The London Rioters and Their Targets

My latest article is out in The American Thinker.  Once again it is on the March 26th rioters and is a reflection on the precise nature of the targets that they chose, and what it says about the ideology of the left.

I note that the anger of the rioters was directed at note only banks and other institutions, but also places of luxury such as confectionary store Fortnum and Mason, as well as The Ritz.  This is well in line with the left's continued assault on luxury and culture, which ultimately hurts the rank and file man or woman in the street - not the rich that the left claim to be punishing or attacking.

"Last Saturday, London was hit by what is now a regular occurrence in Britain: the violent rioting and looting by a growing number of socialist, militant environmentalist and anarchist groups, intent on dishing out as much harm as possible to British capitalism. 

Although (as state controlled BBC told us over and over again) the actual rioters were a relative minority of the protesters, they appear to have implicit support from the majority of the approximately 400,000 that descended upon the capital.  Spokespersons for the marchers seemed angrier at "the media" for covering such violence than those who were violent, and one can see from the coverage of the event that for every small gang of violent thugs, there was a much larger crowd of leftists behind them cheering them on.

This is nothing new; anti-capitalist marches during G8 summits, protests against hikes in tuition fees, and now protests against spending cuts have all ended in rioting and destruction of property, without any sign of opposition from the majority of protesters.

What is interesting about the riots is the targets that were chosen.  Yes, there were the usual symbols of Chomskyite "anti-corporate" rage, such as Starbucks, McDonalds and various banks.  Yet, other targets, such as Nelson's column, The Ritz, and luxury confectionary store Fortnum and Mason are notable for being targets of a different kind of rage -- something best defined as an anti-cultural iconoclasm from the left.

Although the left claim that the targets were attacks on the privileged rich, a closer look allows us to see the root of such attacks in socialist ideology.  For the left have not changed their ideology, they have only changed the way in which it is expressed.  The destruction of a nation's culture, history and the luxuries a nation provides has always been a cornerstone of socialist revolution.  From the book burning of Mao's China to the destruction of the Russian Orthodox churches in Lenin's Russia, leftists have always attacked the symbols of a nation's culture and its luxuries.

The more traditional, anti-religious iconoclasm -- as seen most notably in Lenin's Russia -- can still be observed whenever one accompanies a leftist on a trip to the Vatican.  They can be guaranteed to at some point sniff, "These jewels and churches should be sold off and given to the poor" while failing to see that it is usually the poor who are finding spiritual nourishment in those churches that our leftist comrades would have sold off.  They can almost certainly be relied on to add "that is what Jesus would do" despite it almost being a word for word quote of Judas, not Christ[i].

Yet it is a more anti-cultural iconoclastic spirit that motivates leftists to smash up "homes of the rich" such as The Ritz and Fortnum and Mason.  While the socialists may believe they are punishing the bourgeoisie for their high living and exploitation of the proletariat, they are in fact often punishing those whom they claim to be helping..."

The rest of the article can be found at The American Thinker here.

"Pay For My Own Education? Tory Scum!!"

First of all, apologies for the lack of posts last week - I have been travelling back to England, and have been trying to shake off the jet lag since I arrived.  Good to be home though!  :-)

The obvious news for this week is the riots by British students on the day of the tuition fee vote.  The Bill to raise the cap on university fees from £3,000 to £6,000 a year passed.....just.  Yet the day was marked by a series of "protests" by left wing students determined to present themselves as socialists who are "protesting for the common man."  By the end of the day the protests looked less and less like protests and more and more like a full blown riot.  It was a riot that ended with enormous amounts of damage to the city of London, and even in the royal car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla being attacked.

There are some great articles out there covering the story, and I wouldn't want to retread some of the old points that so many good writers have made.  However, I did want to look at this claim by these students that they are somehow taking part in a socialist revolution on behalf of the working man.

That they are socialists is not up for debate.  The way such student bodies almost always end up paying lip service to Marx, Trostsky, Chomsky et al, and wear Che Guevara T-shirts and wave communist flags prove as much.  However, the idea that they are standing up for the "worker" or the "common man" is completely nonsensical, and the opposite is actually true.

The debate has been caught up in soundbites about "free education" and the "right to higher education."  However, the debate is not about that at all, but instead it is about one question (so important that I will highlight it in bold...)

Who should bear the brunt of the cost for a student's university education?

The socialist, if forced to answer this question, will answer that it should be the State.  Yet this answer is erroneous.  The State does not pay for anything, it only channels funds that it has already received. It has received those funds from the taxpayer.  Now, while some of those taxpayers are the "evil bankers" and the "exploitative rich corporations", many taxpayers are normal, working class people trying to make ends meet on a a daily basis - workers who the socialist students claim to be fighting for.

Therefore by arguing for "free" (by which they mean subsidised) education, the student left are simply insisting that other people, many of whom will earn less than the majority of students will eventually earn, pay for their education.  Therefore, they are arguing for a situation in which milkmen, farmers, dinner ladies and plumbers bear the cost of the university education of future lawyers, bankers and executives.  How this is "fair" is beyond me, and how it is "fighting for workers" is even harder for me to understand!

Lifting the cap is a basic statement that says that students should bear a greater share of the cost of their own higher education, an education from which it is they who will primarily benefit.  If students are unable to pay immediately, then it is important to have an accompanying loan system that works and does not add interests to their debt.  However, forcing people (most of whom are struggling to make ends meet as it is) to pay for the higher education of others is not fair, is not just, and it is certainly not in in the interest of the "working masses." 

If students wants to try and convince the public to subsidise their educations then fair play to them, but they should not pretend that it is done for anyone's interests other than their own.