Why Are Riots Escalating in London?

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SUMMARY

The ongoing riots in London, which began as a peaceful protest against a police shooting, have escalated into widespread violence and destruction over three consecutive nights. The Metropolitan Police have struggled to maintain control, with reports indicating that social media has played a significant role in mobilizing individuals from outside the area to join the chaos. The situation has prompted government officials, including the Prime Minister, to return from holiday to address the crisis. The riots reflect a troubling trend of mob mentality exacerbated by digital communication, leading to opportunistic crime rather than a coherent protest against social issues.

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  • #61
Evo said:
It's really terrible. How long can the police keep up these numbers?

Since people are missing posts, I'll repost this.

Wow that's crazy. The Sony picture looks like it's photoshopped, unbelievable. Savages on the loose, what can we say
 
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  • #62
Evo said:
Shame on Astro for going off topic and not reading the earlier posts. Tsk!
:!) I'm just a troublemaker. :biggrin:
 
  • #63
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/no-politics-today-084521728.html

The major events which hit us now are treated as automatic verifications of each individual's personal politics. It happened most recently with the massacre in Norway. Just this evening mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone made points which amounted to party political posturing. Ukip leader Nigel Farage and the BNP blamed multiculturalism. More than one right-wing columnist blamed family breakdown. An army of left-wingers blamed deprivation. Many of them also joined the right in calling for the army to come out on the streets.
...
The first thing we have to do is separate the valid ideas from the invalid ones. Blaming this on multiculturalism, for instance, is laughable and demonstrably false, as any Turkish man defending his shop with a stick tonight can tell you.
...
We can't talk about why this happened without talking about family breakdown, lack of respect for others and lack of responsibility.
...
But we will also define ourselves by how we respond to this.
...
No-one with a career behaves this way. No-one who is invested in society would act like this. Only people with nothing to lose would do this.

There is nothing I can add to this insightful telling commentary. Easily the best I have seen.
 
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  • #64
mheslep said:
Wrong thread Evo. This is the Riots of London thread :frown:
Yes, the riots in London were caused/worsened by social media. Read the thread! <fish slaps mheslep>

Evo said:
We discussed this yesterday in chat.

http://news.yahoo.com/london-rioters-battle-police-shooting-protest-054921704.html

It seems the riot was fueled by social media, people that had no interest in what happened came in from other areas. Looks like a new trend in mobs and riots caused or worsened by social media.
 
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  • #65
Evo said:
Yes, the riots in London were caused/worsened by social media. Read the thread! <fish slaps mheslep>


I disagree that social media, a communication medium, is responsible for these riots. Just because people can communicate so easily is not the cause of this behaviour.

This quote that Ken Natton posted from a commentary nails it IMO: "No-one with a career behaves this way. No-one who is invested in society would act like this. Only people with nothing to lose would do this."
 
  • #66
drankin said:
I disagree that social media, a communication medium, is responsible for these riots. Just because people can communicate so easily is not the cause of this behaviour.
It's how the mobs were gathered and directed. Social media is the tool, people are the catalyst.
 
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  • #67
Social media and more traditional media played a big role in the spread of unrest around Arab nations earlier this year. The social issues that underpinned that unrest were completely different to the opportunistic mayhem engulfing England at the moment. Social media is just an efficient method of communication. What matters is the content and the motivation behind the messages.
 
  • #68
I had to get out of my area for a bit because I needed to buy groceries. I come out of the grocery store and after 2 minutes a guy tries to mug me in plain sight (grabs at my shirt and pushes me backwards). He says he wants my shoes, then his 'friend' tells him to leave me alone because they won't fit.

Also heard of a few more incidents where thugs are asking random people to give them their clothes. I feel for those people, as it must be absolutely humiliating... I don't even want to go outside anymore. Online shopping it is.
 
  • #69
FeDeX_LaTeX said:
I had to get out of my area for a bit because I needed to buy groceries. I come out of the grocery store and after 2 minutes a guy tries to mug me in plain sight (grabs at my shirt and pushes me backwards). He says he wants my shoes, then his 'friend' tells him to leave me alone because they won't fit.

Also heard of a few more incidents where thugs are asking random people to give them their clothes. I feel for those people, as it must be absolutely humiliating... I don't even want to go outside anymore. Online shopping it is.

I'm sorry to hear you have to deal with that minding your own business in public. It really angers me. Someone comes up to me and tells me they want my shoes, they are going to get one of them in their face while it's still on my foot.

If you have some big friends, ask them to hang out with you when you are out and about until this blows over. Avoid the streets alone.
 
  • #70
drankin said:
"No-one with a career behaves this way. No-one who is invested in society would act like this. Only people with nothing to lose would do this."

See http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/06/17/calgary-vancouver-riot-athlete.html" from the recent Vancouver riots.

I imagine as people are identified in the London riots, we'll see that some of them are successful and were caught up in the mob-mentality.
 
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  • #71
NeoDevin said:
See http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/06/17/calgary-vancouver-riot-athlete.html" from the recent Vancouver riots.

I imagine as people are identified in the London riots, we'll see that some of them are successful and were caught up in the mob-mentality.

That kid should get jail time and his scholarship revoked IMO. Social media is helping to identify these vandals.
 
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  • #72
drankin said:
That kid should get jail time and his scholarship revoked IMO. Social media is helping to identify these vandals.

Agreed on the jail time, not so sure about the scholarship.

I only posted it here to show that even successful people will behave in this way.
 
  • #73
NeoDevin said:
Agreed on the jail time, not so sure about the scholarship.

I only posted it here to show that even successful people will behave in this way.

No question about it. Successful people are involved in criminal activity all the time. Their "successfulness" should not make their punishment any less IMO. I don't subsribe to "the riot made me do it" excuse.
 
  • #74
Tosh5457 said:
These events don't reflect the mentality of British youth. The participants come from poor neighborhoods and are mostly black, which also has an influence.

Almost overkill, since it is worldwide known that British skinheads and football hooligans only drink tea and play cricket, all day long ...

geez
 
  • #75
NeoDevin said:
I only posted it here to show that even successful people will behave in this way.


I hear the point you are making NeoDevin, but again I would suggest that the circumstances are different. The Vancouver riot was borne of sporting defeat, and I suspect, at least partly fuelled by alcohol. Alcohol and drugs might have played a role in the riots in England but, when it all started, a few nights ago, some genuine – if unjustified and misguided – anger at the death of Mark Duggan lay at its root. What has happened since then, though, has nothing whatever to do with the death of Mark Duggan. Who knows, perhaps some people with more to lose have involved themselves in all that has followed, but I don’t think they are representative of the demographic involved. And further, such people are generally band-wagon jumpers. Someone else has to start the trouble and it has to take hold to a significant degree before such types find the courage to join in.
 
  • #76

Primitively disturbing.
 
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  • #77
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/08/london-riots-blackberry-messenger-looting"
The maker of the BlackBerry, Research in Motion, said on Monday night that it would co-operate with a police investigation into claims that its popular BlackBerry Messenger service played a key role in organising the London riots.

Scotland Yard vowed to track down and arrest protesters who posted "really inflammatory, inaccurate" messages on the service, and the social networking websites Twitter and Facebook.

Patrick Spence, the managing director regional marketing at Research In Motion (RIM), confirmed that the BlackBerry manufacturer had contacted police to assist with the investigation.

Let's hope RIM carries through and makes good on their promise. Isn't London one of the most heavily video monitored places anywhere in the world as well ? If so, that can't hurt in tracking down the perpetraitors.

Rhody...
 
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  • #78
While there are some youth mobs forming to rob certain people and businesses, have we really seen any riots here in the U.S. yet? I mean I haven't seen anything here thus far that matches what's going on in the UK right now.

I don't know if I buy the poverty/unemployment/economic hardship argument, I mean we have far fewer social entitlements here in the U.S. in comparison to what they have in the UK, but we haven't seen riots like this. I wonder if any of these riots also have to do with a nanny state being too extensive...? Like turning too much of the society into adult adolescents...? Not trying to go off-topic, just wondering about the causes of all this.
 
  • #79
Willowz said:

Primitively disturbing.


How about those two women who were interviewed saying about how it's all the fault of "the rich" and "people with businesses." Since when are all people with businesses rich (and that's assuming even the truly rich are to blame in such an example)? Destroying all the businesses in a community, those are not rich people they're attacking.
 
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  • #80
CAC1001 said:
While there are some youth mobs forming to rob certain people and businesses, have we really seen any riots here in the U.S. yet? I mean I haven't seen anything here thus far that matches what's going on in the UK right now.

I don't know if I buy the poverty/unemployment/economic hardship argument, I mean we have far fewer social entitlements here in the U.S. in comparison to what they have in the UK, but we haven't seen riots like this. I wonder if any of these riots also have to do with a nanny state being too extensive...? Like turning too much of the society into adult adolescents...? Not trying to go off-topic, just wondering about the causes of all this.
Have you read the fist page of this thread and the linked articles?
 
  • #81
Evo said:
Have you read the fist page of this thread and the linked articles?

Yes...:confused:
 
  • #82
CAC1001 said:
Yes...:confused:
Here you go.
Greg Bernhardt said:
It's becoming a widespread problem. Philly now has problems too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14466369

Evo said:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/08/09/for_flash_mobsters_crowd_size_a_tempting_cover/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Latest+news
 
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  • #83
Evo said:
Here you go.

Yes I read those, but that was part of what I was writing about, we are seeing flash mobs occurring here in the U.S. in certain areas, but I mean we aren't seeing Philadelphia or Cleveland lit up on fire with police cars being torched, buildings set on fire, masses of small businesses destroyed, and so forth. No major U.S. cities with 14,000 police on the streets. So I mean I wouldn't say the rioting as we've seen in the UK and has come to the U.S. yet.
 
  • #84
CAC1001 said:
Yes I read those, but that was part of what I was writing about, we are seeing flash mobs occurring here in the U.S. in certain areas, but I mean we aren't seeing Philadelphia or Cleveland lit up on fire with police cars being torched, buildings set on fire, masses of small businesses destroyed, and so forth. No major U.S. cities with 14,000 police on the streets. So I mean I wouldn't say the rioting as we've seen in the UK and has come to the U.S. yet.
And chicago.

No, our police had inercepted a number of mob tweets and stopped them.

So maybe we are a bit more savvy, or lucky.
 
  • #86
  • #87
Seems to me that when some in the political leadership sowed the unrest over the University subsidies some months ago, i.e. when they tacitly or even actively encouraged those riots, so now have they reaped with this common criminal behavior.
 
  • #88
jtbell said:
A surprising number of the rioters appearing in court have turned out not to be the "unemployed yobs" that people have been focusing on:

Shock over 'respectable' lives behind masks of UK rioters (cnn.com)

If you're interested in real data see this at the guardian.

I didn't do an accurate count, but looking at the spreadsheet I estimate at about 75% of those taken before court were unemployed or have no stated occupation. I am of course assuming that the 124 or so data points are a reliable measure of the whole.

So while its interesting to note that a significant minority of people were employed, preliminary data indicate that the majority don't seem to be. Hardly surprising...
 
  • #89
Why is not completely surprising that even a 1/4 of those arrested in mob violence for looting and/or arson were employed or even well off? Maybe that watched Clockwork Orange to many times?
 
  • #90
mheslep said:
Why is not completely surprising that even a 1/4 of those arrested in mob violence for looting and/or arson were employed or even well off? Maybe that watched Clockwork Orange to many times?

Maybe they did, maybe they got caught up in the excitement... not like having a job means you're not going to be violent and disorderly. I re-read the list... looks like half of those listed as employed are actually students, the rest mostly in low paid jobs like: lifeguard, retail assistant, fork lift truck driver etc. etc.

The occasional mid-pay job like electrician, clerk, estate agent... that is somewhat surprising I agree.

Though hardly occupations to put you in Forbes 500.

Statistics dictates that in a crowd of thousands, you're definitely going to find some odd-balls that don't fit... I'm sure the Sun and other tabloids love to make a bit deal out of it, but its hardly representative.
 

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