I’m saddened by the riots in England, especially in London. For a long-time, during the formative years of my life the city was my home. Of course, London is no stranger to violence, from terrorists blowing up buildings and putting bombs in dustbins, to football hooligans wrecking havoc in the streets and vandalizing everything they could lay their hands on, to gang fights between the Skinheads and the Mods, and race riots such as the bloody one in Brixton back in the eighties.
But this time the riots seemed different. The death of one man at the hand of the police initially triggered a protest, but it did not explain why it turned into riots that spread into a mass rampage of burning and looting in several areas of London, and that were copied in some cities across the country.
Moreover, the rioters were youths, some barely entering their teens, the majority being of school age. And their actions - burning cars, setting fire and breaking into shops to loot and steal jeans, sneakers and electronic gadgets – seemed feral and mindless: creeping out of the woodworks come sundown in an uncontrolled frenzy of lawlessness that caught the authorities unprepared.
I remembered when, over a decade ago, Jakarta too was in the grip of riots. For a few days, with no clear trigger, mobs roamed the streets, burning cars, torching buildings and looting shops. A relative came home with a handful of kitchen spices that she took from a nearby supermarket where she shopped everyday. I was appalled and asked her why she did it. Everybody else was doing it, was her answer. It was no good returning the stuff. The entire supermarket was looted and practically destroyed.
Clearly she didn’t know what she was doing, other than following what everybody else did. For the three days the riots took place, there was not one policeman in sight. In retrospect, it was obvious that the riots were cleverly engineered by starting trouble and setting fire to particular spots, and then leaving it to the mob to continue and finish the job of destroying and creating mayhem. When the Marines took control of the streets, the madness ended. Just like that.
Why some hooded youths in Britain went berserk and set off several nights of the worst riots in memory, was unclear. As the fires died down, thousands arrested and hundreds charged and the clean up underway, no doubt this is the question on everybody’s mind. But this is more difficult to answer than the question on who is responsible and who to blame.
Many blame the police for being too slow, too timid and too late in tackling the riots. UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron makes it clear that the riots were purely criminal acts by gangs and the result of lack in moral and ethics. Parents should have better control of their children. The leftwing politicians would point to the dangers of further public spending cuts. No doubt sociologists would talk about the impact of unemployment, and the anger caused by the lack of opportunities, income disparity and the bleak prospects faced by the disenfranchised inner-city youth. The riots were reflections of familial, community and social breakdowns.
Whatever the cause and who to blame, there is something sinister about the involvement of children and young people as perpetrators of acts that were so clearly anarchic. Surely most teens and pre-teens are still too young to feel the impact of unemployment and the anger of a life with little hope or opportunities for the future or the hatred for the authorities that triggered for instance, the riots in the early eighties?
But the young people of today are very different from those over a decade ago. To know how they think, is to enter their world. When I was a teenager living in London, my life was more or less dominated by school (which was free) and trying to pass my exams so I could enter the university (also free plus a grant for my pocket money.) My parents worked and paid a lot in taxes. There wasn’t much money to spare but I got my eyes and teeth checked for nothing. Weekend was for working on a Saturday job, going to the library and a sitcom on TV. My world was pretty small, but secure.
Today’s kids straddle many worlds: the physical world, the virtual world of social networks and the world created for them by the media: a world of instant celebrity, endless consumer goods and desirable objects. A world run by adults whose greed and selfishness are bringing the country to the brink of financial ruins.
Theirs is a world where the community is not what’s going on down the streets, but in the online communities of Facebook, Twitter, Blackberry Messengers and the likes. Communities where the interaction is devoid of rules and free from censure.
In this world, they are anything but alienated. They are constantly online and in touch with one another. Their desires are the same: the latest gadgets, the hippest jeans and the trendiest sneakers. Stuff and more stuff.
It does not take long for the connectivity of the virtual world goes viral into the physical world. The same technology that had allowed young Egyptians to take to the streets and stage a national revolution could also be used to organise a raid to a local shopping mall and grab some free stuff.
To be sure there were criminal elements involved, but once the opportunity is there, for most kids, no doubt they do it because everyone else is doing it.
(Desi Anwar: First published in the Jakarta Globe)
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