Fact is, let’s be historical about it. No one achieved anything against a massified power structure without breaking things. In a society that is like this: (this is a fantastic blog entry, great facts and details, not to mention a brilliant moral argument) http://nathanieltapley.com/2011/08/10/an-open-letter-to-david-camerons-parents/comment-page-7/#comment-1258

…well in a society like this, ‘breaking things’ when it’s done by the powerful, comes with arguments about ‘he’s suffered enough’ or ‘he didn’t mean it, honest, he only stole that money because he’s um, been just awfully tired, um, maybe’… while the arguments against poor or colored people destroying/stealing stuff tends to be: SCUM! 

Well there’s a third way to go about this. We all stick together and realize our so-called elites, who haven’t a thing to them that qualifies them for ‘elite’ status except birth in a certain neighborhood (I mean even fat old Hank the 8th with his 6 wives fought wars in his youthful years and was a scholar of Latin and composed some literary stuff… Ask Cameron to fight a war and he’ll piss himself most likely…) – yes, we realize these guys have to be destabilized, harassed constantly and then finally kicked off their high horse with a bootheel that hurts. By the people. And yes, before your reflex action of ‘yes, but haven’t all revolutions failed?’ kicks in, no. They have not. Every notion of personal dignity, self-respect that we take today for granted (including the indignation at this kind of ransacking which would have been routine if you were a peasant in 14th century Europe), is a result of previous – often failed – idealistic action. There are no perfect systems. History is an accretion of progresses made and barbarisms conquered. Just because abuse leaves its mark, that doesn’t mean you have to sit and take it forever.

The point I want to make here is that this rioting, like it or not, will provide a kind of sonic boom, a sound barrier, that may well define all future popular action against a phenomenally sick and putrid system of government and corporate cronyism. Yes indeed. If you look at history, there is always a movement that sets the trend, that sets limits within which all future movements then unfold and deploy their energies.

It took many such riots at public executions, flayings and so on from the king and his folks, for instance, for the French revolution to gain its momentum. The reason the Bastille was a symbol of the monarchy was that there had been a fairly decent history of popping peasant/urban-poor bones, ripping out shoulders and generally letting penniless folks rot in shit-caked prison cells which had increasingly pissed le peuple off. Today there is no peuple. Civil society just doesn’t carry the poetic punch of le peuple. And that’s where anger comes in. Anger is not only contagious, it follows rules. It flows like a river, but it has banks, eddies, and a general current and direction. Like any psychological process, it spontaneously creates rules and boundaries for itself. Usually in public movements, it is the extremists who set those boundaries, with outrageous, (almost) incomprehensible anger. Then that anger, weirdly enough, becomes generalized, it is assimilated within the population and even those who didn’t at first understand, begin to. And the fact of showing anger becomes acceptable. Accepted. Necessary. Inevitable.

These riots are a show of anger. Destruction is part of showing anger, ransacking is a part of displaying power. Ransacks were a part of war conduct for a long time. Arguably, even the dropping of nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the Dresden bombing, were ransacks, since they occurred after it was clear the enemy was defeated.

Pride and its rituals are a part of power and its inevitable enactments. As Foucault points out, the highly public dismemberment of the prisoner in the old days was exactly one such display of power. The police that we are taught to fear are its modern version, their uniforms reminding us of the faceless immensity of the State that watches us and will punish us if (and when) we screw up. It is precisely this facelessness that rioters aim for. That they destroy regardless of whose business they’re wrecking is not baffling, it is fundamental to the enactment. It is a display of their power. It is the destruction of a massified visible structure that is usually beyond their control, a display of power over surroundings they do not usually have access to, except as passive consumers.

And of course, this is what pisses the good folk off the most. Displays of power are accessible only to the wealthy and privileged in our phenomenally indoctrinated societies. Ashton Kutcher can earn 700,000 dollars an episode for a dumb tv show he makes, but when any subset of the poor or working class asks for a raise in minimum wage or benefits, the arguments pour in about how industry isn’t about charity, how you should earn your daily wage by the sweat of your brow and so on. Right.

The fact that this argument is accepted by most of us shows how stuck we are in preposterous so-called principles no sane man who isn’t drunk, afraid or dreaming would accept.

We are stuck. We’re stuck in so many ways it’s impossible to delineate. But we are very soon going to have unstick ourselves. We’re going to have to learn to return to a simpler understanding of what life is, a more basic sense of our common humanity. And that’s where this sound barrier is going to prove vital.

Every rebellion, whether personal or public, requires one first insane, traumatic move. Then comes a time when reflection can set in. Criminality? Sure. But it is important to understand this criminality is fully a part of the act of rioting. It is even its essence. Just as corporate and government criminality are a part of their display of power. The article I’ve linked to above gives a clue as to why. It sets up a backdrop for the kind of context we live in. The facts detailed in it show the constant display of power that we put up with: powerful people telling us, WE do this but WE can. BECAUSE we’re powerful.

Well, it was only a matter of time before the boomerang came keening back. With a vengeance that has stunned a lot of people and caused the kind of dismay that says: oh man, I guess we’re going to have to do something like this to get everyone’s attention fairly soon. Do we really want to?

Yes you are, people. If you don’t want your pensions cut while Ashton continues to make his millions, if you don’t want your children’s educations to become unaffordable while your bankers live like mafia thugs, well you’d better listen to that sonic BOOM that’s just sounded, and realize, we’re in a whole new world. And there’s nothing that’s brave or new about it.

It’s a stink-filled sack of lies, corruption and domination. And the fight to overcome it must be accepted.

In ugliness lies beauty, in chaos sits life, in the hideous display of anger sits the grandeur of the inscrutable novelty of the present moment.

Cheers!

‎I found a quote in Hunter S Thompson’s ‘Hell’s Angels’ that says it all… Says it better than Foucault might. So here it is…

“American law enforcement procedures have never been designed to control large groups of citizens in rebellion, but to protect the social structure against specifically criminal acts, or persons. The underlying assumption has always been that the police and the citizenry form a natural alliance against evil and dangerous crooks, who should certainly be arrested on sight and shot if they resist.

There are indications however, that this ‘natural alliance’ might be going the way of the Maginot Line. More and more often the police are finding themselves in conflict with whole blocs of the citizenry, none of them criminals in the traditional sense of the word, but many as potentially dangerous – to the police – as any armed felon. This is particularly true in situations involving groups of Negroes and teenagers. The Watts riot in Los Angeles in 1965 was a classic example of this new alignment. A whole community turned on the police with such a vengeance that the National Guard had to be called in. Yet few of the rioters were criminals – at least not until the riot began. It may be that America is developing a whole new category of essentially social criminals… people who threaten the police and the traditional social structure even when they are breaking no law… because they view The Law with contempt and the police with distrust, and this abiding resentment can explode without warning at the slightest provocation.”

That was Hunter S talking. Now it’s my turn.

It isn’t just American law enforcement that is trained in this manner. They all are. Everywhere. Everywhere, while people prate on about democracy, the truth is, the population stands on one side and the State on the other. This doesn’t show in posh areas where people are fat and happy to be slaves of the corporations and the State, where people draw advantages from this moronic soul-sucking enslavement. But in areas where people get no benefits, where they see only the backend filth of modern capitalist democracy (motto: steal from the poor, give to the rich, make them all vote every now and then so they’ll think we care…), people still get angry, and they’re not afraid to express that anger, unlike the fattened, frightened liberals who hide inside the State’s pockets.

What I especially like is the description of the rioters in London by the authorities as ‘greedy and criminal’. As shockingly violent. PERMIT ME TO LAUGH!

This from a state that finances illegal invasions, massive land grabs, resource thefts, illegal prisons and occupations – all of which send its finances spiralling down world-threatening sewers of public debt – AND THEN resorts to further stealing from its own population by cutting off already meager social welfare programs to ‘fight said debt’ (which is in reality nothing but a huge f*cking subsidy for massive corporations – read banks, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, arms manufacturers et al)… I say, NO such state is justified in preaching moral behavior or ‘respect’ and ‘responsibility’ to rioting, looting youths. Such a state has lost its moral legitimacy to do so.

Do I justify theft and crime? No. But I don’t justify it in Iraq and Afghanistan EITHER! I don’t call it exporting democracy or some such other f*cking unbelievable bullsh*t!

So let’s face it folks. If these young ‘uns have learned that violence and theft are all that pay, it is because the West has a grand, celebrated tradition of such high-handed brutality. Remember colonialism? (Which is now talked about like it was a grand philanthropic project of  drinking tea and chatting about culture?) Remember slavery? The genocidal destruction of the native peoples of Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America in order that their land be stolen? Remember Manifest Destiny? Or maybe you recall the wars in which all those European and colonial poor fought in order to receive nothing but more menial jobs upon their return? Or perhaps you remember grand gestures of state generosity like the massive slaughter of men, women and children to avenge the Paris Commune? No? Well I do. So yes. Greed and criminality? Sure. Shocking? No, not so much. This being the history of the modern West and the mainstay of its current ‘foreign policy’, greed and criminality aren’t shocking at all. If anything, they are perfectly logical. That such things don’t happen more often is a testament to the faithful and dogged work done by the media and the publishers, the manufacturers of discourse and consent, in making you believe the State still cares. And that being able to wear miniskirts constitutes freedom and voting once every few years equals democracy. 

But anger is an energy*. And like George Carlin said (and I paraphrase), since the Owners of society put property above life, things above humanity, damaging property and stealing things amounts to hitting at the State. So, like him, I don’t give a crap about people stealing private property and things. I care much more about the chronic theft of people’s freedom and self-respect while corporations get fat and disgustingly, obscenely rich. I care much more about governments that give tax money to the rich, then steal the hard-won social welfare that is due to the people who have worked for it and who have in fact financed the lives of the rich and famous.

Fact is, the State can routinely use the police against you, while it demands that YOU remain peaceful. This is barbarism, but it goes unnoticed because we’re all hypnotized into believing this is democracy. Should protest be peaceful? I have no idea. I guess it would have to depend on whether your protest is noticed, heeded, or not. If not, and we are in two camps anyway, things will tend to take on a life of their own. And by that time, it’s going to be too late.

And in any case. This is not protest here. This is a lesson learned. Centuries of the same lesson learned. Subconsciously of course (where all true lessons are learned). Dialogue is useless. And you are only respected by the Western state if you steal, kill, rape and brutalize.

Of course… Stealing from those who steal from you every day also does tend to feel good. But none of you need worry. At the end of the day, many of these people will be found, identified and jailed. And State power will probably prevail again.

But not for very long. Because not ALL of us are fooled. And things are getting worse. Much worse. So even if I’m not out in the street – because I don’t give a shit about mobile phones or sneakers or whatever - I know the truth.

I know that none of these preaching authorities have ANY right to call ANYONE greedy or criminal. To do so, they would have to get out of Iraq for one thing. And Afghanistan. AND swear not to rape their populations even further to solve a debt they have wracked up with colossal, unprecedented levels of greed.

It’s what I call the Africa-environment syndrome: we all want to be free to destroy our environment if it means more jobs, more money, more gadgets for us! But if a poor African kills a gorilla for a few bucks, he’s a BAD BAD BRUTAL GORILLA-KILLING BACKWARD PUDDY TAT!  Blame the small guy. While you hide your crime behind grand moral principles. It always pays.

But luckily, not everyone believes this garbage anymore. Hallelujah.

* taken from song by PIL, Rise.