Drawing the Wrong Lessons from the British Riots — Again
The fires of anarchy burning brightly against Britain’s urban, night sky brought forth the liberal pundits who, without hesitancy, cast Britain’s rioters as victims of social policy. For these pundits, the responsibility falls on Britain’s economic austerity, which has trashed the expectations of people to a lifestyle their country can no longer afford.
The people whose stores and businesses are looted and burned and whose property and lives are taken are seldom seen as the victims of riots. Rather, we are told, it is the people who burn, loot, and kill that mandate our compassion. Indeed, when it is time for the government to respond financially to riots, it is generally social programs that get funded. Destroyed businesses and those who were dependent on them for their livelihood are beyond the pale of concern.
For the mainstream media, riots are a framing for the ideology of those who edit the news. On the recent 20th anniversary of New York’s Crown Heights riot, Ari Goldman wrote in the New York Jewish Week about the riot he covered and the riot that wasn’t. What Goldman and others saw was an American pogrom with blacks attacking Hasidic Jews. What his politically correct editors at the New York Times published was the story of a racial conflict between blacks and religious Jews. Yet no one reported seeing Hasidic Jews attack blacks.
The Times congratulated Mayor Dinkins and the New York Police Department on their handling of the riot. Yet the police stood by doing nothing, and a subsequent formal investigation found that Dinkins did little to stop the riot. His police chief, Lee Brown, issued orders to the police to let violent black youths run amuck in the streets and vent their rage. For three days, the Jews of Crown Heights were chased and beaten by black mobs calling out, “Kill the Jews” and “Hitler didn’t finish the job.”
AM Rosenthal of the Times would later write an editorial apologizing for his paper’s oversensitivity that resulted in the mischaracterization of the riots.
All explanations of riots in the West find their origins in the template of the Kerner Commission report. And like mainstream media editors, the Kerner Commission’s researchers had an agenda.
“Kerner” was doomed to bias from its inception. Tom Wicker of the New York Times called the commissioners part of the nation’s moderate and responsible establishment. But the commissioners did not do the work. Social science staffers, who reflected the leftist orthodoxy of the time, did the actual work.
Social psychologist Robert Shellow, the primary researcher, quickly replaced establishment moderation with his own far left agenda. Shellow produced an inflammatory report titled “The Harvest of American Racism,” in which the rioters were exonerated for their behavior. The rioters, who ran through the streets burning and looting their way to fun and profit, were merely responding to social conditions.
Unless and UNTIL people start demanding that the “gimme” culture starts paying back their debt for the “gotchya”, our vaunted ‘society’ will collapse via the much loved and well liked “Cloward & Piven” stratagem.
As daunting and scary as it is, WE-THE-NON-COMMIE-PEOPLE must fight this tooth and nail to our graves to save America for not ONLY ourSELVES but for future generations. Let’s make our future PROUD that we saved America rather than whimped out and gave into a minority bunch of Lefty LOONS who have only HARM in their intent and actions.
Jeebus, people. Is is so hard to just be on THE RIGHT SIDE of history?
FIGHT!
Mr Miller, has anyone done a compare and contrast using both the Kerner report and “Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness”? The point on riots is timely after the events in Madison earlier. Interestingly, James Michener made a similar point about lack of prompt police response to the Water Street riots in Kent, Ohio just before the KSU killings in 1970. The current economic hurricane may be about to wash out the sand on which two generations of social policy was erected. Hope and pray for peaceful change in 2012. GBUSA
At this point, the Boffins of the Left might as well save their breath and their ink after any riot anywhere takes place, since everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows exactly what they are going to blame the riot on.
The S-O-S yields the S-O-S, which is demonstrably wrong, since rioters NEVER “express their rage” by attacking armed police stations which, if their apologists were correct, would be the natuiral targets of an “oppressed people”.
Leftards have ZERO credibility in this, as in so many other things.
I have always wondered about -deliberately disobedient children. A sort of “child psychology” issue- do they want to be punished. Some must fall into this group-children who have been sneaking around committing crimes and gather with other young criminals and -want to follow a leader-who is very bad- and they all form an army of chaos and “come out” and say -We are here-we are
MMB boys (mean macho boys)-disavowing their home, family, community and embracing some extreme, narrow-minded, rediculous set of new rules that make no
sense-ie.gang philosophy.
All the while educated leftists are looking on them and saying -look-they are
organizing, they are uniting, they must have something-we must have it too…
You never hear any stories coming out of Britain about the shopkeepers or the people who are harmed or injured during the riots. None. You always hear about “those poor rioters,” with the media trying everything in their power to come up with excuses on why the rioters were just in destroying property or injuring (and in some instances, killing) people. But you never hear anything about the real victims, the people who had their shops destroyed or were injured in the attacks by vicious mobs.
It’s the same thing here in the United States. We’re always bending over backwards trying to “understand” what motivates these animals, rather than calling them what they are, a dangerous mob that needs to be slapped down before they cause even more destruction. There is a reason why we have laws and why we have police officers. It’s to stop anarchy, deadly anarchy, from running rampant in our streets. Anybody that tries to make excuses for that anarchy is wrong and, if they don’t think they’re wrong, maybe they should be stuck in one of those stores those “poor, misguided, and unemployed youths” burnt down. Yes, nothing turns a liberal into a conservative faster than a real threat to his or her life. Maybe liberals should have been sent out to put down the riots instead of the police. I’m sure that would have changed a few minds.
We certainly heard about them on British TV.
We are Reconquering the Southwest…and you gringos can’t stop us. Our population is rapidly growing, and the gringo population is aging and declining. We are over 50 million and united. You are down to 63.7% and extremely divided…and will be a minority by 2041. We are already a majority of the population under 18 in Alta California, Tejas, Nuevo Mexico and Arizona… and are rapidly taking over Nevada, Colorado, and Florida.
We are young and vigorous. You gringos are old and tired. We are the future. Your time has passed. We have defeated you without firing a shot. It is too late for you gringos to stop us from taking over the country. Gringos are down to only 53.5% of the population under 18…and a minority of births since 2010. You gringos will soon be a minority, and lose control of your own destiny. We will control who gets elected President. We will DOMINATE Alta California, Tejas, Nuevo Mexico and Arizona…and will be the swing voters in the swing states — Nevada, Colorado, and Florida. Whoever doesn’t do La Raza’s bidding will be thrown out of office.
We have Reconquered the Southwest from you gringos without firing a shot. Don’t you see that we have defeated you? You have no leaders, no hope, no future. You gringos will soon pay the price for your sins against us. The 21st century will undo and reverse the 19th century. La Reconquista is almost complete. It is only a matter of time. We are nearly there. In a few years it will all be over for you gringos.
Do you understand that we are CONQUERING this country right now right in front of your eyes, in broad daylight, without a shot being fired? Do you understand that we are CONQUERING America right now…and that your leaders are like the American Indian chiefs who sold their tribes out for bottles of Kickapoo Joy Juice and some repeating rifles…
We have already RECONQUERED the entire Southwest — Alta California, Tejas, Nuevo Mexico, and Arizona. We will soon have control of Nevada, Colorado, Florida, and Utah. After that, we will proceed to invade, conquer, and colonize the entire country. We are repopulating the country. We will eventually drive all you gringos out of the country, to Canada, back to Europe, to Mars, whatever, just get the hell out of this country because we’re taking over, and we don’t want you racist gringos here. We will drive you gringos out of here as sure as I’m standing here.
We have CONQUERED you without firing a shot. La Raza is 50 million strong…and by 2050 we will be 135 million concentrated in the Southwest that borders Mexico. La Reconquista is almost comnplete. We are taking back the Southwest, the land that you gringos stole from us in the 19th century. Demographics Is Destiny. We are repopulating the country. It is all over for you gringos. By 2041 you gringos will be a minority. A minority that is aging, shrinking and dying. By 2050 we will be 135 million strong, about 30% of the population, an overwhelming majority in the Southwest — and an even greater percentage of children. We will soon be an outright majority.
The Gringo’s world is ending… Not with a bang but a whimper.
The Gringo is going gentle into that good night… Don’t rage against the dying of the Gringo’s light.
Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.
Yawn, ZZZZZZZ
Will PJM please do something to keep this racist bullshit off their site?
Indeed. Why isn’t there a “report abuse” button?
I live in Texas muchacho, and if you are conquering our state it is with people who do not share your militant vision. The mexicans (illegal or otherwise) who are here are here to get away from mexicans like you – those who would try to oppress others if given the chance. Our militant liberals are boring, repetitive, uninformed, holistically angry at all the wrong things, and doomed to failure. Sounds like you’ll fit right in.
THAT WAS A CLASSY RESPONSE TO A GOOFY RACIST , HOLLYWOOD HICK , MY HAT IS OFF TO YOU .
I could respond by saying that Chicanos are too lazy to “take over” anything but I won’t.
Nice fake La Raza post. Would be convincing if someone wanted badly enough to be convinced…
As someone who knows England pretty well I was not surprised either by the rioting nor the inevitable response from the chattering classes. Nearly half a century of revisionist history and inept paternalism have pretty well hollowed out most of British society. Anyone who argues that these “working class” youth should exercise personal responsibility and social restraint is viewed by the British media and academia as impossibly retrograde. The idea that people should live their lives without the sustenance and and guidance provided by the state is as foreign to these people as the craters of Pluto.
The Brits have also done a first-rate job of neutering their police and putting the entire concept of social order into the dust-bin. The riots took place not because of a lack of state-sponsored social services but rather because of them. If you are living in a free government flat, with food, medical care and pocket money provided to you by the state, then what is the incentive to “grow up.”
The aforementioned chattering classes are now yammering on about the need to “understand” the rioters. In his great book, “Understanding Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum vividly describes those Jewish intellectuals who furiously argue against any effort to try and “understand” the Furher. Their reasoning, which seems sensible, is that “To Understand is to Forgive.” We are in the same position iwth these rioters. The more we try and “understand” them the less we will be on guard for the next wave of destructive behavior.
Chambers, to understand is not to forgive. I understand that Stalin, Mao, and Hitler all went mad with power, but I don’t forgive them for their tyranny. If anything, what requires comprehension, if the world is to avoid disaster, is the political and economic conditions which put them into power. Here is a sample: Hitler may have wanted a Thousand Year Reich, Stalin may have wanted a worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat, and Mussolini may have wanted to rebuild the Roman Empire. But, what the average Nazi, Soviet Communist, and Fascist wanted was a secure, well paid government job.
I agree. I’ve read biographies of Hitler and seen documentaries. I can understand, to a degree, how he ended up where he did. However, nothing in his background provides me with any moral grounds to forgive him. He wasn’t “driven” to become a genocidal dictator by some unique trauma in his past. His WWI trench and his Vienna halfway house were filled with luckless men like him who did NOT go on to murder millions of Jews. His life was nothing special until he had his “political awakening” and discovered his gift for public speaking. The choice was entirely his. Sorry – understanding does not equal forgiveness.
I’m sure there is some lesson to be learned in understanding Hitler. It sounds purely academic to me.
What peeks my curiosity is the pacifists that did not see Hitler as a threat in spite of the fact that he wrote “Mien Kampf” and told the whole world exactly how evil his intentions were. Now I think there is a lesson to be learned in this.
“Maybe liberals should have been sent out to put down the riots instead of the police. I’m sure that would have changed a few minds.”
–
Somehow, I doubt it. More likely, the liberals would have felt obliged to join in on the rioting to show their solidarity with the righteous anger of the underclass and their hatred of oppression.
“More likely, the liberals would have felt obliged to join in on the rioting to show their solidarity with the righteous anger of the underclass and their hatred of oppression.”
Quite possibly you’re right. But I wonder how they would respond if the rioters were torching and looting their neighborhood, perhaps even their home or business. It’s easy to side with the “underdog” when there’s no personal risk involved. People often think it could never happen to them.
The answer for the Left is always the same – only the questions change.
Riots, recession, depression, crime, climate change (real or imaginary), financial crisis, whatever. The answer for all: More Government!
Precisely.
Strong resistance always shut these people down. I remember the Rodney King riots. Idiots smashed their own neighborhoods. When it was pointed out to them a large group of them decided to go over to the white neighborhoods of the people who aquitted the police officers. They were met by white people with guns who told them in no uncertain terms that if they proceeded they would be dead. Those trouble makers turned around and went home.
I can’t help but link the attitudes outlined in this article to the behavior of recent “flash mobs” in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Young blacks, who aren’t really deprived in the basic sense of the word, see a black President and a black Attorney General who have already shown their willingness to look the other way, and think they’ve been given carte blanche to do whatever they like, because “it’s all society’s fault”, whatever “it” is.
To be fair, that goes for young white anarchists and union goons, too, when they abandon the rules of a civilized society.
I think the basic point that everyone on this board and this writer miss is this…
The functioning system in good times or bad will always be condemned by the Left. They cannot find a redeeming quality in our Western Civilization. Well, here’s one.
In India, the rioters would have been met with armed citizens of some other ethnicity and shot.
In RED china, in Mexico, and in Cuba, the army would have machine gunned the rioters.
In the repressive free market system of the oppressor, we weigh the balance of property over human life and decide for human life.
Very devious… :: ))
The lefties and statists will never assign moral agency to individuals, because it up-ends their child-like view of the world where there is a truly all-powerful state that can guarantee outcomes by fixing “society.”
They cannot accept a world which they cannot perfect through the state; that is why they imagine the poor as virtuous and oppressed, instead of acknowledging the role of value failures in creating and sustaining poverty.
Thugs have learned that they won’t get arrested or will get lighter sentences if they say they feel oppressed. Academics have provided the vocabulary of oppression to them. The public is taught not to use their moral sense to judge the rioters, but to accept the judgments expressed by “experts.”
When we quit accepting the bureaucracy of experts as our decision-makers and return to accepting the moral and ethical judgments of ordinary people who don’t belong to the “expert” bureaucracy, then police will be able to return to doing their job and rioting will cease.
I am glad that lethal force was not used to stop the riots although at the time I was close to advocating it. 3 muslim men died when they were run over and one other man was killed. Its not clear their lives would have been saved anyway.
I agree that left-wing intellectuals will do their best to explain using their usual twisted logic but sadly the right-wing pundits are just as bad. Ploughing the same old furrow about decline and fall,more police,cutting benefits etc. What neither side will admit in public is that we are left with a chunk of the population who are intellectually incapable of working in the modern economy. The idea that you can turn these people into economically productive individuals is fantasy. Its not a race thing,there are plenty of bovine,multi-chinned white people hovering up junk food on benefits.They are too physically repulsive to work in the service industry where many bright,hard working immigrants make a living.Serious suggestions on an envelope please!
“What neither side will admit in public is that we are left with a chunk of the population who are intellectually incapable of working in the modern economy.”
Thanks to the “decline and fall” [your words] of our education system. Sorry, but the “right wing” are well known for complaining about our union-controlled education system. They have been advocating a charter school alternative to our present system, in all neighborhoods, including low-income. And it wouldn’t hurt for governments to promote and pursue policies that increase teen employment all over the country, to better expose them to outside influences and the real world. Instead, we get non-sensical, across-the-board minimum wage laws, serving very few, that increase teen unemployment.
Your sir, are a few cans short of a six pack.
Your first idea about the use of lethal force makes sense. I believe rioters should we warned first before the order to shoot them is given. Of course this requires a police force that is equipped with firearms.
British Police have plenty of firearms and are not shy of using them (on people they suspect of having firearms.)Someone in this town was shot for walking home with a table leg in a plastic bag! Maybe if one or two rioters had been shot on the first night that would have sorted it. What happened in L.A.? Did the LAPD shoot rioters on site or were the 60 deaths caused by rioter themselves?
One of the rioters was given a four year sentence for looting 4 bottles of water.I am not complaining but I wouldn’t call that letting them off.
As far as education is concerned we have to accept that those with an IQ below 90 will find it hard to find work in our economy. Simple unskilled manual work has been in decline for many years and robotic manufacture is replacing more and more. Stupid,ugly people with unpleasant personalities and facial tattoo’s/piercings are not in demand in the service industries either.Big business profits from them as they still spend their benefits in supermarkets and have no shortage of TVs and computers etc.
You don’t need studies,experts or geniuses to sift through the dung piles of excuses and the liberal enablers encouragement of rioters.
Thugs,cruds,anarchist,w/e your title preference,are opportunists.They were bored,saw a chance to get attention for their imagined grievances and free stuff.
Liberals continually bemoan the fate of these helpless creatures.They are given the necessities to survive but that’s not fair or enough.They demand to be equal! They neeeeed cell phones,ipads,bmw’s,skinny jeans,leather jackets,guns,drugs to numb their emotional injuries and pizza 3x a week because…….the rich have it!
Liberals told them they are owed a lifestyle equal to Michael Jordan and 50 cent,they pay them to have babies,go to school and hang on street corners.Why stop there?
The rich white men have everything (magic money fairies)they stole it all with :fraud,slavery,child labor etc. So they are Robin Hoods stealing from the greedy,criminal rich who got rich off them.
For those that don’t think so deeply,it’s free shit.
So a few people got hurt.The underprivelaged live in pain every day.
Recent fav’s i’ve heard on tv:
“I was an abused kid,i didn’t get to go to Disneyland and all my friends did.”
“Welfare is my god given right.”
“Government assistance is a Constitutional right i pay for.”
“Not providing fresh fruits and vegetables to low income areas violates the residents human rights.”
“Children of immigrants deserve a college education.”
“Food stamps are reparations for the rape of black women.”
The liberals created this section of society by demonstrating that not only are they equal,they are superior to working slobs, not by paying for their mere existance but paying for uncontrolled reproduction for three generations.They deserve free food,housing,education,medical care,day care,school grades,cars,phones,vacations and respect because the government said they are owed it.
And the only reason they don’t have it all,is racist,oppressive,criminal white republicans and Jews.
THESE PUNKS NEED TO BE PROSECUTED AND SENT TO JAIL AND MADE TO PAY FOR ALL OF THE DAMAGES THAT THEY CREATED ….THIS IS NOT A COMPLICATED ISSUE ….VERY SIMPLE , WHEN YOU BREAK THE LAW , YOU PAY THE PRICE . PERIOD !
Abe, as usual, you nailed it. Now, if I had my druthers, I’ll ‘nail’ those rioters inside the stores they burned. Then I’d toss in buckets, mops and paint brushes as well, telling the creeps they can only get out after they first clean up all the damage they caused. That will shut them down for approximately a good 2-3 years. (It takes time for morons – who’ve never worked a day in their life – to learn to work.)
“The social science logic was straight out of a Berkeley coffee house–Miller.”
It started before that. See Leopold and Lobe at Wikipedia and the excerpts below.
“During the 12-hour hearing on the final day, Darrow gave a speech that has been called the finest of his career[citation needed]. The speech included the following: “This terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor… Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it?… It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university?”[20
The outcome of this trial has had repercussions to this day, as Darrow popularized the notion that a defendant might not be guilty of his crime because of his inherited traits—to use Darrow's term, Leopold and Loeb were "broken machines."[21]
I think that the rioters in London and other British cities rioted because it was fun. They were mainly young men, 19-25, according to the magistrate’s report I read of those arrested. They were not poor, since many of them were using Blackberrys – quite expensive.
Question: who organized these riots? They did not originate from thin air.
I grew up in the UK but have been an ex-pat for decades.
Girls of 15 got, and get pregnant so that they won’t have to study or work for their whole life.
Several UK generations have only seen the same thing
A good friend of mine (IQ 144) has become a semi-vegetable after accepting a flat and a monthly hand-out.
If I went to the UK embassy tomorrow and said that I was broke and wanted to return to the UK – they’d provide transportation; a flat would be waiting; plus a monthly stipend until I died.
The cause of the riots?
Lack of discipline!
The parents don’t use it; the schools aren’t allowed to; and the courts punish with a slap on the wrist.
In the UK you get a longer sentence for mal-treating a dog than you do a child!
Michael