The Return of King Mob. By Armin Medosch.
The student demonstrations against the rise of tuition fees, the fourth of which took place yesterday, 9 December 2010 signals the return of King Mob to the streets of London. King Mob was the name of a British Situationist splinter group formed in the early 1970s which took its name from the Gordon Riots of June 1780, in which rioters daubed the slogan "His Majesty King Mob"' on the walls of Newgate prison, after gutting the building, Wikipedia informs us. The significance is unmissable that in an episode of last nights running battles between protesters and police the car of the heir to the throne and his wife was attacked. The police tactic of kettling badly misfired as some of those who escaped the kettle vented their anger on shops in Oxford street and the car of the royals. There was even some rumour of some looting going on, reported by BBC news, but later not followed up. The attack on the royals, a remnant of a feudal order, entirely parasitic in its continued exploitation of land-ownership, could be as significant as the death of Lady Di in a car crash which was like an enactment of J.G.Ballard's novel Crash. As much as the princess 'killed' by the media was the emblematic image of the previous era, the prince and his wife haunted by fear of the hydra-like mob could become the emblematic image of the new one. As the youth of England discovers that it has been robbed of its future by a government nobody has voted for, implementing policies never discussed and not agreed by a majority of people, which is then called 'democratic' by the prime minister because a majority of the stooges of capitalism voted for it in a house called Parliament, students detect the pleasure of direct action and extra-parliamentary opposition. While only too predictably the focus of the media is on 'violence' - as if the cuts themselves were not violent, 80% cuts to the overall teaching budget, 100% cuts in the arts and humanities - it was a pleasure to hear those very clear voices of young people who defended their decision to protest undeterred from the BBC reporter's insistence on the question if they condoned violence or not. The 'violence' question has taken on a kind of ritualistic significance on TV. You are certainly not allowed to say 'yes, the violence is good, it helps our aims' as with all the anti-terror legislation now in place you could become victim of breaking certain laws against 'support of criminal activity'. The young people drawn into the spotlight of the camera nevertheless got their message through. Look, we are all working class people here, said the Asian schoolgirl. This is not just about cuts, however deemed necessary or not, but an ideologically driven reshuffle of the higher education system which is now becoming a market, as the income of universities - and departments - will directly depend on contingent decision making of 'customers' - their prospective students. While the government dares to call this system 'progressive' the Asian schoolkid was clear that maybe people coming from poorer backgrounds also wanted to study arts and humanities, where they could hardly expect to ever earn enough to pay back the huge loans soon necessary to study in the UK. more... http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/1347 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
