London and Norway

So soon after the world has recoiled in horror from the bombing and slaughter in Norway we are confronted by the images of rioting youths in London, and later other UK cities.

I put the two together because there are some significant similarities - despite the fact that one is a mass movement and the other an apparent lone individual.

The similarities I wish to explore relate to the role of global media, the existence of a "manifesto", the exercise in "blaming" and finally the wider context of terror.

Global Media

The events in Norway and the UK aren't, in reality, extra-ordinary. Similar things have happened before in other places. However they feel more real and pressing because of the coverage they are able to receive. The Paris riots of 1968 came to us in news reports that were read to us or that we read in a newspaper. The London riots come to us as repeated footage of real people in real streets with real fires. The damage and spread looks far more extensive because of the way it is shown.

Don't get me wrong - this is a good thing. We can only benefit from having a greater appreciation of what is happening.

but as an audience we aren't yet trained to recognise the distinction between the scale of coverage of an event and the scale of an event itself. Earthquakes and tsunamis in developed countries look more devastating because we see more pictures.

The manifesto

Norways's mass murderer had a "manifesto" that was not explicitly racist but decried muliculturalism. However he had a specific dislike for what he called "cultural Marxists".

Off the back of London we are warned by Merv Bendle about the influence on the rioters of a particular revolutionary tract called The Coming Insurrection. (It is online as a blog and a pdf).

Bendle is better known to me through his rants in Quadrant about the proper place in our history for the (valiant men)/(poor misguided fools) who fought for Australia in World War I. (Bendle is, of course, one of those who thinks only the former should be used and can't contemplate that both can apply). It is no surprise that for him the cause of insurrection is left-wing trouble makers, not something real like disadvantage or entirely social, the kind of thing that will happen occasionally in otherwise stable systems.

My point is that the manifesto is an attribute of the underlying issue not a motivation.

Blaming

When bad things happen, someone or something has to be responsible...right? well that's what the commentators think.

Keith Windshuttle catalogued the claims that Breivik "represented the armed wing of hysterical Right commentary." citing sources such as Aaron Paul for the claim. This is really the counterpoint to the Bendle claim that London is the consequence of leftwing writing. Good to see such diversity of views among the Quadrant set.

It is interesting to note that since many of the rioters are clearly non Anglo (but not all) the cause has not mostly been blamed on multiculturalism - that surprisingly has been reserved for Norway.

More practically Paul Sheehan argues that "widespread policy failures" have bred a "feral" underclass. But Sheehan's cure is less welfare. Good diagnosis but poor cure.

Guradian columnist Zoe Williams opined;

There seems to be another aspect to the impunity - that the people rioting aren't taking seriously the idea it could rebound on them. .... This could go back to the idea that people just don't believe they'll go to prison any more, at least not for something as petty as a pair of trainers.

This perhaps comes closer to the mark. But the issue isn't really about whether incarceration is a real threat or not. The kids rioting have no fear not because they don't see the risk of incarceration, just that doing gaol time won't ruin their lives. They see themselves as having no future to look forward to.

Terror

Norway and London though are both examples of terror. Not necessarily terror as an organised centralised act by an agent like Al Quaeda or the Bolsheviks, or terror by the state as in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or the French Revolution.

But it is terror as a political act. And we need to understand terror and its attraction.

Terror is a strategy that makes the powerless powerful. Here we get into the real bowels of discussing a democratic parliamentary democracy - it is meant to be one where no one is subject to the arbitrary exercise of power by another.

But that isn't true of modern "Western" society. Galbraith identified the power of the corporation. More recently we see in Australia the naked exercise of corporate power in ads on policy from tobacco, mining and gambling industries. But ultimately Rob Burgess writing for Business Spectator nailed it, corporations are marketing affluence to the poor.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Robespierre

My post below got left hanging with an obvious conclusion ... what happens when politicians "follow the mob". History has a very interesting lesson there. When modern democracy was a new creation during the French Revolution there was a period of time when the Jacobins "came to power" in the General Assembly. The leader of this group was one Robespierre, and during this time was when the terror occurred in the French Revolution.

One interpretation that can be placed on the terror was that Robespierre was a believer in "direct democracy", that is, doing what the people want. In reality he had no institutional structure to accurately ascertain the wishes of the people, and certainly no structures to ensure the people wre informed and making a full set of choices.

The consequence was mob rule where the Government responded to the calls of the Paris mob. And thus the guillotine commenced its work. This was not because the Government had no control and was appeasing - it was at their time the Government's belief that this is what constituted democracy.

We are seeing our own modern version of this in our justice system. New South Wales Chief Justice Jim Spigelman has recently seen fit to criticise the populism with which politicians of both sides have taken to criticising the courts. He said "Long experience has established that such tasks are best done by independent, impartial and experienced persons, who are not subject to the transient rages and enthusiasms that attend the so frequently ill-informed, or partly informed, public debate on such matters."

This general critique is closely related to our understanding of the meaning of justice and the purpose of the justice system. The modern idea is that justice is about the victims and "closure" - for which we can read retribution. The older idea is that justice was about deterrence and remediation - and that the social response should be to forgive. As a society we are moving from the New Testament values of forgiveness to the Old Testament values of "an eye for an eye".

See also.