The riots and looting in the UK might be seen as a sign of the molecular discontent bubbling away beneath the veneer of adult capitalism (read “adult movies” IE porn IE the business model for Murdoch news incorporated).
The masses of youth are no longer merely content to have their phones hacked into and their local police interrogate and search them in the normal course of a business day. The voluptuous commodities have been tantalising the underclass for decades. Generations of young men playing computer games, getting HY on drugs and the virulent social network sites have eroded the moral fabric until the business shirt and tie have been torn away and burnt.
Enter the Hoodie.
The future of a social class has been decided in Britain. Massive cuts to public spending, hikes in the cost of higher education, evictions from public housing to nominate a few concrete social causes for the riots. Moral disintegration and ideological warfare are two opposing sides of the same abstract coin traded by the State as currency for domination.
See Klein for global comparisons.
Let’s not even call the looters a part of the underclass or the proletariat. There is a basic primitive desire to destroy here. They have no future in a Marxist dialectical process. This is the Sex Pistols taken seriously, this is anarchy in the UK (linked here as if you haven’t already listened to this song a dozen times with the volume turned down on the television news reporting the riots).
The wealth of a community was cascading away for four days rather than trickling down the socio-economic pyramid.
With predictable results.
Greater centralisation of the control of the means of violence. Increases in surveillance. New anti-hooligan laws aimed at the Unspecified Enemy aka the Hoodie. Its the old neo-conservative caper of squeeze the hoodies until it hurts, the hoodies rebel, then re-apply the squeeze even harder. All under the rhetoric of “love-thy-neighbour”.
To give focus to what’s at issue here in the UK riots: a protest against the forces of law and order and a desire to seize back control of the means of consumption. Freedom is a burden and obligation a la Cameron’s Human Rights and responsibility speech for the young men of Britain
The meaning of community is being lost in the individuation of a social network. The people become more disenchanted and less engaged in the community, watching their plasma TVs and trawling through Facebook photos. Even as you are reading this weblog and listening to Scott Walker’s dulcet baritone, you are becoming more disenchanted and less engaged in the community, you are getting sleepy, dreaming…
David Cameron is telling you to stop dreaming. Get out there and hug a hoodie. Don’t steal a smile. Let the love for your neighbour shine through. Go back to good old fashioned Christian values and invite your local hooligans around for a cup of Earl Grey with a twist of lemon.
Don’t forget to screw down your plasma TV though. And stop reading weblogs.
