Vancouverites (white) riot after big hockey loss

We’re talking about serious rioting, with burning cars, mob confrontations with police, the whole scene. In the video, you can see that the rioters are white.

Also, just in: the National Post has many stunning photographs of downtown Vancouver in chaos. Most of the rioters are white, joined by a couple of Asians who show they’re assimilating. A commenter at the National Post (triplewatto at 7:36 AM) tries to blame the riots on the city’s leftism, but I don’t think we should be looking for rationalizations or escapes. Let’s just take in the fact that supposedly ultra-civilized white Canadians are behaving like, well, like American blacks after their team wins.

- end of initial entry -

MBS writes:

Vancouver is very hite and Asian. You could walk through the city and not see a single black person on any given day.

This is a real black eye to the city of Vancouver. No pun intended.

I live in Vancouver.

James P. writes:

This demonstrates how successfully the Left has normalized deviancy. Initially this effort emerged from the need to excuse black misbehavior, and now such misbehavior is slowly making its way up the food chain. If everyone is a deviant, and everyone riots and loots when they’re offended, then blacks can’t be singled out as unusually deviant.

Did you notice the white guys making black-style gang signs? We’re all black anti-social miscreants now!

Ken Hechtman writes:

It’s a Canadian thing. You wouldn’t understand. Canada has had hockey riots as long as England has had soccer riots. The Rocket Richard riot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Riot) is every bit as important in Quebec separatist mythology as Stonewall is in gay mythology and for exactly the same reasons.

I remember there was a riot in Montreal when the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup in 1985 and another in 1993. In 2008 they won the quarter-finals and everybody knew that was as close to the cup as they were going to get so we had the Quarter-Final Riot that year.

http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/04/22/habs-riot/

June 16, 8:18 p.m.

A.M. writes:

Given Canada’s historic affinity for rioting, according to Mr. Hechtman, it may be precisely the opposite of what James P. has said. That is, because rioting in America nowadays is exclusively a black- and brown- affair, whites don’t participate. Whites are quick to avoid places where they are severely outnumbered by undesirable members of a minority, e.g. the public transport system in many cities. While riots would be less frequent if say, portions of America were all-white, white participation might well be higher.

Robert B. writes:

I respectively disagree with your other respondents. Rioting and especially looting were once punishable by being shot on site. This was true during the black riots in the 60’s. Due to the so called backlash by The Left over the enforcement of standing law during those riots, the government no longer enforces that law. The other component to this is that government has decided that crimes against property are victimless crimes due to the existence of insurance—thus, if someone burns your car or loots your store, insurance will cover it and you aren’t really out anything. Thus, rioters know they can get away with it and act accordingly.

Leonard D. writes:

I don’t want to minimize the thing, but as Hechtman says, Anglos have a long history of riots and mob action. Not just in Canada — here too.

That said, white riots are different than black ones. The Canadian rioters certainly destroyed property, and seem to have caused a lot of self-injuries, but the number of injuries is pretty low:

Between 130 and 140 people were sent to hospital, including three people with stab wounds and two suffering trauma, while a number of others were treated in the courtyard of a downtown hospital for the effects of tear gas.

Most people were treated for tear gas and pepper spray effects, lacerations, facial trauma, substance abuse and head injuries, Alyssa Polinsky, spokeswoman for B.C. Ambulance, told QMI Agency Thursday morning.

There were no fatalities

That is, most or possible even all of the injuries were either inflicted by the police while repressing the riot, or by individual rioters on themselves.

Also, notice this in the linked piece:

Some people took their frustrations to Facebook, with at least two groups popping up Thursday morning. One called “Vancouver Riot Pics: Post Your Photos” urged locals to post images from the riots so that police could more easily identify those responsible. The page was filled with photos early Thursday, and more than 20,000 people had joined.

Another called “Post Riot Clean-up - Let’s help Vancouver” rallied volunteers to head downtown at 7 a.m. to help clean up the previous night’s damage. More than 11,000 claimed they would attend the event.

We’ll see how many go. Can you imagine either of those groups in, say, Detroit?

Hannon writes:

At first I was put off by the idea of these enlightened baby seal-bashers running amok in Vancouver, where everyone seems to think crime just does not happen. I can only imagine what pent-up frustrations, synergized with alcohol and mob mentality, not to mention the Canucks’ loss, led to this chaos. Then my thoughts went in another direction. I think on some levels it is a good thing that the modern world witness the fact that whites also can and do engage in reckless group destruction. In itself it is not a good thing of course, but whites remaining ever passive while other racial groups exhibit routine group violence is not a good thing, either. I would assume that these exuberant youth were not acting in the defense of anything, except perhaps pride, but through these acts they know they are alive, and so do we. Vancouver is not a Dead Island.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 16, 2011 09:15 AM | Send