Anarchy in the UK: Part II

Richard Mannington Bowes died today in the hospital. He was hit on the head by rioters. He wasn’t trying to save his business or his home. He was just trying to put out a fire lit by some rioters.

Unlike the bat wielding vigilante groups of Southall and Birmingham, there wasn’t quite the same sense of macho bravado in his actions. However, there was a quiet but definite defiance. The message was quite clear, ‘I don’t approve of your actions’. He lost his life precisely because of his disapproval and his defiance. One can argue that trying to put out a fire in a garbage bin might seem a bit pointless. On the other hand, killing someone for it is equally pointless, especially since the prime motivation for your behaviour probably is that you don’t approve of his defiance.

This is precisely why I think there is a problem when the armchair anarchist celebrates these riots. I do not have a problem with him airing his views. Au contraire, I do believe he has every right to do so. However, in my opinion, there is a massive danger of providing intellectual justification to mindless behaviour and so I would challenge his reasoning.

As mentioned in the previous piece, I do partly agree with a lot of the reasons being given for these riots: unemployment, recession, race tensions etc. However, I always make a distinction between understanding the reasons and to approve of the actions. It is a very simple concept but surprisingly, I regularly observe that a lot of people have difficulties in making this distinction. But as a concept, it is quite useful in the process of understanding the facts within the context of a specific situation and then forming an opinion on the subject.  

Reading some media reports, I came across a few phrases: ‘poorest of the poor’, ‘oppressed’, ‘destitute’, you get the idea. I’m sorry, but did they all just conveniently miss the fact that the riots were largely organised on Blackberry messenger and social media? If these were indeed the ‘oppressed’, we could do with a few more societies where the ‘poorest of the poor’ carry Blackberries! The large number of employed people and 11-15 year olds, who don’t need employment, arrested for rioting again dilutes the possibility of unemployment being the main reason. And do keep in mind that we are talking about a country where the government provides unemployment benefits, housing benefits, disability benefits and the like.

Let me take you back a few years, to November 2006, to be precise. Thousands of young men who had just finished writing a police entrance examination went around Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh, a satellite township of Delhi) rioting, burning buses, vandalising shops and molesting girls, ostensibly because they found the exam too hard and unfair. Let’s do the checklist in this situation, shall we? Youth, check, unemployed, check, not from a privileged background, given that the exam was for hopeful constables and I am yet to see an Indian police constable living in Greater Kailash or Safdarjang Enclave, so check. But I didn’t see anyone justifying their actions. I wonder why.

Probably the most convincing argument I have heard which comes even remotely close to justifying the riots is that finally ‘the masses’ have a voice and are being heard and noticed. This would be the classic case of the Zizekian concept of objective violence of society going unnoticed till subjective violence by  those oppressed brings it into public view. But again one has to remember that the situation in the UK is quite unlike the situation in, say, India where the media only realises that there is a north-east part of the country when there is a bomb blast in Guwahati, or which only woke up to the problems of the tribal belt some twenty years too late, once the naxalites became too powerful too be ignored. Here in the UK, recession, unemployment, benefit cuts, education and race issues are all front page news and the most discussed and debated issues on news channels. Hence, these issues weren’t being swept under the proverbial carpet or being ignored at all. If anything, these issues have been considered of prime importance by the media. So, as convincing as it might sound initially, on closer scrutiny it does not justify the riots.  

So what did the riots achieve? In the long term, probably nothing. What I am hoping is that now, thanks to these riots, the UK government does not introduce some draconian measures leading to the police restraint, that I praised in the last piece, to become a thing of the past.

Yes, a lot of situations demand breaking the law as we know it, in an attempt to redefine it. Indian independence could not have been achieved without creating a situation of anarchy in terms of social and political disorder. Political movements such as those in Egypt, Libya and Syria demand a situation of disorder to break down the existing order. Then, there are class struggles, like those of the naxalites, whose inception lie in absolutely valid reasons but their actions, beyond a point, seem unfeasible and a lot of times, unjustified. Unjustified because a large proportion of their victims are people from their own class and community, the very people they are ostensibly fighting to emancipate.  Unjustified because a lot of times it boils down to ‘whoever is not with us, is against us’ and I am very uncomfortable with such reasoning, especially when the situation is to be resolved at gun point. Unjustified, because all movements advocating ideal classless, stateless societies have historically only created a narrower elite class with virtually limitless power and almost zero accountability.

This is brings me to the idealised state of anarchy. To be honest, I am only talking about this because a very special friend read my last piece and commented that ‘anarchy is not that bad’. I completely misunderstood her and thought she was talking about social disorder as with the riots. So I do want to provide her comment with a proper response.

Yes, I do believe anarchy should probably be the ultimate ambition of our species. Here I refer specifically to anarchy in terms of Kant’s concept of law and freedom without violence, or possibly even individual self governance and a complete absence of law and government. But we as a species are thousands of years away from that state. This is why I find claims of establishing an ideal state in the present times absolutely ludicrous. And this is why I am very uncomfortable with the justification of ‘collateral damage’ in an attempt to establish an ideal state. It requires some blind faith to believe that an ideal state can be established in the present times, especially when the facts almost certainly show that it can’t be done. I don’t even put my faith in a god, much less humans.

The fact is we as a species are too rudimentary for an ideal state. Lots and lots of technological, biological, psychological and social changes are required before our species achieves that ideal state of anarchy. We will have to lose a lot of what we take for granted today: our concepts of family, society, country, religion, culture, labour, nutrition, procreation, possibly even gender. In short we will have to be a lot more than the present human species; we will have to be some sort of a ‘post-human’ before that state is achieved. Sounds impossible, even hilarious I guess, but in my opinion, if and when it happens,  we will be laughed at by post-humans, much like we joke about Homo erectus and Neanderthals, not unlike Nietzsche's overman laughing at man.

It’s a humbling thought indeed.

On the other hand, the post-human would never have had to put up with the hypocrisy of the armchair anarchist!