which are bloody well useless), and finally we are seeing the results of this.
I think we also need to recognise that these young people live in a world where “looting” the system is a normative action, modelled from the top. Some of those very politicians who now decry as “sick” and “criminal” what we are seeing on the streets, have had to write cheques and pay back the money they themselves looted from a lax expenses system. CEOs are also looting the system as they feather-bed their own retirement whilst slashing future prospects for the workforce. Bankers have smashed-and -grabbed to their hearts’ content, with total impunity. And that’s before we think of the plundering of private messages, the tax evaders and avoiders and the subtle theft embodied in the Civil List. Scarce wonder then that these young people think themselves sanctioned to do the same, albeit in a much more crude and obvious manner.
So whilst I understand the impetus of the last contributor who says the “looting is beautiful” and is an expression of social protest and even power, it could also be argued that what’s happening now suggests that the values of turbo capitalism, which licence self-aggrandisement at any cost, have permeated and corrupted society from top to bottom – that’s a more despairing view, but may have some validity too.
Those riots are about few snatched hours of dignity. “Free shit” is about joining the “haves”. Unless this is understood, nothing is understood.
interesting and this is not aimed at you…but thought sparked…but in seeing all the sly associations by journalists with sensational imagery…destructive violent imagery,to be precise, with headlines yelling ‘Anarchy’
Is it not more accurate to say that this riot is a social response to a dysfunctional imperial democracy which seeks obedience from antisocial sycophants who describe oppressive depravity, degradation as order and this order as peace?
Only thing i can limitedly tell as anarchial in its character is perhaps in the current of its aspiring cries. should it be characterised as Violence, well violence in its immediate and in its continuance is a form of opressive governance which is antithetical to anarchy.
Anarchy seems would require a highly functioning society one of empathetic people responding to complex psychic physical holistic needs of people, beings environment.. careful socialization reciprocty.
to associate anarchy with violence via what is being described as riot/protest/insurrection is outrageous when it is actually so called society and democracy which is failed in this situation, producing violence on a much greater scale in its daily operation which these actions responded to in opposition.
This is like associating the violent destruction of Baghdad and it’s House of Knowledge with Islam and not some precarious condition of imperial crusading democracy or high tech conglomeration of war