They're never what they appear to be, cynical, brutal delinquents. They always have a tiny private dream.
This dream can be many things. It can even be something quite ordinary. Let's take the English riots of August,
2011. The standard liberal explanation really sounds like a reptition of the "Officer Krupke" song.
We cannot just condemn this riot as delinquent vandalism. You have to see how these people live in practically
ghettos, isolated communities, no proper family life, no proper education. They don't even have a prospect of
a regular employment. But this is not enough. Because man is not simply a prodcut of objective circumstances.
We all have this margin of freedom in deciding how we subjectivize these objective circumstances which of
course determine us. How we react to them by constructing our own universe. The conservative solution is
'We need more police.' We need corps which pass severe judgement. I think this solution is too simple.
If I listen closely to some of David Cameron's statements, it looked as if "Okay, they are beating people,
burning houses, but the truly horrible thing is that they were taking objects without paying for them."
The ultimate sin that we can imagine. In a very limited way, Cameron was right. There was no ideological justification.
It is the reaction of people who are totally caught into the predominant ideology but have no ways to
realize what this ideology demands of them. So it's a kind of a wild acting out within this ideological space
of consumerism. Even if we are dealing with an apparently totally nonideological brutality "I just want to burn
house to get objects", it is the result of a very specific social and ideological constellation where big
ideology, striving for justice, equality, et cetera, disintegrates. The only functioning ideology is pure
consumerism and then no wonder what you get is a form of protest. Every violent acting out is a sign that there is
something you are not able to put into words. Even the most brutal violence is the enacting of a certain
symbolic deadlock.