The useless American "lamestream' media has been caught flat-footed yet again. Initially they totally missed the beginning of the London riots and failed to report anything. Then the dopey editors woke up & decided that perhaps there was actually something to report after all, but they have completely misinterpreted what's going on.
Why do the Brits riot? Some "experts' have pointed to the recent killing of a black man by the police. Wrong, this is not new, the British police have a longstanding history of such incidents -- a man armed with a rifle which turned out to be a chair-leg, a naked man asleep in his bed in East Sussex, an innocent bystander knocked to the ground during a demonstration in Central London -- the list of fatal "mistakes' is a long one, so that can't be the reason.
Others claim it's all racial; it's the fault of the blacks & other ethnic minorities. Wrong again - anyone watching the videos of youths who are looting the stores, firebombing businesses, & pelting the police with bricks, can clearly see that the perpetrators are of every race and creed. Many may indeed be black but that just reflects the existing ethnic mix of the local populations.
The real reason why the Brits riot is simply because they can. Civil unrest in Europe, especially France & Italy may be more frequent but they do have a political purpose. In the U.K. there is no such raison d'être - the average British youth is probably the most politically ignorant creature on the planet, followed closely by those in the USA. Unlike their equivalents on the continent it is almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation or any kind of political debate with a young Brit.
The hard Right & the extreme Left have a history of public unrest on the continent which is mostly absent from the UK (Northern Ireland excepted). British youths riot simply because they can, because they are angry, because they are bored, because many of them are feral, raised by dysfunctional parents, because they have no work and no prospects for their future.
But they are only following by example. British youth are immersed in a culture where looting has become a way of life which has been highly rewarding to those at the top. The bankers have looted the tax-payers, the Members of Parliament have looted their expense allowances, and "celebrity culture' has looted the moral seed bank of the nation.
In order to stand up & support society you actually have to have a stake in that society. These rioting youths, many of them barely teenagers, just don't care if they get caught. Threats by Prime Minister David Cameron to get tough are meaningless to such children. There is nothing the authorities can possible do to them which is worse than what they have already experienced in life.
Perhaps the Brits are fortunate that their youth is so politically ignorant & merely bent on mindless violence & looting - because they are exactly the sort of fodder which brought Hitler to power in the 1930's. Read this description of Brownshirt recruits; "audacity was their dogma ".. the destruction of all social connections had made them rootless. With many, going berserk was overcompensation for their measureless weakness, their camaraderie a product of their fear of being alone'.
Britain, like the Weimar Republic, is a broken nation where the political leadership has totally lost the confidence of the so far silent middle classes. Keep watching, this country is a social Petrie dish -- a rat-lab for the future development of Anglo-American culture.