The Riots

1. The Riots http://youtu.be/5aVrtL_KhE0 http://youtu.be/9UKBi25G0HE http://youtu.be/RLfiE08JM_o

2. What Happened? • The riots which began on August 6th and ended by August 10thwere sparked off by a single event. • The murder of Mark Duggan by the police resulted in a small protest (which grew) in Tottenham. • The police attempted to aggressively subdue this protest, which resulted in an escalation of anger on the part of the local community. • This blanket of anger provided the opportunity for various criminal incidents to begin to occur. • This criminality almost immediately surpassed the narrative of the protest against Mark Duggan’s murder and began to spread across London, becoming quite its own beast. • The riots lasted for 5 days in London and spread across several other parts of England. • Why the riots happened and how they should be dealt with sparked a great deal of right and left wing views. • What are your views on the riots? • How did you perceive them at the time?

3. The Right – Why? • A right wing perspective on the riots might be that socially irresponsible and even potentially ‘evil’ youth were at the heart of it. • Also that the Welfare State is partially to blame for creating these socially irresponsible individuals. • That the breaking down of the family caused by liberal initiatives which promoted individual freedoms are to blame. • A lack of more aggressive law enforcement and punishment for crimes. • That it is the decisions of individuals (and lack of care of the previous government to this fact) not those of society that are fundamentally to blame. • That the riots had no explicit ‘political’ message.

4. The Right – What? • A right wing response to what should be done during the riots would generally begin by involving tougher policing measures. • Many called for the use of water cannons and plastic bullets. • Extremely long prison sentences were suggested to (and enforced by) the courts in the wake of the riots. • That rioters should be evicted from social housing and have their benefits cut as a firm statement on their enmity to the state.

5. The Left – Why? • The left’s first response was generally to suggest that these riots are the backed up result of generations of repression and exclusion of a lower class of people. • That it was mainly the fault of social inequalities. • And the racial profiling of policing against black youths (their race and age indicating them as more likely enemies of society). • That the riots had a very important implicit political message.

6. The Left – What? • The left wings response to the riots was mainly focused on social change. • Improving the standards of living for poorer communities. • Decreasing police harassment and general prejudices held against poor, black and asian people. • Looking for deeper causes of the riots and attempting to solve the problems therein. • More radical left wing views suggested the riots required the overcoming of capitalism and a total system change (think about the dangers of advertising, competition without engagement, dreams of social mobility without actuality, etc)

7. Readings on the Left and Right • http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011-Britains-liberal-intelligentsia-smashed-virtually-social-value.html • http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite

8. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011-Britains-liberal-intelligentsia-smashed-virtually-social-value.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024690/UK-riots-2011-Britains-liberal-intelligentsia-smashed-virtually-social-value.html • ‘Welfare dependency further created the entitlement culture that the looters so egregiously display. It taught them that the world owed them a living. It taught them that their actions had no consequences. And it taught them that the world revolved around themselves.Theresult of this toxic combination of welfare and non-judgmentalism was an explosion of elective lone parenthood and dysfunctional behaviour transmitted down through the generations at the very bottom of the social heap — creating, in effect, a class apart.’

9. http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unitehttp://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite • ‘The protesters, though underprivileged and de facto socially excluded, weren’t living on the edge of starvation. People in much worse material straits, let alone conditions of physical and ideological oppression, have been able to organise themselves into political forces with clear agendas. The fact that the rioters have no programme is therefore itself a fact to be interpreted: it tells us a great deal about our ideological-political predicament and about the kind of society we inhabit, a society which celebrates choice but in which the only available alternative to enforced democratic consensus is a blind acting out. Opposition to the system can no longer articulate itself in the form of a realistic alternative, or even as a utopian project, but can only take the shape of a meaningless outburst. What is the point of our celebrated freedom of choice when the only choice is between playing by the rules and (self-)destructive violence?’