moot point

August 9, 2011

Tweets I’ve not sent, thoughts not fully formed, etc. Just venting really.
- Prevalence of “send in the army”/”shut down the internet”/etc. tweets horribly depressing. As well as being three meals from anarchy we’re also three riots from fascism, I guess.
- Well no, that’s a glib exaggeration but it doesn’t take Nostradamus to see that the far right and authoritarian elements in politics are going to make massive hay from this: I’ve already seen BNP leader Nick Griffin talk about “the Black Blitz”, so watch out for that as a sickening far-right meme.
- On the “they’re destroying their own communities” meme: problem is, they’re not. They’re destroying what we distant observers liked to imagine were “their communities” because we assume a commonality of identity based on geography and/or race without asking too many questions about subdivisions of identity/community within and across those. In the messages being reported by the media there’s a lot of mentions of abandoning existing fights between ends/postcodes to join in this - those “communities” are as relevant (more relevant probably) as local or bureaucratic ones.
- The violence may or may not be mindless - “mindless” seems as fair a word as any for the adrenalin-rush of any mob activity, and a very stupid word to excuse or whitewash structural and social problems - but the condemnation or response doesn’t have to be mindless in the same way. Not that that’s stopping anyone.
- Bear in mind I know nothing about any of this really, I’m miles away in a house I own in the leafy suburbs w/my wife and two kids. So what can I answer? Well, I can ask why I don’t go and steal a plasma screen TV tonight? What’s stopping me? The answer, as far as I can tell, is a mix of fear (can’t get away with it), morality (taught it was wrong), empathy (might hurt other people), lack of social proof (nobody else I know is doing it), wealth (i can afford one anyway) and privilege (i have a lot to lose). Explanations for why people are doing it - even when the explainers are saying “just greedy little shits” and don’t think they’re offering an explanation - will focus on the absence of some of these factors, and fiercely deny others have any relevance.
- For me, it seems obvious that when you create a massive wealth and power gap you create an empathy gap too - groups in a society who either can’t understand one another or see no value in doing so. This seems to be part of what’s happening on both sides.

Things similar to what I might be writing if I felt equal at all to writing about this. I just keep getting stuck on “It’s so strange to be here” and “I can still see smoke out my bedroom window.”

6:39am | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZSRIby85jAio

(Notes: 52)

Filed under: london