I’m not a fan of the Daily Mail but they’ve put together a pretty fascinating collage of the London Riots. It’s impressive how much of the city has been destroyed. It’s worse than the Rodney King riots. I think you have to go back to the late 1960’s to see any comparable destruction in this country. The causes of these riots are hard to understand. The immediate problem was that the police shot and killed a civilian under hotly disputed circumstances. So, in that sense, it is similar to what happened in Los Angeles in 1992. It’s hard to explain the way the riots have expanded into other parts of London, and now into other cities in England. The simple answer is that austerity measures and difficult economic times have enraged a big segment of the public. That has to be part of the explanation, but at the same time it’s not like the people who are setting fires and looting stores have any political demands. It’s just a breakdown in social order.
That kind of display usually empowers the Right by uniting the middle class against the underclass and in support of stronger law and order measures. Yet, true fear, if it rises high enough, empowers the Left, as the well-to-do opt to share more wealth rather than have their stores burned to the ground.
Could this kind of stuff happen here? Absolutely. Our wealth disparity is almost as bad as the U.K.’s. With the right kind of spark, we might find ourselves in the same boat.
