These riots reveal some unpalatable home truths: Hari Kunzru
Donagh of Dublin Opinion
August 12th, 2011
Hari Kunzru has a chilling and accurate indictment of the reaction of those 'average Britons', those " frightened, precarious & lonely little entrepreneurs".
"I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to see a large number of supposed social liberals revealing their true colours on Monday night, tweeting and bleating for curfews and water cannon and rubber bullets. Early in the evening, watching social media, I was seeing variants of the same joke: "I'm in Chiswick/Hampstead/Dulwich Waitrose and there's a RIOT! They've run out of POLENTA!" The smug sense of disconnection (this is nothing to do with me, or my comfortable middle-class life – it is an affair of the poor, in places I choose not to go) was soon replaced by panic. "WHERE IS THE ARMY?" Screw civil liberties, time to declare martial law. How easy it would be to install fascism in this creaky little country! No need to torch the Reichstag – all you'd have to do would be to burn a few more sports shops."
* Url:http://www.irishleftreview.org/2011/08/12/these-riots-reveal-some-unpalatable-home-truths-hari-kunzru-comment-is-free-the-guardian
