I'm pretty shocked as well. Sure, we're used to having demonstrations and sometimes even small riots in Western Europe, but usually it's not that bad. As far as I remember the riots in Paris a while ago weren't quite this bad either. It's a clear sign, though, that a lot of sings are pretty fucked up not just in the UK, but probably also in other European countries in similar situations. There's a lot of discontent, and people feel generally helpless about it, and situations like that can easily escalate. But, yeah, it is pretty frightening. It's not like burning cars and houses is going to change anything or solve any problems.
I think in Western Europe many people just associate any kind of violent police action (let alone sending the army in) with the kind of thing that happens in dictatorships. The idea is that in those regimes people get oppressed, so the government uses the police/army to keep them in line. And democracies are hesitant to do the same, because they usually condemn the police taking strong, even violent action against people when it happens somewhere else. And whenever the police forces DO act like that, there's usually a public outcry about police violence etc. So I think the problem here is indeciveness: they feel like they should be doing something, but they don't want to appear as the bad guys who beat citizens. Especially since, if I heard it correctly, the first riots started because a man was shot by the police. Maybe they're afraid of what will happen if another person gets seriously injured by the police.
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Date: 2011-08-09 01:45 pm (UTC)I think in Western Europe many people just associate any kind of violent police action (let alone sending the army in) with the kind of thing that happens in dictatorships. The idea is that in those regimes people get oppressed, so the government uses the police/army to keep them in line. And democracies are hesitant to do the same, because they usually condemn the police taking strong, even violent action against people when it happens somewhere else. And whenever the police forces DO act like that, there's usually a public outcry about police violence etc. So I think the problem here is indeciveness: they feel like they should be doing something, but they don't want to appear as the bad guys who beat citizens. Especially since, if I heard it correctly, the first riots started because a man was shot by the police. Maybe they're afraid of what will happen if another person gets seriously injured by the police.