Russell Brand on the UK riots: Surprisingly good essay.

[crispini]

Here's a snip. My jaw dropped when I got to this part.

Politicians don't represent the interests of people who don't vote. They barely care about the people who do vote. They look after the corporations who get them elected. Cameron only spoke out against News International when it became evident to us, US, the people, not to him (like Rose West, "He must've known") that the newspapers Murdoch controlled were happy to desecrate the dead in the pursuit of another exploitative, distracting story.

Why am I surprised that these young people behave destructively, "mindlessly", motivated only by self-interest? How should we describe the actions of the city bankers who brought our economy to its knees in 2010? Altruistic? Mindful? Kind? But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out, perhaps that's why not one of them has been imprisoned. And they got away with a lot more than a few fucking pairs of trainers.

These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron's mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there's no such thing.

More good stuff in the article... read the rest here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/11/london-riots-davidcameron?CMP=NECNETTXT8187

[blogslut]

1. Everyone should read this

It's a helluva thing.

[drokhole]

2. Wrote this in another thread, but feel it relates to this as well...

Russel Brand does a fantastic job, and begins to scratch the surface of the underlying problems in his essay. But it's Alan Watts, another one of England's better exports than Miserable Margaret, who had this incredibly valuable insight on society:

"The child is tricked in the ego-feeling by the attitudes, words, and actions of the society which surrounds him - his parents, relatives, teachers, and, above all, his similarly hoodwinked peers. Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted.

We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social environment. We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them that excrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body.

Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules. Just because we do not exist apart from the community, the community is able to convince us that we do - that each one of us is an independent source of action with a mind of its own. The more successfully the community implants this feeling, the more trouble it has in getting the individual to cooperate, with the result that children raised in such an environment are almost permanently confused."

- from The Book, written in 1966(!)


He elaborates much further ("a society which has defined him as separate cannot persuade him to behave as if he really belonged") - but that's the general gist. Funny how his nearly 50-year-old commentary is among the best descriptions of what truly gave rise to the recent riots, along with the deeper issues of alienation/anxiety/resentment. Thatcher (and Cameron), then, should feel proud, considering how successful they are at selling their claptrap - because, as Watts pointed out:

"The more successfully the community implants this feeling, the more trouble it has in getting the individual to cooperate, with the result that children raised in such an environment are almost permanently confused."

And permanent confusion leads to leaders like Thatcher and Cameron, and thus the vicious cycle continues.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Hard to improve on this statement

"If we don't want our young people to tear apart our communities then don't let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.."

[Sarah Ibarruri]

4. As usual, shit brought us by the same people: the mega-rich, the corporations and their lackeys.

They destroy, live in splendor, then they wonder why the people aren't happy. At least in England people react. Here? Here they go to church and worship in hunger, and won't react until it gets so bad that it's too late. Americans have a servile spirit and it's too bad, really, because it's servile to the wrong crowd.

[Chorophyll]

5. Wow. Thanks for posting. K&R.

[hiphopnation]

6. New-found respect for Brand, after reading this.

Thanks for posting. Another great paragraph:

As you have by now surely noticed, I don't know enough about politics to ponder a solution and my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass. But I know, as we all intuitively know, the solution is all around us and it isn't political, it is spiritual. Gandhi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

[crispini]

7. I liked that paragraph too.

It's a strong person who can admit their own complicity in public.

[pansypoo53219]

8. of course.

creative people see things the others don't.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

9. A stunning commentary. I knew from when I first heard him open up his mouth, he

wasn't just another pretty face. :)