Anarchy in the UK

I realize this article is a little late to be immediately topical, but the underlying theme is too important to ignore and goes along with a theory I have been developing for quite a while. For all three of you who don't know what happened, violent riots broke out across the United Kingdom beginning a little over a week ago. The rioters were supposedly protesting a shooting by police officers on August 4th. The "protests" quickly spun out of control (or, from another perspective, did exactly what they were intended to do), leading to massive rioting, looting, arson attacks, muggings, and general lawlessness that left at least 5 people dead and over 200 injured. Of course, the leftist spin machine was out before the fires had really started to claim that the rioters were just "poor, underprivileged, oppressed, victims of (insert favorite -ism here)." In reality, many of the rioters were from the middle or even upper classes and were inspired to violence because, essentially, "everybody's doin' it" (just as a side note, if anyone, ever tries to convince you with that argument, you should simply run in the other direction as fast as you can).

A major problems, according to the British authorities, was the massive spike in gang activity during the riots. This is important because gangs have several characteristics that will feature heavily in the coming months and years. Most are based on racial lines (Caribbean gangs, Pakistani gangs, etc.) and as multi-cultural Europe breaks down I believe we will see more such divisions in even the non-criminal communities. In the United States we witnessed racially-motivated violence by mobs at the Wisconsin State Fair mere days before the British riots started. Gangs are also organized and can effectively control small patches of cities to the point where even the police are reluctant to enter without heavy firepower. Gangs also have the numbers to do a lot of damage with minimal equipment. Guns are extremely hard to find on the streets of London, but the gangs don't care. They can attack victims from all sides with knives, pipes, baseball (or cricket) bats, or their bare fists. What politicians on both sides of the Pond don't seem to understand is that people who are committed to pursuing violence will find a way around whatever petty rules are put in their way.

Something else is important to note: the backlash among the non-rioters. The police were seen as ineffective and useless. In a statement that would be laughable if not for the creepy Big-Brother (not the reality show, the 1984 one) vibe, British Prime Minister David Cameron has suggested shutting down any social networking sites at any time if the government feels that the site is being used to plan criminal activity. But worse than the overbearing but ultimately futile attempts by the government, I fear that we may see a wave of vigilante violence against gang members and other violent criminals very soon. Depending on how effective these counter-attacks are, we may even see some gangs taking the role of "defender of the neighborhood" to both maintain control of their territory and also to gain respect and support from normal civilians.

Among the loudest voices screaming for vigilante justice were from Britain's Muslim community. One of the worst cases of violence during the riots was a particularly nasty attack in Birmingham during which black gang members plowed a car into a crowd of people at full speed just to cause injury and death. Three brave young Muslim men, Haroon Jahan, Shazzad Ali, and Abdul Musavir, who were seeking to do nothing but protect their family's place of business from looters, were run down and died as a result. One man from the neighborhood who witnessed the scene threatened the gang members responsible with the following statement: "We'll hunt down these black men, cut off their heads and feed them to our dogs." While Tariq Jahan, Haroon's father, spoke out against retaliation, we will have to see which path is more popular in a Muslim community that believes that they are the only ones who can protect themselves (which, to be fair, is actually probably true).

So where does this leave the rest of us? Unfortunately, I believe that the recent acts of mob violence are a sure sign that Western civilization is unravelling. Now, before you call me an alarmist (or any mean name), I am not saying that civilization is collapsing. But there are loose threads in the fabric of our society, and every faction that seeks to destroy Western civilization and supplant it with their own misguided ideology has been pulling like crazy over the course of several decades. What we are seeing in the UK (and elsewhere) is simply the inevitable result. What's more, these events are also a warning to the rest of us. It is not too late for us. Why are the Islamists, Socialists, Communists, Fascists, and every other variety of -ist you can think of (okay, maybe not capitalists. Not most capitalists, anyway) teaming up to batter Western civilization from all sides? It is because they are afraid of us! There are still enough good, intellectually honest men and women from all over the world who are guided by the desire for true freedom (and the willingness to accept the responsibilities associated with those freedoms) to turn back the tide of evil that threatens to spill across the globe. But that can only happen if we have the wisdom to wake up and the courage to stand up for the cause of freedom.