through h4x0r3d's eyes

#LONDON - #UK - #RIOTS

Media anti-spin: For the benefit of those among my American countrymen who are wondering just what’s happened to the UK

You know why the English are rioting? What nobody will say? It’s backlash against arming the English cops, who already have a terrible track record with human rights. They stood strong through everything the Irish could deliver without arming the police force with guns, but now that an American-style false flag attack has undone the century-plus effort to keep guns out of the police’s hands when unnecessary, those same brutal, thickheaded cops have gone and shot someone, and now they don’t know how to cover it up. Unlike America, England doesn’t have much practice in covering up police-related public shootings. The people of the communities which previosly had NOT been patrolled by armed, under-trained tea servers are now understandably mad about this turn of events. The government/police and media are making it worse by trying to quash the situation through the delays of official apathy (“we MUST wait for the results of the official inquiry before we even speculate about what caused this!” can be heard in the news media over and over, effectively attempting to postpone any meaningful discussion of just WHY the riots have happened until such discussion has been made inactionable by the passage of time), as well as by minimizing the meaning of what the rioters are actually doing. The BBC will never tell you that pub catered almost exclusively to a police clientele, only that rioters trashed it. They won’t tell you that people are taking the things dangled in front of their faces by capitalism which they can’t afford because they’ve been denied the opportunity for acquiring weath, just that people are stealing and surely that’s black-and-white wrong, right? The media would rather quote some dumbass patrol officer blaming Grand Theft Auto IV on the BBC, asserting that the Pac-Man era didn’t have any riots and everybody was nice back then, which is total bullshit, see Brixton 1981, and the Handsworth race riots of the 80’s and 90’s. Why are the English so mad? Because their cops are so incompetent they shot someone on accident who completely didn’t deserve it, tried their damndest to cover it up and keep people from reacting in horror and outrage, and oh yeah, the people affected are just sick of being fucked with, period. England should have seen this coming and could have stopped it. They should have learned their lesson the numerous times it’s happened before. But the English authorities and media are still behaving as if the old caste system is in effect, and it’s all just “A problem with controlling the under classes.” Other things they viewed this way: The American Revolution, Ghandi.

Now they’re sweeping up thousands of their own citizens indiscriminately in mass arrests, which begs the question: what happens when you have a sudden influx of prisoners dumped into prisons for rioting? Typical English response: bad idea after bad idea, all of which punish others and sidestep the need for those in power to be mature about what they do in the eyes of their people.

What the English authorities are faced with is an active illustration of a very simple principle, one which is anathema to the deep-set elitism among any ruling class: those who lead are beholden to those who agree to let themselves be lead. Without the cooperation of the masses authority means nothing, it’s the mere opinion of arrogant and disempowered ; if consent is lost, and the measures which previously had been used to enforce the consensual order (IE police) are reduced to a role of mere physical violence to try to stem the tide of disobedience,then the elite become little better than, and different from, the rioters themselves. As an example of this, look how quickly rights are suspended and laws “set aside” for the sake of restoring order, thus allowing the elite to take any measures they deem necessary outside the bounds of law. Keep in mind that law is put in place to protect citizens from abuse of authority! This is no different from a rioter’s way of breaking social order, yet it is de rigeur in our modern society. One need hardly look strange to have their rights suspended anymore…

The elite depend upon those below them to define their own position; to admit a responsibility to treat those below fairly in order to maintain that position is basic reasoning, yet it clashes with the arrogance needed to maintain that elite position.

England has a deeply entrenched culture of social divisiveness. Ever wonder why a country the size of Oregon ended up with so many regional permutations of accents? It’s because despite practically living on one anothers’ doorsteps geographically, the English are raised with very strict ideas about who belongs to what social class and why, with most conformity enforced via overwhelming peer pressure. (“Mind your accent.” “Don’t go thinking your posh or something.” “You’ve got Manc eyebrows but sound like a Scouser!”) The result is a situation where individuals are raised living alongside large social groups from which they are physically no different, but which they have been socially prevented from interacting with, assimilating with, or emulating. Thus convinced that these people are fundamentally different from themselves, an individual can now allow or even justify radically different treatment of members of that “other” class much more easily. This is just as common in the “under” classes as it is among the elite, by the way, illustrating that there is no side of this conflict which is really more enlightened at the outset than the other. That’s right America, you think the fight between “blacks” and “whites” here is bad, just imagine what it would be like if both sides of the argument looked the same, only one had a last name starting with O’ or Mac’, or just had red hair, or just had ancestors from Limehouse who didn’t get a very good education, or one was just a little retarded from years of royalist inbreeding yet rich beyond all reason.

Faced with that kind of bullshit, smashing windows to get what you want, and throwing rocks at murderous, arrogant, untrained cops who are firmly entrenched in an outmoded social caste system seems just a bit more reasonable, doesn’t it? I’m not advocating a violent approach to social change, or wanton disregard for authority. But by the same token I would like to point out that sometimes violence is a logical outcome for authority which wantonly disregards social change and the welfare of its people. Right or wrong, these things happen for a reason, and it has nothing to do with video games.