Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“From the point of view of the regime, it may well be that riots are welcome , for they guarantee  renormalisation , they permit social ‘bantustans’ to remain such, and they deflate discontents that could otherwise be perilous. Naturally, for them to perform this stabilizing function they must be subject to outward condemnation: vandalism should be denounced, violence should spark indignation, looting should cause disgust. Such reactions justify the ruthlessness of the repression, which becomes the only means to beat back the tide of barbarism. It is under these conditions that riots serve to ossify social hierarchy.” “A social system is not only characterised by its internal structure, but also by the reactions it provokes: a system founded on commandments can, in certain moments, imply reciprocal duties of aid carried out honestly, as it can also lead to brutal outbursts of hostility. To the eyes of the historian, who must merely note and explain the relationships between phenome...

The Haymarket affair

 The riots are the death spasms of a broken Britain Related Unrest in Northern Ireland

  We shouldn’t be surprised by the chaos

“Michael Biggs, Chris Barrie and Kenneth Andrews recently showed  that the Civil Rights Movement had only negligible long-term effects on the attitudes of white Americans, making them no more likely to have liberal views on race or to support the Democratic Party. So if the effects of more ‘respectable’ protests can also be questioned, where does that leave riots.” Are riots counterproductive, and who decides?

Which tactics are appropriate for today’s rebellions can only be determined by a strategic and organizational analysis along the lines [Marin Luther] King proposed, and not according to the moral judgment which he subordinated to that analysis. In fact, with news that Los Angeles is considering cuts in police department funding, Minneapolis city council members openly considering disbanding the police force, and curfews being lifted in several cities, there are good reasons to believe that the current riots are strategically effective. “No justice, no peace,” from King’s vantage point, means that there is no positive peace without justice. Therefore in the context of injustice, there can be no negative peace, in the sense that there must be tension, there must be a “disturbance of the peace” in order to have the presence of justice. Today, when protestors shout “no justice, no peace,” we should understand this as a political principle which takes primacy over the abstract conceptio...

What sort of a PhD candidate in sociological studies who does mention capitalism and profit, but not the word 'class' even once? Could it be that an editor remove the word from the article? I don't know. Protests – and riots – are rebellion against an unjust system

"Neoliberalism is dead, capitalism lives"

Britain May emerged as the preferred candidate of the Tory establishment. Her job, it seems, is to organize the transition to a new form of Conservative politics with less emphasis on austerity and economic competence and more on racist populism. Amid a record period of declining living standards and economic stagnation, the currency of politics today is resentment; it is never just “the economy, stupid.” Theresa May's Le Pen Moment