examples of good writing about riot things sprouted up in the last week.
Right what have we got here? Everyone know what you're going to get in the mainstream press: empty condemnation, populist rhetoric etc. You might get a whiff of discussion in the Independent or Guardian about what could be some causes, but that's just the same shtick as usual, now being proven correct. Politicians and the majority of mainstream media depoliticise things like this or politicise it into rhetorical corners. Likewise the kids involved don't politicise it, they embody it, as James said. Social media, hailed as the lubricant of the Arab Spring, condemned as the lubricant of the "England Riots," contains not only impetus for collective action, but is also the most important opinions. People on the ground or at least closer to it than the stratospheric Conservatives or the media elite. Individuals and small collectives, a mess of eccentric discussion. Here's some tingz I've come across.
East London poet Raymond Antrobus has had a pretty creative blast with the riots, mediating sentiments and pictures. I found this articulate short essay by Anthony Anaxagorou on Raymond's blog. He fears not only the Right's response to the riots, but also the Left's. (As the Right wait earnestly to slam the Left's sympathetic mothering of looters, 'Britain's ethnic citizens' get caught in a sort of possessed middle-ground - "They're our vehicle for change!" "No, they're ours!"...)
And a poem by the guy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqusuhaPeDQ
Someone commented on Anaxagorou's essay saying that the 'Black leadership' and thus community should not seek vengeance for the 'righteous kill' that was the shooting of Mark Duggan, a 'parasite and a blight to the Black community.' This reactionary mentality is prominent right now, and the appetite for looking beyond simple punishment/deterrent is low. Strangely enough, its George Osborne who says today that this is about more than police numbers, they're 'deep-seated issues'. What's more scary, the usual Tory lack of understanding with punitive moralising, or the usual Tory lack of understanding with a social rehabilitation programme?
One thing can stuck from Anaxagorou's message and the response was an exhaustion with the educated armchair lefties, who are always harping on about revolution but maybe found themselves asking where the police is on Monday night. A few days go by and the intellectuals come out of hiding and start writing articles to enforce a political agenda, or so the caricature goes. I may be in this group, may be not. I do like a mocha, it's true.
But: we also cant find jobs, we know how our 'overseas student' friends are treated, we've had the police squaring up to us at protests, we get treated like shit by the Jobcentre, the benefits people, with their ineptitude and scorn, we care when our libraries close and we notice when milk goes up 3p, even through we don't have milk in honey and ginger tea. It's been a monumental time to be a student, as the political laboratory has revolved around the university, the distinction between labour and learning. So, with a highly relevant position, after all, the University for Strategic Optimism's Dr. Sofia Himmelblau writes a very popular and much debated article, lambasting the divisive tactics of the post-riot self-righteous, which mark line between citizens and non-citizens and opportunistically exploit it while the media are onside.
Dan Taylor, on it before most, wrote a typically insightful commentary on the politics of riots, after standing by an increasingly battered Currys in New Cross. Poverty, discrimination, police violence and boredom on the one side, contempt on the other:
White middle-class pundits pass judgement. I want a fuckin satnav: young and old, men and women, a community comes together in looting. Big society? We’re all in it together, so hand me that toaster.
Keeping with white middle-class pundits for a moment, William Wall, Irish writer, came up with a small article linking the riots directly to neoliberal theory. This day has been coming. The state functions to '[facilitate] the accumulation of wealth.' Cue privatisation, the 'looting of the public sphere,' and increasing wealth divides. Here we don't have citizens and non-citizens, a la Dr. Himmelblau but consumers and, I'd add, non-consumers.
Meanwhile, back to the street. One man conveys some very apt sentiments. 'This is not a movement, this is a cry for help,' says he. And one frustrated woman laments the kids inability to understand what they're doing and act in a more appropriate way. "If we're fighting for a cause let's fight for a fucking cause!"
Sorry I don't know how to embed videos.
Darcus Howe, not shocked, calls it an insurrection, talking to a pretty bewildered and patronising BBC Newswoman. Which beings us to the media's gesturing, and the 'neutral' BBC, who's own particular social position has been exposed, speaking as they have for the appalled middle-classes.
Also on the BBC, a report about one man, a pharmacist, who, like many other unfortunate people, have had their shops looted. In that pity voice the reporter adopts for stories you are meant to feel bad for (picked from from voice-cupboard for such occasions as: plight in Africa, Japan explosion, Haiti earthquake, Thailand tsunami, New Orleans hurricane, and now = hapless shopkeeper) we are told that his 'livelihood' has been wrecked. All his stock is gone, his windows are smashed. His family business, over. Hold on, it's fucking Boots!
Stories of the Reeves furniture store are few and far between, which we can be grateful for. But at the same time, family businesses are also few and far between. And the banks aren't lending so we can't expect much more. Most places are wealth-accumulator-factories run by fat-cat capitalists, as John Hutnyk would put it.
John has had an ongoing commentary on the riots, particularly in sections of 11 notes. He covers a lot of stuff. Political agendas, wealth divides, police behaviour, media reportage, and more about insurrections:
Cut through this phantasmal comedy and it’s illusions of civic responsibility, morality and myths of political representation – contemporary Capital is nothing less than theft and plunder and should be hounded into the annals of history.
So I'll refrain from having my own rant, there are plenty out there put far more forcefully, cleverly and poetically than I could.
But, briefly: our society rewards greed. Success = financial success. To 'achieve' is to have money. To have money is to be able to 'get what you want'. Lots of kids went out and did just that. And they've been rewarded with world-wide fame. Where social mobility is inhibited and opportunities are low, this is some achievement. To try to understand what brought about these riots is not to excuse it. The myopic reaction that simply condemns is a sign that those in power are scared about what we might find if we do try to understand. It's far simpler to make it all about kids in tracksuits. It's recognisable, it's safe. Kids in tracksuits have given us grief since we were kids, now they're world famous, and we hate them.
So out come the racist jokes, the ill-thought-out petitions, the political empty gesturing, the reactionary righteousness of a country which has learnt to think about things with Murdoch and the Daily Mail as tutors.
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Update: A bunch more links of stuff from Yu-Mei's pleasant little blog
http://blog.toomanythoughts.org/2011/08/linkdump-perspectives-on-london-riots.html
key words of the week, from all sides of a debate which everyone apart from looters is allowed to have.
looting
wanton
orgy of violence
sick
pockets
insurrection
lack of identity
lack of respect
opportunism
copycat
bad parenting
cuts
youth centres
community
society
education
police brutality
not enough police brutality
politicians return from holiday
excuses
reasons
game-changer
mindless thuggery
victims
perpetrators
benefits
black people
fire!
water cannon
martial law
copycat
moralising
causes
normal life.
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