Iain Duncan Smith says role models don't work hard

[Yui108]

Okay, I can't really comment on the rest of them, but Michael Jordan has a reputation as one of the hardest working players in Basketball.

He had to work hard to be the very best. Doubtless he could've been a roleplayer without as much effort. But that doesn't matter

 

[Mise]

The "causes" of the riots were nothing more than herd mentality. I don't think there is a "socio-economic" cause, a "cultural" cause, a problem peculiar to the way the British police does things, or anything else. It's just that there were a bunch of gangs who turned the demonstrations over Duggan's death into a riot in one place, which spawned copycat riots elsewhere. Then, as shop windows got smashed, herd mentality kicked in and people started looting. Ordinary people do crazy things when everyone around them is also doing crazy things - it's a classic psychological phenomenon. The chain of events makes perfect logical sense; you don't need to know anything about British culture, its police force, its welfare system, its racial demographics, or anything else. All you need to know is basic human psychology.

All the attempts at "explaining" the riots beyond these primative psychological effects is just an obvious attempt to advance a particular political or ideological agenda. On the right, they want it to be cultural because it helps them justify their conservative views on social issues, morality, policing and justice, etc; on the left, they want it to be "socioeconomic" so that they can justify increases in public spending and welfare. There's no more cultural or economic implications to this than the Stanford prison experiment or the Milgram experiment, no matter how much politicians wish there were.

Of course, the obvious explanation isn't a popular one, let alone a mainstream one, exactly because it doesn't help advance any kind of political agenda. It doesn't sell newspapers and it doesn't make headlines, so nobody really wants to mention it.

 

[Traitorfish]

Then why where the riots as limited as they were? If it was a simple case of people hearing about it, and going "Oh, righto" and putting a bin through a store-front, then we should have seen rather more of them than we did. It's not like the Scots are an endlessly pacific people, and we didn't get so much as a peep. All you're really suggesting here is a mechanism, which is a partial explanation at best.

 

[Mise]

The riots spread in London because neighbouring gangs thought, "oh, look at all the crazy stuff that gang in Tottenham is doing! That looks like fun! Also, we don't want to be outdone, so lets make ours even more fun!" That kicked off riots elswhere in London. Other gangs in other cities saw the same thing, and thought the same thing, but the 2nd impoetus of "not being outdone" was much less significant, because obviously gang rivalries are stronger between Tottenham and Hackney than between Tottenham and Manchester. I don't even know if gangs in London are aware of the existence of Dundee, so I doubt rivalries would have been at all significant there. It was more a matter of luck as to whether an individual gang decided to make noise elsewhere in the country.

The looting came after the gang-instigated rioting. As gangs smashed shop windows, the looting started; herd mentality took care of the rest, turning ordinary people into opportunistic looters.

In any case, if the problem was socioeconomic or cultural, you could still ask "why was the rioting so limited" or "why was the rioting so extensive" or "why were there riots in Tottenham but not in Newham" or "why were there riots in London but not in Newport" or blah blah blah. Ultimately, there is simply no way that "more public spending and welfare" or "fewer footballers getting drunk and cheating on their wives" would actually have prevented this. Not only are those explanations unsatisfactory, but their prescriptions are downright ludicrous.

I've said this before, the question isn't "how do we prevent riots?" but "how do we deal with criminality?". There may be socioeconomic or cultural causes for the prevalence of gangs and criminals in London and other cities, but ultimately talking about the riots is just a useless distraction. The riots and looting were merely the most visible symptom.

 

[Traitorfish]

The riots spread in London because neighbouring gangs thought, "oh, look at all the crazy stuff that gang in Tottenham is doing! That looks like fun! Also, we don't want to be outdone, so lets make ours even more fun!" That kicked off riots elswhere in London. Other gangs in other cities saw the same thing, and thought the same thing, but the 2nd impoetus of "not being outdone" was much less significant, because obviously gang rivalries are stronger between Tottenham and Hackney than between Tottenham and Manchester. I don't even know if gangs in London are aware of the existence of Dundee, so I doubt rivalries would have been at all significant there. It was more a matter of luck as to whether an individual gang decided to make noise elsewhere in the country.

The looting came after the gang-instigated rioting. As gangs smashed shop windows, the looting started; herd mentality took care of the rest, turning ordinary people into opportunistic looters.

...

I've said this before, the question isn't "how do we prevent riots?" but "how do we deal with criminality?". There may be socioeconomic or cultural causes for the prevalence of gangs and criminals in London and other cities, but ultimately talking about the riots is just a useless distraction. The riots and looting were merely the most visible symptom.

There's a lot of doubt been cast on the riots-as-gang-violence model, though. From what I've read, the gangs-as-gangs were largely peripheral to the whole thing, even if some members were involved. Most of the gang members who were involved seemed to have been younger, junior members acting in no "official capacity", with the older, senior members, and thus the gangs as organisations, being largely peripheral. The gangs, if we're using "gang" to mean something more substantial than "a bunch of kids who hang out together and go 'grrr' at passers-by", are basically narcotics enterprises, and that's a business model which is not helped in any way by the city shutting down, territorial delineations dissolving, and the streets filling up with police officers. (The Guardian had a piece about the involvement of gangs in the riots which discusses some of these points.)

Honestly the whole "gangs did it" explanation strikes me as an attempt to find an actor whose existence can be safely located outside of normal society, and so head off the idea that the idea that there may be any structural factors at work, which is really just as political an explanation as any other that has been offered.

In any case, if the problem was socioeconomic or cultural, you could still ask "why was the rioting so limited" or "why was the rioting so extensive" or "why were there riots in Tottenham but not in Newham" or "why were there riots in London but not in Newport" or blah blah blah. Ultimately, there is simply no way that "more public spending and welfare" or "fewer footballers getting drunk and cheating on their wives" would actually have prevented this. Not only are those explanations unsatisfactory, but their prescriptions are downright ludicrous.

This much I agree with- the easy, off-the-shelf answers offered by the mainstream, left and right, are particularly informative, and they certainly don't offer any useful response. But I don't think you can reasonably draw form this the idea that all explanations with even the snifter of politics about them are to be discarded. That's as much a contrivance in favour of your own conclusions as theirs is.

 

[Mise]

I'm not saying that gangs organised the whole thing, nor that they weren't peripheral: indeed, what I'm saying is that they were merely the spark that lit the match (the match in this analogy being herd mentality). They were the guys that turned a demonstration violent, and they were the guys that took that violence to other parts of London. But what turned that into looting and vandalism on such a massive scale was that other, ordinary people got involved, and it snowballed. There's no policy in the world that can stop herd mentality, so if the "problem" that politicians and judges are seeking to address is the looting, then they're a bit stuffed really. We can address general crime and gangs, though, which is why policy should be focussed on that instead.

I don't really see anything in the Guardian article that contradicts that view. The article seems to be criticising the view that gangs were at the heart and soul of the whole thing, that there was some deliberate attempt by gangs to create trouble on a massive scale, or that it wasn't an opportunistic, random thing. I don't agree with that view, which is why I spent most of my first post here talking about herd mentality, and not gangs.