Tottenham Riots: Discrimination + Austerity + Violence => Violence

To follow-up on Laura's last blog post, I myself have four points to make.

1. If we, as gatherers of information, do not trust the news releases from Gaddafi or other gov sources in the Middle East when riots erupt, then why do we give so much deference to the version of events as released by police and politicians in the UK (and the US). No, she did not advocate rioting. And yes, there is a very big difference between the characteristics of the regimes in terms of democratic legitimacy. However, various studies (Manufacturing Consent, among others) have shown that the amount of propaganda in democratic countries is at least as high if not higher and more sophisticated than in undemocratic ones. Yet, we still give so much deference to government version of facts even after the Iraq war lead-up catastrophy, even after this very police department said that the rioting was controlled and then it spread, and even after this particular police department stated that there was a non-police bullet at the original crime scene (a fact that they later could not prove).

Oh, and this was the very same police force whose, I believe, top two people just stepped down over corruption, lying, and improper collusion with the media. We also accept in the abstract that politicians lie to us, but then we refuse to apply that knowledge in individual cases.

2. Human life if one of the most important legal and moral values in society. Property is also am important value. Laura's point was that it is hypocritical to condemn violence to property when people riot when the same people showed no solidarity after a man was shot and killed. We should consider why it is that, despite the fact that neither instance of violence at all affected any of us, people were silent in the first instance and outraged in the second instance.

3. The media has not reported on it well. The media has portrayed the police and restoring order after it was broken by the rioters. Most of us accept that society is fragile and that there is always a tension between the governed and the governing. This tension is also always fragile. We call this the social contract/compact. When this is broken, society falls apart and becomes ungovernable. We also know that even under legitimate democratic societies, there are conflicts which must be responsibly managed. It is my perspective that the actions of the police force through early discrimination and then this shooting broke that social compact, the conditions of which were already stressed through austerity and other measures. Rather than taking this perspective, the media has always referred to the rioters breaking 'the peace' and the police 'restoring it'. This is literally reporting from the perspective of the governing, rather than reporting from a neutral perspective that sees the logical tension between the people and the governed.

4. My fourth point is an assumption about violence in society and how to view it. Violence should be defined by all damage to life and property which occurred despite being reasonably preventable. The part of violent that we typically get most outrages about (the type that makes good TV news) is overt violence. However, that is only a small part of the violence and conflict that exists in society. The difference between manifest violence and the other parts of violence that are harder to see is the time span in their causal connection between the wrongful act and the result and thus the increased visibility. However, that is not a moral distinction. Thus, all are responsible for the natural and logical consequences of their wrongful acts.

For more information from better sources than the TV and tabloid media stations that have recently been criminally colluding with the police, I found these sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=solAQO62_gQ&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/08/context-london-riots?CMP=twt_gu
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201189165143946889.html
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=%2Fjournals%2Fhuman_rights_quarterly%2Fv029%2F29.3thoms.html