Why were police most alarmed about the peaceful English?

Looting in Croydon, London

What was striking about the recent riots in England? The police command kept a relatively low profile in tackling the rioters themselves, with police standing off at times whilst the looting was taking place. Even when private homes were being invaded in Notting Hill or when diners in restaurants were being robbed of their wedding rings, there were no alarmed statements from the police.

Nor did the police come out with public statements of alarm when some ethnic groups came out to defend their areas. If anything, the Sikhs and Turks were treated favourably in the media - there were even photos of Sikhs brandishing swords with positive media reports alongside.

But when a group of white Englishmen got together in Eltham, London, to peacfully defend their high street, the police command suddenly became alarmed and issued warnings that this turn of events was "enormous" and "worrying" and that it might add a "racial element" to the riots.

What's going on here? Why is it OK for Sikhs or Turks to stand together against the rioters but not white Englishmen? Why, in the middle of a riot, do police worry most about a gathering of anti-riot whites?

There was a useful discussion of this at View from the Right. A reader, Philip M, wrote:

The thing that will really stay with me about these riots is the way that the Turks and Bangladeshis were praised for standing up to the riots, yet the moment that English people tried to do the same thing they were dismissed as racist yobs and thugs. The only real unity of purpose and firmness that has been shown by the police, media, and establishment has been in condemning even the possibility of English people defending themselves. A senior police officer on NewsNight actually said: "If white middle class people [he obviously means English people] form a gang to attack these rioters they are no better than the other gangs" [meaning the gangs doing the rioting].

Philip M then goes on to give a good explanation for the police reaction:

The paralysis and uncertainty that was shown by the police and politicians in facing these gangs is largely because they were dominated and led by blacks. White liberals simply do not feel they have the moral legitimacy to challenge the rioters or the culture that they come from because they know the culture of the underclass is largely a black, gangster culture, and to critisise this culture would be racist. Any response to combat the violence by English people will therefore also be racist. This is why they were so relieved to see Turks and Bangladeshis defending themselves. These were people taking on the rioters that they could support without fear.

That's a similar point to one that I have made before about left-liberalism. There are left-liberals who explain inequality by claiming that "whiteness" is an artificial construct invented to uphold privilege over those categorised as "non-white". Therefore, whites are held to be uniquely guilty of racism and the racial oppression of others and any positive expression of whiteness is thought to be motivated by a desire to uphold "white supremacy".

If you are a white person who buys into this theory, then you lose moral standing - not so much within the white community - but relative to non-whites. You become a member of an oppressor class who carries moral guilt toward the non-white other. You will also become hypersensitive to accusations that you are acting in a "racist" way toward non-whites.

So Philip M's argument is well within the bounds of possibility. Lawrence Auster thinks so too; he made this comment in response to what Philip M wrote:

it's the same with U.S. conservatives who are always looking for salvation through a black conservative or a Hispanic conservative. These conservatives want nonwhites to take controversial positions on social issues that they, the conservatives, feel they lack the standing to take themselves. They are contemptible cowards, helplessly under the thumb of the liberalism they claim to oppose.

The key word here is cowardice. Not a physical cowardice but a certain kind of moral cowardice. It would be like a man who thinks aspects of feminism are wrong but who won't speak out against it himself because he thinks that as a man he has no place or standing to make such criticisms. Such a man is really, as Lawrence Auster puts it, still "under the thumb" of the feminism he holds himself to be an opponent of.

So what can we say about the English police commanders? They are either true believers in an anti-white ideology - in which case they are enemies of the majority of the population they are supposed to be protecting, or else they are moral cowards who can't or won't overcome the feeling that they have no moral standing when it comes to the "non-white other".