Right-wing populism and disillusionment

[Questionable]

So I was reading a story about a town called "Gretna" that turned away New Orleans refugees at gunpoint after Hurricane Katrina. Checking the comments, I discovered a story talking about how horrible the crime that refugees brought with them to neighboring cities was. Of course there's always right-wing populism on these news stories, but this wasn't just one person; among hundreds of comments from people in neighboring states complaining about how refugees terrorized them. Many people told stories about break-in, gunpoint robberies, and gang violence among the Katrina refugees. People talked about employees quitting their jobs because they were afraid of getting robbed. There was also talk of street gangs flashing symbols at pedestrians in order to intimidate them into giving handouts.

As a leftist, this confused me. Are we supposed to be on the side of these people? Obviously they're victims of the hurricane, but how could we justify them going into neighboring towns and downright terrorizing people? Based on the stories it sounds like most of them were just innocent workers being beset upon by the homeless. It could be easy to dismiss them as "lumpen scum," but is it really that easy? As communists/anarchists, do we tolerate this kind of behavior from the lower classes?

[Os Cangaceiros]

There was a lot of sensationalism that I remember in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, about how the gangs had taken over the streets and were even doing things like shooting at helicopters which were sending aid into the city, etc. Not sure how much of that stuff was actually true.

Katrina was a huuuuuuuge clusterfuck, though, and in such situations the "strong" often prey on the "weak", unfortunately. Gangsters and professional criminals who extort poor and working people do not merit support from communists at all...they are not a revolutionary subject, contrary to what some people on the left have sometimes claimed (ie Nechaev, some anarchists, Fanonites, etc), generally they're self-serving assholes.

Ordinary people who engage in criminality to survive in desperate circumstances is a different situation, though.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Looting is something which does tend to send the left into a tailspin.

It's important to actually understand the causes and social factors involved in non-political looting (i.e. looting that doesn't have an overtly conscious political tone), but also understand that, in general, looting can be a negative action when accompanied by the terrorising of working people and by other acts such as arson against fellow workers and so on.

[cynicles]

I heard a lot of those stories were bullshit fear mongering praying on people's racism.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Every white person has some story about someone they knew who got fucked over by refugees, it's all bullshit.

Plus it's a comments section, don't ever read those.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Also looting owns

[Ostrinski]

With looting it really depends on context. Looting in the aftermath of Katrina could be justified in light of large numbers of people having no other access to means of subsistence.

However, organized gang activity, which is often carried out to the detriment of working and poor people around and among them, has no place in working class politics.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I don't think it takes a disaster of some sort to justify looting, the justification for looting is built into the capitalist system. The looting of private residences is questionable but I'm not sure where organized crime enters into this. I wouldn't expect organized crime to engage in much looting if only because it doesn't seem like a regular enough occurrence for them rely on.

[Red Commissar]

This was a very sensationalized aspect of the Katrina story in Texas too. Texas was one of the states that absorbed a number of hurricane refugees, and with it came the local news stories that typically fell into one of the two following types

-Crime increases
-Abuse of state and/or federal "welfare" and aid cards

Even years after Katrina I still get second-hand stories about the problems the refugees caused in the local communities, such as the Dallas area where I lived in and especially in the Houston area. This was (unsurprisingly) commonly said by people living in well off suburbs or at least saw themselves as "middle-class" and different from the "crime-ridden" residents of poor areas. I was in 9th grade when Katrina happened, and I remember students repeating what their parents said about the students who were enrolled in our school that had come from Louisiana that they were using loans to get big houses and enrolling their kids in free/reduced lunches, the usual spheel. Instead of emphasizing with those who survived the ordeal, they seemingly wanted to find reasons not to help them. For all the talk of helping a "fellow American" in times of need that right-wingers go on about, it was absent here.

The whole experience of the Katrina hurricane and its effect on people, particularly those from the East Side of New Orleans, would often be used in subtly racist comparisons. The most common one in this type I hear is the comparison of what happened to New Orleans residents to those in the Kansas and Missouri floods, where right-wingers often chastise the former for being "dependent" on aid while lionizing the latter for "coming together" and not asking for handouts. Same short-sighted comparisons were also used between the poor communities of New Orleans and other Gulf coast cities that got hit by Katrina.

Of course, this ignores the realities of how marginalized and poor the east end of New Orleans was, and how difficult it is for a community to "pitch together" if A. There was already significant social problems before and B. Holding back an ocean after the levees broke. The crime that these people may or may have not caused is not because of some moral failing that right-wingers attribute it too, but quite frankly a harsh reality of living in a decayed urban area. The "left" of course sees the decay here as an example of capitalism's negative effects on society, and how an "informal" segregation has arisen in modern day metropolises among "affluent" and "poor" communities along both racial and class lines.

This was also an attempt to try and put some emotional and moral distance with the experience of Katrina. Instead of wondering how a country like the United States botched their response to a major disaster, and why this kind of poverty existed in the first place, right-wing media instead turned the dialogue to the oft-repeated one of welfare and ghetto crime and piling the blame on the victims. Of course, blaming the victim is not an unfamiliar tactic among politicians and pundits, as we are aware of with with their spin on almost any event.

[Questionable]

Also looting owns

I'm sorry, but this kind of attitude seems childish and uncritical to me. It's as bad as people saying all looting is bad no matter what. Yes, there are times when looting could serve for protests and riots against the unjust status quo, but I can find little ways to justify career criminals terrorizing workers for their own selfish purposes. They have more in common with the bourgeoisie than us.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Who the fuck are these career criminals or organized gangs you're talking about? Merchandise "falling off the back of the truck" isn't the looting I'm talking about and may not even be looting to begin with. I'm talking about autoreductions or people stealing television sets during a riot. I don't care if they're taking food or ipads, if something like that bothers you, you're probably a fucking cop.

[Questionable]

Who the fuck are these career criminals or organized gangs you're talking about? Merchandise "falling off the back of the truck" isn't the looting I'm talking about and may not even be looting to begin with. I'm talking about autoreductions or people stealing television sets during a riot. I don't care if they're taking food or ipads, if something like that bothers you, you're probably a fucking cop.

Wow, get more defensive, please. I'm talking about street gangs terrorizing workers for their own selfish, non-revolutionary purposes. I'm talking about burglaries and murders against fellow proletarians. If there's a political protest or riot occurring and Ipads are stolen, you're right, I don't give a damn. But when workers are mugged or otherwise victimized by other lower-class members during these riots? When their homes are broken into? I have a problem, and if that makes me a fascist, call me a fucking fascist if you want. This doesn't mean I have some right-wing sentiment about law and order, I want the workers to defend themselves from brutality wherever it occurs. If there's a group of people robbing the homes of workers or otherwise victimizing them, they're enemies of the working class just as much as the police might be

[Art Vandelay]

Who the fuck are these career criminals or organized gangs you're talking about? Merchandise "falling off the back of the truck" isn't the looting I'm talking about and may not even be looting to begin with. I'm talking about autoreductions or people stealing television sets during a riot. I don't care if they're taking food or ipads, if something like that bothers you, you're probably a fucking cop.

People who call others cops are the first I suspect of being cops (especially when there reason for doing so is as shitty as yours).

[LoCo]

In London, it was selfish greed, full stop. If people insist in giving those riots a political motive, that's their choice. For the ones who had the misfortune of being caught in them, and had to run form idiots trying to mug us while stating that they "ruled the streets now", was a bit of a shock to hear some so-called "comrades" justifying looting and mugging as some sort of revolutionary action. In my days, when the youth were protesting, we'd block the traffic and try to get our message across. What I saw in London was, basically, that there was no-one to protest, as they were all looking for stuff to steal and threatening and shouting abuse to everyone that happened to be on their way.

Now I know I know, that is how working class youth are suppose to protest now. Frankly, I prefer how it was a few years back, when protest was about sending a message, and not smashing shops to make personal profit. But I may only be a stupid nostalgic. The way forward is surely making money out of political unrest and gangsta culture.

See you.

[Positivist]

There is no cop smart or committed enough to post as frequently as these two users do so everyone shut the fuck up.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

In London, it was selfish greed, full stop. If people insist in giving those riots a political motive, that's their choice. For the ones who had the misfortune of being caught in them, and had to run form idiots trying to mug us while stating that they "ruled the streets now", was a bit of a shock to hear some so-called "comrades" justifying looting and mugging as some sort of revolutionary action. In my days, when the youth were protesting, we'd block the traffic and try to get our message across. What I saw in London was, basically, that there was no-one to protest, as they were all looking for stuff to steal and threatening and shouting abuse to everyone that happened to be on their way.

Now I know I know, that is how working class youth are suppose to protest now. Frankly, I prefer how it was a few years back, when protest was about sending a message, and not smashing shops to make personal profit. But I may only be a stupid nostalgic. The way forward is surely making money out of political unrest and gangsta culture.

See you.

I think you may be something of a nostalgic, but not necessarily stupid.

However, your attitude is misguided. The problem with the London riots was not the rioting itself (a mistake which many on the left made - me included), but that it did not develop politically. There was no real working class consciousness, let alone political consciousness, as evidenced by the 'grab something and run' culture that developed, and the random way that shops were chosen to be attacked.

We on the British left should feel ashamed (I do) for our lack of immediate moral, political and logistical/organisational support for the rioters. Whilst arson against working people and looting of the family shops of working, people was certainly wrong, it was a workers' tragedy that could almost certainly have been avoided had there been some class unity amongst the rioters: if they'd have decided to occupy police stations and decided to occupy/loot the bigger stores - Vodafone etc., it would have sent a political message.

As it was, the results of the riots - the arson, the looting, the worker-on-worker crime, was regrettable and not justifiable, but it was as a result of a total foul up by the left, and a certain degeneracy of the British working class (mostly a total lack of class unity and of political understanding) which probably can trace its roots back to the collapse of the USSR [the pathetic nature of the British left] and Capitalist propaganda [the degeneracy of the British working class].

[Red Commissar]

...

Eh, this thread was more about the Katrina refugees than the London Riots. The problem here is the seemingly popular assumption that communities accepting these people could expect crime rises and an increase in spending from welfare.

We could have a conversation about looting, rioting, etc. but the original question here is really one of the discrimination and how this perception of the displaced people just being full of criminals and "welfare bums" led to some rather sad displays of greed, hate, and selfishness when having to deal with the crisis.