These idiotic protests at the G8 summit in France need to fucking grow up.
They seem to think that being violent equates with protest, but it doesn't. The best I can come up with is that they see throughout history outbreaks of rioting and violence in response to oppression and other undesirable situations. But they fail to comprehend that those historical instances of rioting, from the French Revolution (perhaps earlier as well) up to the L.A. riots following the Rodney King verdict were not organized planned expressions of protests but explosions of human pressure flowing from a systemic violation of their lives.
The violents morons who trash McDonald's (and in the link above, a bus stop) aren't responding to violations of lifestyle by the objects of their destruction. These vandals are just ideological punks who most likely view major summits and conferences as opportunities to do battle with the economic, social, and political currents running through the world. They see trashing a big name outlet as some kind of warfare, as though it makes a statement or difference.
It pisses me off, because the complaints against, say, globalization or neo/pseudo-ImperioColonialism between the developed and developing world are very legitimate and worthy, and in need of being addressed by the powers that be. But these concerns don't play to the strengths of the status quo, and as thus will never be picked up unless there is popular support. This support will never materialize as long as Mom and Pop Smithers equate anti-globalism sentiment with violence and destruction.
If the people smashing windows at these events really wanted to express themselves in a subversive manner, go make up a Fight Club homework assignment and seek to educate (and thus liberate!) the masses to the problems. Throwing a chair through a Starbucks window isn't a statement, its childish. If someone would spend 15 reasoned minutes talking about why they think Starbucks as an entity is bad (and if they can't express that sentiment in 15 minutes, I'd have to say they don't really know what they are fighting for). Write some letters to the editor of a local newspaper. Attend (or organize) community meetings on the subject. Hell, start a fucking blog and talk about the problems and solutions (the latter is really the important thing).
Just stop fucking up the opportunity to argue against these issues, like you are doing when you get spastic like this.
Posted by Nutrimentia at June 2, 2003 08:43 AM | TrackBack