Print this post.By Diane Gee
Sometimes the world has to burn to be reborn. The Phoenix myth is myth for a reason.
A meditation on institutionalized violence and its ugly consequences and contradictions.
Cops gang up on a demonstrator.
I am just catching up on the protests and riots happening around the Globe. I am less than surprised by the Right’s reaction to it; by the Right, I mean most of the press. I am unsurprised by the usual “leftiness” position about this, either. I mean, most of the so-called “left” loves to stand on the righteous high ground of denouncing violence, sweet little martyrs wringing their hands. They think, like the abused spousal enabler, if they are “good enough” and “sign enough petitions” and speak in platitudes about resistance.
Can no one state the obvious? I stand with the rioters in England, I stand with the tent cities in Israel, and I sure as fuck wish the citizens of the United States had equal amounts of balls.
This is a class war, and the cops are now the army protecting the rich from the poor.
Am I the only one on the Left who says,”Burn it down, take it back!” Am I the only one who understands the looting by people who have to pass windowfuls of glories they can never have, made by people they will never know in other countries. Their jobs are gone, and they have nothing. Am I the only one who sees hope in the housing crisis in Israel too, their demands starting to include disenfranchised Bedouins, and inclusive of Tent 48 who is there to support the Palestinian housing crisis being exponentially worse?
In the case of Israel, I find it just fucking HILARIOUS that neo-cons give blind support to a country that seeks to restore the very socialist notion of subsidized housing and demanding (and I quote) a WELFARE STATE and the END TO PRIVATIZATION. They never have a problem with that; yet are doing everything in their power to help Nutzy-yahoo maintain a right wing stranglehold in that land. His extremism is a useful tool of the right. He does and will support our own wars of acquisition and the lies it takes to sustain them.
Can you imagine what the Right and their mouthpieces say about Americans who demand a welfare state? It would be a bloodbath. Don’t believe me? Look at the bloodbaths we have wrought on Americans to our South.
I find it not just morally repugnant, but indicative of utter insanity that if any other country attacked US citizens in international waters, or stopped a US ship from sailing. the Right-wing would go ballistic. Yet, Welfare State Israel gets a pass, and peace activists get branded terrorists. ::TILT::
As we speak no less than 81 House Representatives are on their merry way to Israel on the dime of AIPAC spinoff the American Israel Education Foundation. What a grand way to say, “Hey Netanyahu, we’ve got your back, even if the President has shown enough kahunas to not even daresay the settlements are a gross injustice, only that they are an impediment to Peace. Will they support the “Only Democracy in the Middle East’s” people’s democratic voices asking for socialism, or will they be there hawking crackdowns like their corporate masters demand?
Do you think they will say a word about the Extremist Jewish people holding Al Aqsa Mosque hostage and not letting the Muslims worship there in Occupied Jerusalem? What would they say if they were holding Christians out of a Church? The irony is so rich you could smelt it into a skyscraper of heavy metal hypocrisy.
But I digress.
Four days ago British Police in Tottenham, North London shot and killed Mark Duggan, a 29-year old father of four, for no (or as yet not) discernible reason, setting off riots that are spreading across the country.
People are acting “shocked, shocked I tell you” and wasting airspace and precious font point talking about race, and how ugly violence is.
Really, fucking really? Do they talk about the Ugly Violence done them (and us) daily by the Elite Class? Oh, the Elite never riot. They hire us to do it for them, all over the world, and call it an army. They hire policemen to do it and call it the keeping of the peace. Yet, they are never denounced for their gloved hand in the matter. Never blamed for the murder by gun, rocket, homeless, joblessness, malnutrition nor lack of health care here. Is their violence toward us any less distasteful?
I call it self-defense and proof positive that if you harm enough of us, we have the power to take it back if and when we so choose. They should tremble.
You may say they are trashing their own neighborhoods, and what social justice in looting a store for shoes? I say that is one quarter Nike won’t make a profit off of Indonesian children chained to machines, and fuck their overpriced bullshit, anyway. I say that the slumlords jacking rents up will suddenly get a wake up call. The looting is not merely a thumbing of the noses at the profiteers, it is survival. They can sell the things they take to survive.
I say they and we should storm the banksters and houses of the unholy that rule us and tear it down.
This is not mindless violence it is RETURN fire in a war that has finally pushed the people to the brink of self-defense.
The Elites have consolidated their efforts to extract all the capital possible out of what used to be the under classes until we are bled dry. Now they are decrying our natural instinct to protect ourselves, to survive, to regain autonomy over our own fate and they are using violence to put us back down into the misery they have created as our existence. They are talking about “fightback” in England, when “fightback” is what they are facing.
The Arab Spring is only the beginning. The Israeli Summer is too. When the US/British Coalition Empire starts to lose control of their denizens? Whoa, buddy, the game is coming into full swing.
The right loves its violence, unless it doesn’t serve their idea of Churchie Unistate.
The “left” claims to despise violence, yet allows violence to happen by silent complicity and/or letting someone else do the act for them.
Both sides have the Universal Human blindness to the fact we all ONLY survive, we all ONLY thrive when we ALL do.
This means you cannot demonize everyone, nor refuse to demonize those who act demonically.
Right now, there are only those of us dying in the Class War and those on the road to that end soon. When people have nothing left to lose, and are under siege, violence always ensues in an effort to strike back at those harming us.
I say, like in the movie “V” that violence is not only just, but goddamned necessary at times to fight the fucking demons.
Now the question is this, oh ye readers of a Liberal Nature… as things get worse, do we let the Right define our Riots, and Riot for no Government and to allow “(un)Free Enterprise” run unfettered and taxes to be a thing of the past?
Or do we let the Left define the Riots and make DAMNED sure our collective purchasing power (that IS what taxes are, after all) become a medium of ensuring social good for the people?
The choice is ours, what our future will be, and I sure as fuck will do my damnedest to frame it so that it comes to a righteous outcome.
BRING IT ON!
Contributing Editor DIANE GEE also maintains a personal blog, the Wild Wild Left, and runs a lively Facebook discussion group, Links for the Wildly Left. In case you didn’t notice, she’s mad as hell and won’t take it no more. And madness at gross, institutionalized injustice is a sign of vibrant sanity.
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