It’s been a fucking riot. You twats.

Yesterday we heard there was a tiny attempt at a mob looting in our overpopulated suburban town centre.  This may have something to do with the recent riots in Tottenham and outwards, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that too many people in this town and others are bored, sulky twats who think the world owes them a living just for existing.

Harsh? Only a bit.

True? Listen, I used to be one of those bored sulky twats. I know what I’m talking about.

I wouldn’t have started a riot, but I can remember watching the Rodney King riots in LA on my TV screen and thinking something along the lines of “hell yeah”.  Before I grew up, I saw it differently – rioters were righteous, the authorities unjust, oppressive and reactionary.  I assumed this unless it was explicitly shown to be otherwise. Because I was a twat.

Before I grew up, I threw rocks [small ones! pebbles! but I still did it] at another kid in a riverbed, just because the other kids from school were doing it already.  He was an unpopular kid.  The thought of what we did makes me sick now, but at the time I did it without thinking. Because I was a child and a bit of a twat.

The problem isn’t that riots get started by a group of angry people whose tempers have frayed to hell.  The problem is that riots are propagated by further groups of people who see a chance for a creepy admixture of depersonalised retribution and entertainment.

You are thoughtless wankers.  You’ve burned homes, taken lives, and stolen from an economy that’s already been fucked every which way. And it’s not just you.  Almost every talking head and chav-on-the-street has annoyed me with their general lack of a proper grasp on the situation.  The world hates your face.  All of you.

You’ve stood in front of TV cameras braying about respect and shitty policing [riot supporters] or social deprivation and lack of opportunity [middle-class think-gooders] or criminal gang culture and appropriate response weapons [politicians have been far less supportive of domestic rioting than they were of recent violent uprisings on the other side of the world].

The Animal asks me, if the rioters had a problem with the government then why didn’t they go to attack the government?  And I tell him,

*sigh* Because they haven’t got a problem with the government, they’ve got a problem with everything that isn’t them and theirs. Frequently got problems with those, too.

*double sigh* Because they don’t in fact know where the fuck to find “the government”.  Most of them have never attempted political action of any kind before.  Many of them are, however, familiar with fighting and breaking shit up to relieve tensions and resolve disagreements in subcultural politics.

We’re all tired.  I’ve got a cold [this has nothing to do with anything, really, but adds to my overall feeling of impatience and weariness]. Just stop being complete fucking idiots and fuck off home, yeah?

Related articles

• The Psychology Of A Rioter (huffingtonpost.com)
• British PM Misses Point of Social Media, Threatens Ban (readwriteweb.com)