In the news

I agree that these riots are the result of wider failures in society. From the riot videos, photos and mug shots, you see people who have been chewed up and spat out by neo-liberalism.

They have been led down the garden path by political rhetoric, and now feel that politicians don't do anything for them. Their analysis (that their problems are caused by immigrants) is wrong, but that doesn't mean they don't have problems.

Completely agree. As before, when people are desperate, they often don't dare attack those more powerful than them. Instead, they end up getting used by power to attack those less powerful than them, also deflecting the blame from bad government and powerful other interests. See attacks on just about every minority group ever; all this has worked a treat for thousands of years and will undoubtedly continue to work. Great political dreams are generally betrayed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baJ5LsCn358

We adopt political positions tribally, which applies to 'the left' just as much as to 'the right', thinking that just because positions appear to have been prefigured, they may also be consistent in their parts (which they are generally not), and of course they're often represented by sophistic demagogues.

Just oppress people so much that they can't think of any other outlet than a bit of a riot every ten years or so (whether 2011 or 2024), perhaps against other vulnerable people, then persecute them through increasingly near-universal surveillance and facial recognition technology (they may have innocently given up their data through Zoom in lockdown) while most likely the only 'economic' improvement a few of them may see is from 'trickle-down' through 'growth', demonstrating 'social mobility', while most will continue to feel abandoned by society.

All boilerplate truisms, really, but somehow they need to be repeated over and over.