Wednesday 10 August 2011

I Dismiss Your Biased Speculation


To the glib people who say “it’s possible to condemn the riots AND to understand the background you know” I say fine, of course that’s true, but I hope such sophisticated thinking extends to allowing me not to accept every “understandable” or "logical" reason as if it’s an actual observation of reality.

Riots exist. Possible reasons for riots exist too. The existence of a riot does not itself prove why it started (this sounds blatantly obvious). Surprise surprise, the reasons people “reckon” on seem to follow what their political biases already were. Just because you can think of a logical reason that stems from your politics, it does not mean that you have therefore identified the motivation of the rioters.

There are all sorts of potential logical reasons behind a riot. Some of them you will like, some of them you will be appalled by (BNP). So please allow me to dismiss any unsubstantiated ideas without presuming that I am therefore unwilling to understand the actual reasons for the riots.

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