The riots in the UK are horrible and awful and destructive and I wish they weren't happening.
But at the same time, I cannot pretend that they are unprovoked. I cannot pretend that it's just racism. I cannot pretend that this came out of nowhere.
I cannot pretend that the people of the UK don't have a right to be angry about the two-tier policing, the miscarriages of justice, the smug elites who've sacrificed so many innocents (including hundreds of thousands of adolescent girls) on the altar of multiculturalism and covered for the perpetrators in the name of "not inflaming racial tensions" as if the only problem with the situation was that people might notice something was wrong.
If it were happening in the US, I could condemn the violence wholeheartedly, because in the US you have options. There may be some places here where free speech and/or self-defense will send the police to your doorstep, but they're the exception, not the rule. Those who hate NYC or California can move to Florida, or Idaho, or Texas, or Kentucky and expect things to be different there. Is there anywhere in the UK that can serve as that kind of haven?
I think of some people sentenced to years of jail time for praying silently too close to an abortion clinic and others getting community service for child pornography. I think of Pakistani Muslim serial child rapists sheltered and sanitized as "Asian grooming gangs". I think of the police arresting a preteen for underage drinking while ignoring the adult men who gang-raped her. I think of the Scottish girl who shouted for her and her companion to be left alone, arrested for having a knife, goaded into showing that knife by a harrasser smugly confident that she would get in trouble and he would face no consequences. I think of a man stabbed, arrested by police who laughed at him while he bled out for claiming that he'd been stabbed, given first aid only after he collapsed unconscious, his phone searched for evidence of racism so they could excuse his murder. I think of an attempted beheading described in the news as a stabbing, with scare quotes around the phrase "serious injuries".
I think of government authorities who react to every horrific incident by downplaying the severity and accusing the victims (and those outraged on their behalf) of prejudice and intolerance, and I think: there is no better way to build intolerance than by claiming that injustice is a necessary component of tolerance.
I don't want violent riots in the UK. I don't want houses set ablaze. I really don't want the statistically-inevitable innocent casualties.
But even so... I can't fully condemn the rioters, either. Because if it were my brother arrested for a meme, my little sister who'd been raped, my grandmother sent to jail for silent prayer, my cousin mocked as he bled to death, with a government that had spent over a decade not just refusing to act in defense of the victims but choosing to act in defense of the attackers—well. I would definitely want to hit something, and I can't be sure that I wouldn't take to the streets with a baseball bat in search of something to hit.
You said it perfectly. Better than I ever could. I've been trying to figure out how to express what I'm feeling about these riots and you just did it for me.
The only thing I could add is that, while I understand why it happened, attacking businesses and houses isn't the best use of time and resources. The houses where the politicians live and the police stations where the cops who refuse to arrest Muslims operate out of are all right there. If things have broken down so badly that the democratic process and the rule of law no longer work as they're supposed to, it's the ones responsible for that break down that should be taking the brunt of the backlash.
origamiaround
areudirty
snowghoul
ellievsbear
amandla
gracieabrams
prguitarman
