Close To Being Right

I spent Saturday watching a protest made up of 450,000 peaceful people being overshadowed by about 200 angry anarchists.  A Sky news commentator regretfully announced that “unfortunately this will make the headlines” and of course it did make the headline on his own sensationalist rubber necking network.  At one point Ed Miliband made a speech to the demonstration, but the second he opened his bandwagon-hopping mouth he was cut off as both Sky news and BBC news got distracted by an attack of paint throwing and window breaking on a tax-dodging Topshop.  In the blink of an eye important journalism had descended into the likes of the police videos you’d expect to see on ITV4 at 1am. 

Perhaps the BBC and the rest of the news media took some responsibility for the smashed windows.  Over the last few years rolling news and newspaper editors have made it clear that the best way for a protester to grab attention (something every protester wants) is to cause chaos.  The anarchists running rampage in the West End know that they would make the front pages as well as having their actions broadcast live on two channels for a whole afternoon if they broke things.

While I can’t support rioting on the streets of London its far too easy to write the perpetrators off as idiots and hooligans, even if many of them are.  They probably voted for Nick Clegg who betrayed them by being being complicit with a government happy to ignore the public’s opinion.  When people are ignored and helpless theirs not much else to do other then kick out in anger. So why not?  Martin Luther King said that “a riot is the language of the unheard” and he was probably right.  Nobody cared about Brixton until it was on fire and even the biggest protest in the history of Britain couldn’t stop Blair from invading Iraq.   

So who do we blame?   The news media for providing a one way ticket to the front page to the views of any activist willing to start a fire?   Us for being so interested in rubber necking at the first sign of disorder or politicians for have so little respect for our opinion that the only self expression worth while is destroying a police van?   All I know its that it far too easy and far too lazy to dismiss an angry mob when they’re clearly a symptom of our obviously broken collective mentality.  Now that I’ve written this I’m going to play a video game in which I’ll enjoy killing fictional people for fun because I’m just as flawed as everybody else and theirs no point in pretending over-wise.  Bye