Riots vs. Uprisings

[MineralMan]

The riots in the UK are leaderless and unfocused. They're taking place in the neighborhoods where the people rioting live, rather than in the public commons. While they may have been sparked by poverty, voicelessness, and neglect, they will not produce any desirable change. Instead, they're destroying the very place they live. Such events are not only unproductive for change, but have a negative impact for change. Indeed, the change they inspire is nothing like the change that is needed.

Uprisings, such as the ones in Egypt and other places in the Middle East, are directed at the government and take place in the public commons. They have focus, leadership to some degree or another, and the numbers of people of all ages and sexes that actually can force political change. What sort of change they create is another issue. But these uprisings do not destroy the very place the protesters live and attract international attention and support.

Here in the US, we have Wisconsin as an example of mass action that produces results. There is an election today that may well change the entire political climate in that state's legislature. It was effective, powerful, and typifies what mass action should be. It is working to inspire many in other places as well. Nothing was destroyed, but much was gained.

It's an important difference, and one that will influence the response to the unrest. The response in the UK is not going to be positive, overall. The number of people involved in the unrest is small, compared to the people who are viewing it on their television sets. The violence and destruction is not something that inspires an understanding of the conditions that sparked the unrest. Instead of support for the rioters, there will be massive anger at the rioters and calls for even more oppressive actions.

I am in support of the people in the UK who need change. It's largely an ethnic and racial issue and there is much injustice. I'm very sad that the actions taken there will not work to the benefit of the people who deserve those changes. Those who believe that any sort of uprising is a good thing should pay attention to what happens in the UK over the next few months. Then, compare it with Egypt or Wisconsin over the same period.

[Romulox]

1. An "uprising" is a lot like a "riot", except that the US sends Predator drones (see Libya)

:shrug:

[MineralMan]

7. Not at all, actually. Egypt vs. London. Wisconsin vs. London.

If you cannot see the difference, I do not know what to say.

[Romulox]

8. You studiously avoided Libya. Your lecture seems to break down, there.

:hi:

[MineralMan]

10. I did not avoid it. I was considering it before answering.

In Libya, our Predator drones and other weapons of war are being used, by intent, to support the rebels, not the existing government. The rebels have a clear goal, and that is the overthrow of the government, and they are fighting the government directly and in a military fashion, not destroying their own homes in unfocused violence.

The conflict in Libya is neither a riot nor an uprising. It is an organized rebellion, complete with arms and combat. I did not mention it in my OP, because that is not what I'm discussing at all.

[Romulox]

14. Sounds like the "no true Scotsman" fallacy; your analysis breaks down, so throw out the offending

data set.

"The conflict in Libya is neither a riot nor an uprising. It is a rebellion, complete with arms and combat. I did not mention it in my OP, because that is not what I'm discussing at all."

Right. You've placed a conceptual line between these made up categories. How DARE I not recognize it! :silly: :hi:

[MineralMan]

16. There is no demand that you agree with my premise.

Have a nice day.

[KittyWampus]

28. Ah, trotting out the "true Scotsman". Tell me, is there a "true Democrat"?

[Romulox]

30. Nah. Instead, I'd like to tell a story about when Non met Sequitur.

Oh. I see you're already familiar. :silly:

[bvar22]

43. LOL... Made my day.

:patriot:





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[seabeyond]

2. exactly MM. thank you for this clarification and OP. too many posters on du

has suggested the same of u.s. to me, it is destruction and vandalism against the least that can afford it. to advocate this s the opposite of what i stand for.

[chrisa]

3. I find it funny that some people have a positive view on these riots.

They think of them like a French protest, or something like that. Doesn't make any sense. The French when they protest are calm and rational (minus the riots a few years back). These riots, on the other hand, are burning peoples' homes and businesses. People are starting to die. It's nothing but opportunistic mob violence by cowards who are only doing it because the police can't get to them.

A rational person doesn't need the police to control them - they operate by moral standards. A thug goes crazy at the first opportunity where they can't be punished for their actions, and does whatever they feel like.

[NightWatcher]

4. Black people riot in friendly countries. Other people uprise where we'd like regime change

Black people loot, white people scavenge (see New Orleans)

[GliderGuider]

5. What do you think is needed to move the rage in a productive direction?

It strikes me that if such opportunities were available there would have been be British activists working their guts out to open them up. The British are no more backward than Americans in this regard, after all, and their disadvantaged are no stupider than your average Egyptian. so what should have been done before now, and what should be done going forward? Simply bashing the rioters for their catharsis is unhelpful.

[MineralMan]

9. I am not in the UK, nor do I follow the social and political issues there.

So, I do not have an answer for you.

[GliderGuider]

13. I'm in the same situation. However

One thing I've observed over the years is that rioting usually happens where there are no other available avenues of empowerment. Eventually you just get so pissed off at being considered an untermensch that you start to break things just to force people to notice what's been happening. The upper classes (which most of us represent, like it or not) have an uncanny ability to urn a blind eye to any unpleasant consequences of the system that gives them their daily perks.

[MineralMan]

17. There have been organized public protests in the UK,

and large ones, too. I was just reminded of that below by someone who lives there. Sadly, the spontaneous and violent events of recent days will not produce the desired results. That was my whole point.

[GliderGuider]

18. So what the hell went wrong here?

People don't just burn down their own houses without a lot of pent-up rage driving them.

I'm not feeling "sadly" about this, I'm angry. Angry that they felt they had no other recourse to get noticed. I'd bet that most of the rioters feel that any result is better than the status quo they've been suffering though.

[MineralMan]

20. There was a trigger, as often happens, that led to a spontaneous

burst of anger, which spread. That's the usual cause of a riot. And, like most riots, it is leaderless, so everyone who participates acts more or less autonomously, and that leads to unfocused violence and destruction. It also leads to people who have no particular long-range political goals taking advantage of the chaos to steal stuff or be destructive.

Sometimes, riots occur when your favorite sports team loses. Sometimes the trigger is an incident where a member of the local community is wronged by the authorities. The result of a riot like that, however, is never positive.

[GliderGuider]

21. Soccer riots don't spread to five cities.

There have to be the right underlying conditions for them to spread. How far do forest fires spread in tropical rain forests versus hot, tinder-dry conditions? If the situation of the poor and disenfranchised had been "watered" a little more attentively for the past 30 years since Brixton, do you think the riots would have spread this way?

One can't walk away from this by saying, "Poor people just like to riot, and bad people encourage them." That would be a very facile, classist dismissal of what is obviously a very serious social problem.

[MineralMan]

35. I dismissed nothing. My point is that the current rioting in

the London area is not going to end in improvements of any kind. In fact, it will probably end with even more repression. In that sense, it fails.

[GliderGuider]

36. In fact we have no way of knowing what the outcome will be.

We know for sure that nothing was changing before the riots, and also that the riots can't help but change things one way or another. We each have expectations for the outcome, but those are always coloured by our own psychology. Perhaps it will simply result in more repression. However we can equally hope that someone with some vision and decision-making power will seize this opportunity to bring in some effective social and political changes to improve the situation.

[Rex]

51. Yes use the rioting itself as a tool of change, someone can do it.

[Bragi]

27. One of the rioters answered your point yesterday

In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

That quote is from a blog posting from a bright young woman in London whose analysis puts the right-wing commentators in the media, sadly echoed by many here, in a proper political and socialperspective.

Her central point:

Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.

http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html

[laundry_queen]

41. +1 nt

[fascisthunter]

47. Could you Please Make this Post a Thread of its Own?

This is very important...

[theophilus]

34. Apology accepted. n/t

[Freddie Stubbs]

38. Ballots, not bricks through windows

[RKP5637]

6. Excellent analysis. The result will be more oppressiveness IMO. n/t

[FSogol]

11. K & R. Well said. n/t

[LeftishBrit]

12. Agreed, but there has been real focused mass action in the UK too

notably the 'March for the Alternative'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12864353


The current unrest though it started with a real small protest, has ended up as a combination of general boiling over of (very understandable) frustration, and hijacking by criminals who are using the occasion to rob and vandalize.

It was being predicted on the UK forum from the beginning of this government that the combination of creating hopelessness and despair in significant numbers of the population, with drastic cuts in the number of police on the beat, would lead to rioting and lawlessness sooner or later. Those who seek to 'shrink the state' can easily get more shrinkage of the state than they quite bargained for!

Very predictable that this would happen; but it's hardly a focused fight for political change.

[MineralMan]

15. Yes, there have been well-organized and well-attended

shows of strength in the UK. Sadly, the events of the past few days were not among them. Thank you very much for adding your perspective. Like most Americans, I do not follow the politics and movements there closely. I appreciate the information.

[Maeve]

19. "creating hopelessness and despair..."

We saw the same dynamic in the '60's--people see a better life that they cannot obtain by following the rules and eventually they destroy everything at hand in frustration. If they are organized, they might be able to win what they need (go Wisconsin!). But without structure to guide the energy....a forest fire out of control.

[leveymg]

22. The Brits uprose last year when the cuts were announced, this is real rage

and frustration from the failure of relatively peaceful uprisings and public demonstrations, such as the "student protests" of November through January. But, it isn't just students who are suffering amidst the cuts, and the rioting now is a much broader among unemployed lower class youth.

It very much reminds me of the U.S. anti-war movement, a segment of which turned violent after the Johnson and Nixon Administrations refused to listen and continued to escalate and spread the Vietnam War to Cambodia and Laos.

Indeed, it is a pattern that will repeat itself elsewhere, if governments continue to be unresponsive to the will of large segments of the population who have deeply felt grievances and a sense that the system isn't being responsive to peaceful opposition.

As for the leaderless nature of modern movements, there is rightfully a deep distrust of the cooptation or assassination of leaders, so movements have found workarounds.

[msongs]

23. wow that kid that got mugged (video) was mugged by "frustration". well that's your values nt

[leveymg]

25. Soldiers get mugged on military bases, too. What's the connection you're trying to make?

There are thugs, everywhere, including in the police, the armed forces, and in corporate boardrooms and stock market trading pits.

[coalition_unwilling]

24. This is but the opening salvo, imho. I'm reminded of "The Grand Fear"

in France in 1789-90, when uprisings by the French peasantry had the rural nobility quaking in its boots. The reason the episode is called 'The Great Fear' is that many French villages feared they would soon be attacked by mobs of armed French peasants, i.e., brigands. But, the irony of the title of the episode notwithstanding, the uprisings of French peasants put the final seal on the rights of the rural nobility.

[starroute]

26. Even looting can have elements of alienation and class warfare

I've been noticing how many of the shops that have been attacked are part of chains -- sometimes even the exact same chains as do business in the US, like Foot Locker.

Places like that are not an active part of the local economy. They typically sell goods made overseas, they employ at most a few local salespeople, and they suck money out of the area rather than putting it in.

I'm aware that some more genuinely local businesses have also been looted -- I saw one reference to a hundred-year-old family business that was trashed. But in a neighborhood composed largely of immigrants, any operation that's been around for a century is likely to be perceived as "them" and not "us." There can also be tensions even among recent immigrants if certain ethnic groups have been more successful in establishing themselves as show owners and are seen as exploiters of those which have not.

I agree fully that this kind of rioting and mindless destruction has a self-defeating effect. But that doesn't mean it can be dismissed as merely opportunistic. In most cases, it is deeply rooted in the dynamics of the situation. The people doing the looting know very well what their targets are, and they are sending a distinct message about resentment and exploitation.

[Bragi]

29. The right-wing needs to strip the riots of any political meaning

I expect the right wing to try to strip the riots of all political meaning.

What is disappointing is how many at DU choose to buy into the fiction that the riots are devoid of social/political significance and origins.

[leveymg]

32. There is a Right-wing on DU, and its purpose is to strip DU of its political meaning.

You know what I mean.

[Bragi]

39. Just saw this sadly relevant tweet

RT @stephie08: On the bright side, the #londonriots will help you identify which of your friends are closet fascists. Ever the optimist, I am. #ukriots

[leveymg]

42. As if we didn't already know. ;-)

[Romulox]

33. Agree 100%.

Nailed it.

[GliderGuider]

37. Bingo. nt

[Modern_Matthew]

31. There's just so much anger and suffering in the world that any small event can snowball. nt

[Poll_Blind]

40. +1

It puzzles me that you have to even break it down so simply, at all. These things should be self-evident to DUers. But apparently, they're not. I honestly don't get that disconnect.

PB

[bvar22]

44. When Peaceful Protest and Mass Demonstrations produce no results,

violence becomes inevitable.

A government that looks at THIS...

...and does the OPPOSITE is escalating the problem.


"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
---John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962




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[MineralMan]

45. Violence is only useful if it accomplishes something valuable

enough to compensate for the destruction caused by the violence. Frankly, I do not see any possibility of a successful violent solution to the problems you point out. The numbers of people who might have any inclination to react violently to the conditions pointed out in your image are far too small to create even a hint of a solution.

[Bryn]

48. +1000000

Great quote by John F Kennedy. He was right.

[Scurrilous]

46. K & R

:thumbsup:

[Rex]

49. People riot when they are unhappy with policy, they uprise

after deciding to move beyond unhappy and finally understand that rioting only hurts themselves and the locals. A riot can never be a revolution, but can start one. Not in the UK imo, it will just mean more oppressive Big Brother...so the rioters actually hurt themselves in the longrun. Which most rioters and riots do anyway.

[MineralMan]

50. Good, thoughtful post.I suspect even less chance of rioting turning

into an uprising in the US than in the UK. There are just not enough people willing to do that to make a real uprising possible, I thing, except in local or regional areas.Wisconsin pulled it off, but the end result will be demonstrated after today's election. They certainly got enough votes to do recalls, and 6 recalls of GOP state senators is a big result. Will they succeed in recalling enough to gain control of the Senate? I am not venturing a guess. Tomorrow, we should know.