For the British, the only people who have the moral legitimacy to use force against nonwhite rioters are—other nonwhites

Philip M. writes from England:

The thing that will really stay with me about these riots is the way that the Turks and Bangladeshis were praised for standing up to the riots, yet the moment that English people tried to do the same thing they were dismissed as racist yobs and thugs. The only real unity of purpose and firmness that has been shown by the police, media, and establishment has been in condemning even the possibility of English people defending themselves. A senior police officer on NewsNight actually said: “If white middle class people [he obviously means English people] form a gang to attack these rioters they are no better than the other gangs” [meaning the gangs doing the rioting].

[LA replies: This is the same mentality as that of the editor of a prominent neoconservative magazine who said to me at a dinner in 2006, “If we stopped Muslim immigration, we would be as immoral as the terrorists.”]

The paralysis and uncertainty that was shown by the police and politicians in facing these gangs is largely because they were dominated and led by blacks. White liberals simply do not feel they have the moral legitimacy to challenge the rioters or the culture that they come from because they know the culture of the underclass is largely a black, gangster culture, and to critisise this culture would be racist. Any response to combat the violence by English people will therefore also be racist. This is why they were so relieved to see Turks and Bangladeshis defending themselves. These were people taking on the rioters that they could support without fear.

[LA replies: it’s the same with U.S. conservatives who are always looking for salvation through a black conservative or a Hispanic conservative. These conservatives want nonwhites to take controversial positions on social issues that they, the conservatives, feel they lack the standing to take themselves. They are contemptible cowards, helplessly under the thumb of the liberalism they claim to oppose. ]

This makes me wonder about your prediction that Western liberal elites will capitulate to Islam. I had always assumed that if this happened it would be out of a fear of Islam. But in England, I can now equally see that the growing, lawless, mixed-race underclass (not Muslims) has the potential to cause such fear in the middle classes that they will want to see firm and forceful measures used to counter the threat. But since they will deem that as disgustingly racist, they may turn to Islam as the only non-racist acceptable counter-force to the threat of black/mixed race underclass violence.

[LA replies: This is like the ancient Romans, recruiting Gothic tribesmen into their army to help counter other Gothic tribesmen. Ultimately the Goths whom the Romans made a part of their empire took it over. The only way for a people to defend their society, is for that people to defend their society. But liberalism—not as a matter of having bumbled into a bad situation like the Romans, but as a matter of fundamental moral principle—won’t allow that. ]

P.S.—As I write this I am listening to the BBC Radio Four news. For the first time in the British media I have heard the term “flash mob” used as it is euphemistically used to describe black mobs in America. They have a reporter in Philadelphia who has just spoken to the woman who works for The Onion, Emily Gindelsburger, who was attacked recently, and are interviewing blacks and others about the flash mobs and the curfews being enforced to stop them. This is the first mention I have seen in the British media of the American flash mob phenomenon.

UPDATE, August 13, 12:29 a.m.

Philip continues:

Maybe I am wrong, but this seems like such a huge, era-defining story to me. I get a feeling that this has shocked the establishment to the core in a way that even the London bombings or the Muslim riots in the North of England a few years ago did not, in a way that nothing has in my lifetime.

It is partly the powerlessness of the response. It is so shocking to think that politicians and the police could equivocate in the face of such an onslaught. There was just a feeling that this could go on and on and no one seemed to have any idea how to stop it, or even if we had a moral justification for doing so. For a while in London such was the overstretch of the police that people calling 999 were basically ignored. People could literally get away with anything they wanted to, and nothing could stop them. The police completely lost control.

It is the fact that the police have been reformed along left-wing lines, and the underclass have been so heavily financially indulged, yet they clearly just enjoyed the violence for its own sake without even a pretence at a “political agenda”—which made it impossible for the usual leftists scapegoats of poverty and police brutality to gain any traction—and it is not that they did not try, just that when they did the words just seemed to disintegrate upon contact with reality. They could not even find an excuse. The story could not be contained. No narrative could be imposed on events—it still hasn’t been. This story has not been wrapped up and put to bed, no lessons have been learned, no moral or silver linings to be seen. Just emptiness. The race element still went largely unspoken, but this time it went unspoken so loudly that it was deafening.

It is the fact that so many liberals, including journalists, were attacked in their little gentrified inner London ghettos by the very blacks they live around and had assumed loved them because of the anti-racist aura they presumed that they emanated. I know that most liberals will not change their opinions as a result of this, but there is only so much self-deceit a mind can take. They have taken an existential battering. Mentally, they will be living in a different place from now on, a more uncertain and more frightening place. They will never be able to be as smug or complacent in their views about race relations ever again, no more looking down on America and its race problems—“we aren’t like America, we treat our blacks differently over here.” Yes, and look where it’s got us. Nowhere. The next time they meet a BNP member or another racist bogeyman it will just that bit harder to laugh at them for what they are saying.

It is the fact that almost instantly people began uniting and defending themselves along ethnic lines.

But most of all it is the fact that amidst all the chaos and violence the mask slipped and we saw the horror of the police and the media that a handful of English people had actually been pushed so far and were so concerned that they were roused out of their complacency and banded together for their lives against nonwhites. In the mind’s eye of the left they have so many times imagined that English people would suddenly rise up and start some kind of Nationalist revolution and overthrow the government and start ethnically cleansing the cities that they are no longer capable of seeing white people in any other way. The left couldn’t acknowledge the simple fact that the English were acting in a justifiable, purely defensive way against nonwhites who were threatening their homes and neighborhoods. They had to see the whites’ defensive local action as though it were some kind of fascist coup.

I’m writing this really to you, as I don’t know how big a deal it seems over there. Just want to impress on you how shocking this is.

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Bill Carpenter writes:

Philip’s quotation of British liberals reveals their deep desire for moral superiority. It correlates with what I have long said about liberals in general. They would rather die than give up their liberalism. Of course, usually they only have to let someone else die rather than give up their liberalism.

Cameron and Boris Johnson should resign in disgrace, along with the whole top of the domestic security hierarchy. If you don’t start shooting in the face this kind of rioting, you have surrendered.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 12, 2011 01:25 PM | Send