snip It began as a protest but it quickly descended into anarchy and lawlessness; these nightly confrontations are terrifying in their violence and frightening in their pointlessness; but they have not come out of nowhere and they're about more than just urban alienation or aggression. Anyone who tells you otherwise has no appetite for reality. It's not erroneous to accuse the rioters of criminality - but you shouldn't just stop there. Something's shifting in the wider British culture and you're kidding yourself if you pretend not to see it.
All you need to do is look at the scale of the riots now engulfing London - they pass from district to district, they're highly organized and they're growing.
It's not just the thought of stealing a HDTV or the entertainment factor of petty vandalism that luring these masked youths onto their own streets to set them alight. As report after report is showing, the rioters do genuinely hate the police - who they see as hired flunkies - and behind that they hate their government.
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