Dealing With the Renegades - Revisited

[LLETSA]

I can summon up very little moral outrage at let's say; a single mum on benefits taking a chance to score some free trainers for her kids ...

Nobody has even mentioned moral outrage, and rather than talking about nicking trainers, people are more focused on the gang/pack mentality that fuelled the terrorising/ ransacking of working class communities, and the alienation of the majority working class who quite naturally do not want to identify themselves with the very criminal elements who do their best to make the lives of many of them a misery.

Lot's of straw men being constructed, as usual when it comes to this kind of subject.

 

[LLETSA]

What do you base that judgement on?

Experience. I know what I'm looking at even if you might not.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> Lot's of straw men being constructed, as usual when it comes to this kind of subject.

Including yours, hence my suggestion that step one is to try to establish some facts ...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Experience. I know what I'm looking at even if you might not.

And yet there appear to be a lot of first time offenders up in court for rioting.

 

[LLETSA]

You win the political argument elsewhere. The political argument is what you win with those in control of money to get some money to spend on giving these kids something to do.

As we are seeing, this argument is not being won and shows no signs of being won. And isn't even a major part of the solution to what is a very complex cultural dilemma.

 

[LLETSA]

And yet there appear to be a lot of first time offenders up in court for rioting.

So?

 

[LLETSA]

Including yours, hence my suggestion that step one is to try to establish some facts ...

Go on then. I've seen none coming from your direction so far, but don't let me stop you.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

And yet there appear to be a lot of first time offenders up in court for rioting.

Sure and who ends up in court might provide some factual information, at least as a starting point, about the composition of the rioters.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

As we are seeing, this argument is not being won and shows no signs of being won. And isn't even a major part of the solution to what is a very complex cultural dilemma.

You are right that this argument is not being won. But I disagree completely with your second sentence. All the various social ills you and others describe have as their root cause inequality and lack of money being spent on certain parts of society.

 

[_angel_]

Nobody has even mentioned moral outrage, and rather than talking about nicking trainers, people are more focused on the gang/pack mentality that fuelled the terrorising/ ransacking of working class communities, and the alienation of the majority working class who quite naturally do not want to identify themselves with the very criminal elements who do their best to make the lives of many of them a misery.

Lot's of straw men being constructed, as usual when it comes to this kind of subject.

Yes but the judiciary are clearly treating the two as the same thing.

 

[Brainaddict]

Nobody has suggested 'uniting a moralising middle class' with the working class', though, have they? And whether you like it or not, the bitterest condemnation of what's happened has come not from the middle class but from the working class people whose communities were ransacked.

'I didn't defend violent rioting and I did not condemn it. There are several reasons for that but one of them is because I am aware that my opinion means fuck all to most of the people I saw on the streets this week. I would think about that fact alone for some time before bothering to venture an opinion on the rioting'

If you're not offering an opinion on the rioting right now, what exactly are you doing?

I'm offering opinions on people's reaction to it.

So 'the working class' condemned the rioting did they? Which parts of the working class condemned which parts of the rioting? Cos we'd sure better deal with the ones who didn't condemn it, what with them not being the Real Working Class.

 

[butchersapron]

What was this again Butchers? (I did hear vaguely something about it happening - ie criminals being employed by the authorities, but what was the camel attack?)

The attack by paid Mubarak supporters on Tahir square by idiots on camels and the people rounded up and paid to attack from the bridge and so on. 1848 was Louis Napoleon using the same types to first crush the w/c revolt then to stamp on any later potential anti-state organising. (If you're asking about that as well, unsure if you are)

 

[LLETSA]

You are right that this argument is not being won. But I disagree completely with your second sentence. All the various social ills you and others describe have as their root cause inequality and lack of money being spent on certain parts of society.

It might be a major part of the cause, but if it was the whole cause, you wouldn't get such attitudes arising even among relatively affluent youths. For every 'ghetto' kid there's a middle class copyist.

Also, we need to remember that as society became more wealthy and inequality declined consideraby in the era of welfare capitalism, gang culture and crime, particularly anti-social crime in working class communities, actually grew. It isn't simply a matter of 'throwing money at a problem' (as they say.)

 

[love detective]

It's a good piece, only thing I take issue with is "willingly embraced".

presumingly your issue is more to do with the use of the term willingly (as opposed to embraced - as i don't think anyone can disagree there has been an embracement)

to take the view however that people unwillingly embrace the kind of tendencies referred to in the article smacks of a crude kind of economic determinism which robs the working class, both as individuals and collectively as a class, of the agency and potential to be the active subject that is required if any kind of progressive alternative to capitalism is ever to be achieved

Instead it leaves them as passive objects, conditioned totally by factors external to them, destined to behave & act in a particular predetermined way, like some kind of secular predestination. While socio-economic factors clearly cannot be ignored and form a fundamental part of any analysis - to go too far the other way to the kind of crude determinism that some lefties come out with further consigns an already weakened, demolarised, emaciated, confidence sapped, working class further, as it robs the class of its ability to actually be the class for itself. It's only the crude kind of vulargised marxism that allows us to think that all that's needed is to turn capitalism on, sit back and await the glorious proletarian revolution and emancipation of the working class, like some kind of determined chemical reaction

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So?

So the rioters would appear to be far from just a bunch of the usual suspects who make the lives of others on their estates a misery.

 

[LLETSA]

I'm offering opinions on people's reaction to it.

So 'the working class' condemned the rioting did they? Which parts of the working class condemned which parts of the rioting? Cos we'd sure better deal with the ones who didn't condemn it, what with them not being the Real Working Class.

Working class people condemning the smashing up of their own communities were enough in evidence right across the media over the past week.

Nobody has used the term Real Working Class.

 

[LLETSA]

Yes but the judiciary are clearly treating the two as the same thing.

Are you surprised?

 

[revlon]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

1848 so not new.

he dosen't call them the most dangerous class of all, and they were only dangerous when they were mobilised into a standing army.

It's not a particulrly big deal but calling them the most dangerous class of all gives them a status beyond their means.

 

[frogwoman]

@butchers, yeah, I was, thanks for that. Were all those types really "lumpen" tho? I guess a lot of them were ... but reading one of the articles about it it appears that some of Mubarak's thugs were relatively wealthy

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Also, we need to remember that as society became more wealthy and inequality declined consideraby in the era of welfare capitalism, gang culture and crime, particularly anti-social crime in working class communities, actually grew.

I presume you're talking the period 1950s-70s here. Do you have evidence for this?

 

[LLETSA]

So the rioters would appear to be far from just a bunch of the usual suspects who make the lives of others on their estates a misery.

Nobody's said they are. Some have asserted that many of those at the forefront of the riots are. As I said, some of us at least do recognise what we're looking at.

 

[revlon]

In the context of them being employed by the authorities to undermine the 1848 revolution - and most recently used when he Egytpian state did the same early this year - remember the camel attack?

this is what i suspected. So they are dangerous when they are used professionally by the ruling class against the woking class.

 

[LLETSA]

I presume you're talking the period 1950s-70s here. Do you have evidence for this?

Nobody's said they are. Some have asserted that many of those at the forefront of the riots are. As I said, some of us at least do know what we're looking at.

No. Look it up and you'll find it's true though.

There was even a thread on here that discussed the subject in the context of something else not that long ago, I seem to remember.

 

[_angel_]

Are you surprised?

no but it still doesn't make it okay.

 

[Joe Reilly]

i wondered about that. ive walked all round south east london the last few days, and was up in camden the other day. the scale of it is immense, even toysrus, in a (pretty remote part of the old kent road) has its windows staved in - but it does seem to have been confined by and large to chain stores, not local businesses and pawn shops/banks/bookys (theres an argument to be made about that as well, whats so fucking great about the petit bourgeois)

id dispute that there are hundreds of gangs btw, there are a few very fierce and nasty gangs (much as there always was), there are lots of lairy teenagers bigging themselves up who'd shit themselves if they ever got involved in anything serious

Not being snidey - but where do you live?

 

[Joe Reilly]

Not doubting you, but how do you know that? It's the first time I've heard that suggested definitively.

It was widely known locally that the Pembury was going to blow even before Duggan was executed.

 

[Joe Reilly]

Where is your evidence for this? Having watched a lot of footage myself and recognised people and places I say that you are skewing what happened.

Skewing it how? Your not saying that you think the whole the thing was 'spontaneous' surely?

 

[LLETSA]

no but it still doesn't make it okay.

Maybe not, but who's saying it does?

 

[Sue]

It was widely known locally that the Pembury was going to blow even before Duggan was executed.

Week after a load of the local gang got picked up for drugs offences.

http://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/new...swoop_on_hackney_gangs_in_dawn_raids_1_983079

 

[The39thStep]

(2009)

New figures revealed there were 93 gang sex attacks in London in 2008/2009, compared to 71 in 2003/2004, with others unreported, detectives believe.

ignoring the 'beliefs' of bent OB on the take from NOTW, a 17% rise is not to be taken lightly, , but we'd need a update now to actually get any hard info from this, ie: to see any kind of continued, sig nificant rise .

I think you will find when you see the trials over grooming evidence of this sort of behaviour even if the charges aren't rape. Commiting gang rape or group sexual assualt, for young girls being the victim when they join, is very often part of initiation into youth gangs.