Anarchy, hockey and the Vancouver riots
This thread is already a bit late, but I thought we could have a discussion not just about the macho, hypermasculine, booze-fuelled rioting in Vancouver post-game seven, but also about the state's attempt (through both the mayor's office and the police force) to link the violence to "anarchists," and the protests against G20 and the Olympics. Not to mention the subsequent enthusiasm for citizens to oust perpetrators on social media, essentially doing the state's surveillance and coercion work for them. Here are few articles to get the discussion started:\
Understanding Vancouver's 'Hockey Riot'One thing was made abundantly clear to me, please disregard the “analysis” of TSN’s Bob McKenzie a k a “The Hockey Insider” who blamed “left wing loons” for the rubble. Mackenzie tweeted that he was sure responsibility lay with “anarchists and some organized extremists…many of the same people and groups who orchestrated riots in Toronto last summer at the G8.” This is unsupported and profoundly irresponsible garbage with no basis in fact. Vancouver activist Harsha Walia said to me, “It’s ridiculous that even a hockey riot needs a scapegoat. A deliberately created media circus of sports fervor, millions of alcohol advertising dollars and City-sanctioned street party zones all over downtown will unsurprisingly lead to a massive street brawl."...What happened after the game was neither in the spirit of people at the arena not the spirit of those who bravely protested the G8. As activist and hockey fan Derrick O’Keefe said to me, “Sometimes a riot is the ‘language of the unheard,’ in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. But sometimes a riot is just an expression of young male stupidity and violence— this was the case last night in Vancouver.”...
I did receive this incisive bit of analysis from Dru Oja Day, an editor at the Media Co-op. “If you ask people to pour all of their emotions and anger into a game, then a major event (Montrealers have rioted after first round game 7 wins!) is going to occasion some outbursts. Hockey commentators like Hockey Nights’ Don Cherry are constantly associating hockey with the troops overseas (he went to Afghanistan and fired a live shell, for chrissakes) and promote fighting and big open ice hits. We shouldn’t be surprised.”
John Ward-Leighton also pointed out on his blog the role that the liquor lobby placed in turned an entire area around the arena into a branded “Entertainment Zone” larded with bars and free-flowing liquor.
“It was clear that a lot of of the participants in last night’s riot and looting were at the very least impaired and looking for trouble,” said Ward-Leighton. “This ‘zone’ has nothing to do with entertainment and much to do with the almost criminal profit taking of the proprietors of the establishments who far from ‘serving it right’ pour drunken idiots into the streets nightly to brawl and drive drunk….The fault for last night's idiocy was not about losing a hockey game or the police response, the bomb had its fuse lit with the myth that the only way you can have fun is to get stinking drunk.”...
As one of those real heroes, Harsha Walia said to me, “There is a sense that people rioted over a ‘stupid apolitical hockey game.’ While I too wish people were motivated by social justice issues, the hockey game is not apolitical by any means. The riots were a fundamentalist defense of a type of nationalism, most evident in the beatings of Bruins fans in Vancouver last night. NHL hockey is not simply a game, it is representative of obedience to consumerism and is part of the state’s attempt to forge a false identity—despite vast differences and inequalities across race, class and gender, through the spectacle of sport.”
The state does reap what the state sows. We should remember that as the hand-wringing by police and government officials commences in the wake of Vancouver’s Great Hockey Riot.
Roving bands of anarchists and troublemakers bent on havoc set fires, broke windows and whipped up booze-fuelled mobs to create the worst riot in Vancouver’s history, Mayor Gregor Robertson said Thursday.The mayor said there was no advance warning of the strategy, which caught police and city officials off guard, and may force them to take a different approach to security plans for large public gatherings in the future.
“There had been absolutely no signs of this coming,” Robertson said Thursday afternoon. “Both during the G-20 [leaders’ summit in Toronto] and the 2010 Olympics these thugs were well known to be organizing and preparing to take action and criminal activities on the streets. There were no indications of that leading into last night,” he said.
“Definitely there are citizens responsible for inflaming the situation. But there were purposeful vandals who instigated this and very cleverly whipped many others into a frenzy by attacking cars and storefronts and moving throughout the downtown to create more hot spots.”
and Gregor finally shows his true colours....hopefully the lefties in the GVA see him now for what he is.
But interestingly some people, at least around here, are noticing this attempt to paint the drunken Vancouver rioters as a political side, or force. They don't quite get what is wrong with their doing that, they just seem to realize something shadey is going on.
"All goaltending is theft."
P.J. Pronovost
It's also funny that as soon as it is clear that there were lots of privileged louts involved the powers that be put down the pitchforks and start wringing their hands about how sad and painful it is, and - most hilarious of all - ask "who was reponsible" as if that guy's mug wasn't clear enough in the camera.
My guess is it would have been crystal clear who was to blame if it had been someone in a black hood torching that cop car instead of a rich polo player.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/gary_mason...
I think the police presence should have been far greater, earlier. When I was 20 the big event was Bathtub Weekend in Nanaimo. Drinking began early and was very excessive. However when you came out onto the street police were on every corner. If there ever was a good use of police presence it is to discourage young drunk males from doing stupid acts.
Richmond carpenter fired for FB comments
Geez the comments are interesting on that story. I love the "what about free speech" ones. The company is not saying you cannot say such things, just not and work for them.
A early object lesson on the perils of social networking
David Warren tackles the subject with all the sophistication of a Goofus and Gallant cartoon...
"Laid-back" Vancouver throws a tantrum when their team loses. "Enterprising" Calgary accepts defeat with dignity and class.
While visiting my mom last night I did a dramatic reading of the Globe and Mail's editorial published on Saturday. Please guess where I added sobs of despair.
Further to your point, 6079, if the participants in the "mob" had mostly been young Black men, and other men of colour, there would be no hand-wringing about what this "means" about Canada.
Hmm. Most of the violence-causers were young white men. What could that possibly mean? I anxiously await your turgid prose, Globe and Mail.
If I see someone committing a crime, should I just mind my own business? Not be a "rat" or a "snitch" or whatever?
I'm not sure I follow why this is a concern. Because someday it could be me holding a lighter up to the gas tank of a car??
lol. I wouldn't doubt it if certain babblers were listed in the police "snitch" files. Just like those who helped the Stasi in the DDR.
Really, N. Beltov?
I know there is a big grey area when it comes to turning people in, but are you really trying to equate the events in Vancouver with political activists being rounded up? I'm sorry, are they drunken hooligans or freedom fighters?
I have called the cops once or twice in my life, once when I stopped a drunk driver who had run a women over, so you don't need to wonder any more.
I don't disagree, Catchfire. I believe I alluded to that smear tactic myself in my first post, and I know there is a danger when everyone who happened to be there gets turned over with the help of social media.
But as far as I am concerned there is a grey area, and I can think of times when I have come down on one side or the other.
The Stasi comparison? RIdiculous in my opinion. And we have had this conversation before. If I saw shop windows being broken I expect I would have no problem reporting the person who did it, and I wouldn't have nightmares that I had betrayed "the cause" either. I guess that makes me one of the snitches.
Sorry, but I didn't sign up to support that.
(edit)
And frankly, my comment was less directed at opinions about the vandals than a clear slur against those of us who post here.
Uh, 6079, the police have such files in every society. They rely upon snitches to carry out their duties. It's universal. Like the Income Tax Department (CRA I think it's called now), there are more snitches and more ratting out neighbours and so on than such departments have time for. They pick and choose among the "wealth" of information that comes their way. These are, of course, political decisions.
There's no getting away from this. And I think it's starry-eyed to think otherwise. Most of what the police do is to follow up on information already provided to them. Really. They don't do that much despite the piles of crime drama and other misleading crap that fills the TV wasteland.
Anyway, my remarks were certainly not directed at you. I don't know where you formed that opinion.
For those of us who think that fundamental social change is a necessity, questions about the police and their role in society are important. I rather expect that even with photographic evidence there will be remarkably few "vandals" prosecuted. (Certainly many fewer than the 1,000 or so of mostly peaceful protestors rounded up at the G-summit.) I think we both know that.
Then who were they directed at?
I'm willing to read what you might know about this topic, Snert.
Yes, N. Beltov, but the former DDR StaatsSicherheit is not quite the same as the Vancouver police. It is a ridiculous and completely false comparision.
Although I am also alarmed by the police chief's boneheaded accusation that this was the work of "anarchists", and from what I understand their response was flawed, I think it is generally a good thing that the police did something that night, rather than nothing.
And I don't care which of "certain babblers" you were directing it at. If you were hoping to put a chill on by suggesting that any of us here would ever turn anyone into the police then you are talking about me. Sorry but that collaborationist smear is ridiculous, and I am neither ashamed nor intimidated by it.
So was Stasi surveillance just the "wrong kind" of surveillance? What makes our kind superior? Purity of heart?
The problem isn't necessarily seeing someone committing a crime and reporting it, (although I don't share your conviction that private property damage is the kind of menace to our society you and others seem to infer), but that social media and citizens' participation therein as a volunteer arm of the state seems to be growing as a popular pastime. We needn't look far for problems with this model, even if you don't hold, as I do, that surveillance itself is central to the state's coercive power. For example, what if a young man had just wrested a gas can and a rag from a vandal in order to stop him, only to have his photo snapped? (He shouldn't cavort with criminals, comes the eager refrain.) What if an unlucky citizen were misidentified? (Police work is difficult, and every lead needs to be investigated.) What if a facebook user takes down an unrelated photo that another overzealous user claims was riotous proof? (We must first, as good citizens, police above all ourselves.)
You're right. I didn't sign up for that either.
ETA: and Beltov, if you could refrain from accusing "certain babblers" of Stasi-like collaboration, that would be grand.
Catchfire.
I agree with you (strongly, actually) about about the dangers of surveillance, and the pitfalls of people informing on each other based on photographs and other tangential information. I know if we were to go down that road we would wind up with a true stasi state, or at the very least with a McCarthyist nightmare:
From Wikipedia:
At its height, Stasi personnel reached one employee per 166 citizens. When informants were included, the Stasi had one spy per 66 citizens of East Germany. When part-time informer adults were included, the figures reach approximately one spy per 6.5 citizens.
But the fact remains, there is a wide range between public safety and thoughtcrime. And I don't think being opposed to unfair intrusion by the authorities means that means one has to be opposed to the police doing the job they SHOULD be doing, nor that one should refuse to have any dealings with them in supporting public safety.
And yeah, I know I disagree with most here when it comes to vandalism, and I am fine with that.
I agree.
I get very uncomfortable with government surveillance of citizens. And, if less surveillance means a few of the hooligans get away with burning some cars, so be it. The more information and power that gets concentrated in the state, the greater the chance that information and power will be abused.
I'm not sure if you're referring to any and all surveillance (by the state, by citizens) or just surveillance in the context of these hockey riots.
But I would hope there's some daylight to be seen between someone identifying an arsonist, based on photographs of the act itself, and someone "identifying" an "enemy of the state" because they keep to themself and don't seem very patriotic when the national anthem is played.
I guess where we, and Stasi, differ is in the definition of a crime. To me, arson is a crime. Destruction of property for the LULZ is a crime. Looting is a crime. Being unpatriotic is not a crime.
There was some fellow on "Q' this morning blaming the riot on postmodernism and South Park. Looks like we're not the only people making hay over this little incident.
What amazes me is that people know how omnipresent video etc is, but still chose to participate in this event. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Apparently quite a few of these football hooligan wannabes were mugging for the cell phone cameras while carrying out their nefarious deeds, so it wasn't so much a case of cognitive dissonance as it was a case of mass stupidity.
Which I believe speaks to the fact that they've likely never had to concern themselves all that much with unwanted notice from the authorities, whereas for others, a stroll down a sidewalk is enough to attract that sort of attention, let alone posing at a riot.
And as for politicians using the occasion to blame anarchists and activist protestors alike as potential fodder and excuse toward future undemocratic crackdowns; if the excuses weren't handed to them on a platter, they'd invent them. We should be shaking our heads at a naivety which suggests that a few here and there who like to introduce a little more intensity into their protest than say, the movement of ritualized chants and peace sign holders, are ruining things for latter.
my view on this is a bunch of drunken sports fans hyped up by the "win at all costs" mentality started rioting because they were constantly reminded of the last one by our national media who then took the opportunity to blow this whole thing way out of proportion and make this their latest subject of "round the clock continuing coverage"...
it happened, it's over and done with, let's clean up and move on.
The severity of the witch hunt, with people now threatening anyone who they think was even remotely involved, their employers, their parents, their charities, etc. is just as bad as the rioting itself and really shows these folks are just as bad as someone who in a fit of drunken rage and passion broke a window or jumped on a car. Almost worse in hindsight since they're not egged on by alcohol or a thousands strong crowd and group think...
Why should we trust the Vancouver, or any other, police to appreciate that difference? Especally when they have shown time and time again that they will from time to time bring their full force to bear on any protesting "social misfit" who steps out of line and fails to show sufficient respect for the state and its institutions? Especially if they're the "wrong" racial and economic demographic.
Notwithstanding 6079's bleatings of outrage over the comparison of the Stasi and the Vancouver police, the difference is merely one of degree. So far.
M. Spector:
If you are going to compare me to a sheep, and talk about matters of degrees (as indeed, I couuld compare an elbow in the side to a knife across the throat) perhaps we should get down to specifics.
Do you think wnat happened in Vancouver was a good thing, and what you think the appropriate response should have been?
When all else fails, change the subject...
I think that years and years of cold war propaganda about middle class kapitalism based on konsumerism and oil is coming home to roost for the two old line parties in Amerika and Bananada.
Young people today have high expectations, and boy are they ever disappointed in the stoogeaucracy. Maybe a little Otpor and a little Gene Fisher would do this northern banana republic some good.