UK Civil Unrest

[BillsFanNC]

 

[The Frankish Reich]

https://www.ft.com/content/a0a4fb08-40cc-4627-a58f-b3a8d2d0e009?accessToken=zwAGH1UwRNrgkdOgpPsIQMxGJ9Olj7Oo0tDgCQ.MEYCIQChxhfA2SBamOb_Y_c0vQwPJmzXo0fHfucpW2v_dBGr2gIhANMcXEtBzZqY7R0Z9RkAZMkEoGMSy5P49MRnprFYWvAH&sharetype=gift&token=75895b79-b6c8-4e1f-a3ab-dc4d87161131

 

Some insight from, of all places, the Financial Times (London).

The 2011 riots started exactly this week, on August 6, after police in Tottenham killed a Black man, Mark Duggan. Most rioters are male — indeed, riots are an assertion of masculinity.

 

And riots both require and build group identity. People tend to riot with people they feel connected to. Those ties can pre-exist in real life, as in a small town like Southport. Or they can be forged online, then deepen during a riot, when a rioter’s personal identity merges with the group identity. Transgressing social norms with other people creates a particular bond. That happened at the January 6 riots in Washington. Heather Tsavaris, a former senior terrorism analyst in the US State Department, studied livestream footage filmed in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt hotel, where rioters gathered after the violence. She noted “a palpable sense of community, connection, and belonging . . . These people had come to be together with others who were like them. They chatted about where they had flown in from, how they were thrilled to be meeting other ‘patriots’, what this event meant to them.” Riots make rioters feel less lonely. That sense of connection may have been particularly welcome in early 2021, after months of Covid-19 lockdowns.

 

The ‘riffraff’ and ‘rational actor’ theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot Forging group identities requires what sociologists call an “Other” — an enemy who helps define your own group. That enemy can be Muslims, as now, or Jews, as in past pogroms. In some riots, the “Other” is the police. When people argue about the aims of riots, there are typically two rival theories, which are doing battle again this time. One theory is that rioters are mindless “riffraff” who must be punished. The other is that they are rational actors with grievances that must be addressed. The “riffraff” and “rational actor” theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot. In 2011, when many British rioters were poor non-white people, conservatives called them riffraff while the left defended them. Now that white rioters are attacking Muslims, the roles of prosecutor and defender are reversed. Ian Dunt, author of How to Be a Liberal, is propounding the riffraff theory: “It’s not about immigration, or integration, or Islam. It’s about a bunch of violent thugs blaming Muslims for a terrible crime, being instantly disproved, and then continuing with their bull#### anyway.”

 

Meanwhile, rightwing academic Matthew Goodwin rationalises the riots: “What this is about, is that people don’t feel safe in their own country.” The rational-actor theory of riots has gradually surpassed the riffraff theory among social scientists, especially after the 1960s black inner-city American riots, when many liberals sympathised with the rioters, notes criminologist Tim Newburn of the London School of Economics. But he adds that the rational-actor theory omits something: “Not all riots are focused, or not primarily focused, on some desire to bring about social or political change.” Quite simply: rioting can be joyous. Take the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969. They had a rational justification: LBGTQ people were fighting police harassment. Yet there was more to it. Decades later, Stonewall veteran Martin Boyce, speaking on the podcast Making Gay History, described the scene at dawn after the riots: “I saw this queen who was exhausted, bruised a little, I believe, and couldn’t go on any more, was just on a stoop, exhausted but at peace, because near her was a cop who was also exhausted, that made no attempt to bother her. The riot was really over. Still, the street was glistening. It was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw. The whole street just like diamonds, but in reality it was broken glass, the smell of the smoke of burning garbage cans was there, all those smells that a riot make[s], even a certain kind of sweat. It was ugly and beautiful.” Sympathisers are now interpreting the British riots as political speech, a violent version of, say, American civil rights marches. But the alternative reading (not entirely mutually exclusive) is that rioters riot because rioting is fun. In that case, the parallel to today’s rioters can be found outside politics — in British football hooliganism.

Edited August 11 by The Frankish Reich

[Tommy Callahan]

 

[BillsFanNC]

 

[BillsFanNC]

Found Roundy on X

 

 

[BillsFanNC]

All of them simply Marxists.

 

 

[The Frankish Reich]

14 minutes ago, BillsFanNC said:

All of them simply Marxists.

 

 

Of course it would be Trumpist Man Crush James Lindsay to post perhaps the dumbest take on Orwell yet.

Maybe we should ask George himself:

 

"The Spanish War and other events in 1936–37, turned the scale. Thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism as I understand it." 

[BillsFanNC]

 ⬆️ 

 

Marxist. 

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

19 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

https://www.ft.com/content/a0a4fb08-40cc-4627-a58f-b3a8d2d0e009?accessToken=zwAGH1UwRNrgkdOgpPsIQMxGJ9Olj7Oo0tDgCQ.MEYCIQChxhfA2SBamOb_Y_c0vQwPJmzXo0fHfucpW2v_dBGr2gIhANMcXEtBzZqY7R0Z9RkAZMkEoGMSy5P49MRnprFYWvAH&sharetype=gift&token=75895b79-b6c8-4e1f-a3ab-dc4d87161131

 

Some insight from, of all places, the Financial Times (London).

The 2011 riots started exactly this week, on August 6, after police in Tottenham killed a Black man, Mark Duggan. Most rioters are male — indeed, riots are an assertion of masculinity.

 

And riots both require and build group identity. People tend to riot with people they feel connected to. Those ties can pre-exist in real life, as in a small town like Southport. Or they can be forged online, then deepen during a riot, when a rioter’s personal identity merges with the group identity. Transgressing social norms with other people creates a particular bond. That happened at the January 6 riots in Washington. Heather Tsavaris, a former senior terrorism analyst in the US State Department, studied livestream footage filmed in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt hotel, where rioters gathered after the violence. She noted “a palpable sense of community, connection, and belonging . . . These people had come to be together with others who were like them. They chatted about where they had flown in from, how they were thrilled to be meeting other ‘patriots’, what this event meant to them.” Riots make rioters feel less lonely. That sense of connection may have been particularly welcome in early 2021, after months of Covid-19 lockdowns.

 

The ‘riffraff’ and ‘rational actor’ theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot Forging group identities requires what sociologists call an “Other” — an enemy who helps define your own group. That enemy can be Muslims, as now, or Jews, as in past pogroms. In some riots, the “Other” is the police. When people argue about the aims of riots, there are typically two rival theories, which are doing battle again this time. One theory is that rioters are mindless “riffraff” who must be punished. The other is that they are rational actors with grievances that must be addressed. The “riffraff” and “rational actor” theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot. In 2011, when many British rioters were poor non-white people, conservatives called them riffraff while the left defended them. Now that white rioters are attacking Muslims, the roles of prosecutor and defender are reversed. Ian Dunt, author of How to Be a Liberal, is propounding the riffraff theory: “It’s not about immigration, or integration, or Islam. It’s about a bunch of violent thugs blaming Muslims for a terrible crime, being instantly disproved, and then continuing with their bull#### anyway.”

 

Meanwhile, rightwing academic Matthew Goodwin rationalises the riots: “What this is about, is that people don’t feel safe in their own country.” The rational-actor theory of riots has gradually surpassed the riffraff theory among social scientists, especially after the 1960s black inner-city American riots, when many liberals sympathised with the rioters, notes criminologist Tim Newburn of the London School of Economics. But he adds that the rational-actor theory omits something: “Not all riots are focused, or not primarily focused, on some desire to bring about social or political change.” Quite simply: rioting can be joyous. Take the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969. They had a rational justification: LBGTQ people were fighting police harassment. Yet there was more to it. Decades later, Stonewall veteran Martin Boyce, speaking on the podcast Making Gay History, described the scene at dawn after the riots: “I saw this queen who was exhausted, bruised a little, I believe, and couldn’t go on any more, was just on a stoop, exhausted but at peace, because near her was a cop who was also exhausted, that made no attempt to bother her. The riot was really over. Still, the street was glistening. It was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw. The whole street just like diamonds, but in reality it was broken glass, the smell of the smoke of burning garbage cans was there, all those smells that a riot make[s], even a certain kind of sweat. It was ugly and beautiful.” Sympathisers are now interpreting the British riots as political speech, a violent version of, say, American civil rights marches. But the alternative reading (not entirely mutually exclusive) is that rioters riot because rioting is fun. In that case, the parallel to today’s rioters can be found outside politics — in British football hooliganism.

On this, yes, and of course it extends beyond rioting. Think of all those comments about irredeemables, deplorables, uneducated, racists, cultists, authoritarians and you can see how we get here.  

 

The ‘riffraff’ and ‘rational actor’ theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot Forging group identities requires what sociologists call an “Other” — an enemy who helps define your own group

[The Frankish Reich]

3 minutes ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

On this, yes, and of course it extends beyond rioting. Think of all those comments about irredeemables, deplorables, uneducated, racists, cultists, authoritarians and you can see how we get here.  

 

The ‘riffraff’ and ‘rational actor’ theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot Forging group identities requires what sociologists call an “Other” — an enemy who helps define your own group

Yes, that's what the article is getting at.

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

2 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Yes, that's what the article is getting at.

This isn't over. 

[The Frankish Reich]

12 minutes ago, BillsFanNC said:

 ⬆️ 

 

Marxist. 

Maybe take a few days (or even a few hours) away from this place and actually read Orwell.

Start with this quite manageable short work:

 

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

 

It is a call for a peculiarly English form of socialism, a socialism reached not through revolution but through gradualism of the type advocated for (wait for it) The Fabian Society. If anything, Orwell thought the Fabians a bit timid in their approach; he advocated a faster path toward a socialist society that did not dispense with the possibility of violence.

 

In other words, James Lindsay is an idiot. And people who cut-and-paste his stupid tweets are idiots on stilts.

[The Frankish Reich]

1 minute ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

This isn't over. 

This is why I posted the video of The Clash playing White Riot. It wasn't a joke. It gets at the truth of the matter. The "I want to feel like I belong to a great movement," that I'm standing up to the man just like the black Notting Hill riots of 1976:

 

White riot - I want a riot

White riot - a riot of my own

White riot - I want a riot

White riot - a riot of my own

 

Black people got a lot a problems

But they don't mind throwing a brick

White people go to school

Where they teach you how to be thick

 

And everybody's doing

Just what they're told to

And nobody wants

To go to jail!

 

All the power's in the hands

Of people rich enough to buy it

While we walk the street

Too chicken to even try it

[All_Pro_Bills]

3 minutes ago, leh-nerd skin-erd said:

On this, yes, and of course it extends beyond rioting. Think of all those comments about irredeemables, deplorables, uneducated, racists, cultists, authoritarians and you can see how we get here.  

 

The ‘riffraff’ and ‘rational actor’ theories are constant, but who espouses them depends on the nature of the riot Forging group identities requires what sociologists call an “Other” — an enemy who helps define your own group

37 minutes ago, BillsFanNC said:

All of them simply Marxists.

 

 

I think all these dictator wannabes lurking in the shadows of obscurity in various ministries and departments are a symptom of the transition of the priorities of  national intelligence services work. Traditionally, organizations such as the CIA and MI6 where focused outward. Gathering intelligence on their enemies and competitors while provided a great deal of mis and dis information to their citizens. Disrupting and destabilizing wherever they could achieve such a mission.

 

But now the gaze of these agencies is inward. Maybe it was some make-work project resulting out of necessity to keep their jobs from little-to-nothing to do at the end of the Cold War. Gathering intelligence and spreading dis and mis information among their own citizens. Identifying, tracking, and harassing skeptics and critics of the government. The 21st century Surveillance State. That inward obsession is one key reason why our human intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities appear to be so poor. While they seem capable of breaking up things like the terrorist plots they help manufacture I have serious doubts they can effectively deal with the real thing.  And while I hope I'm wrong, I expect that competence will soon be tested. Compare that to the high level functioning of Mossad in Israel where they know every time some Mullah sneezes in Tehran.

[K D]

 

 

[Tommy Callahan]

 

[BillsFanNC]