BradSpangler.com

With the continuing nonsensical claims by reactionary forces that the Paris riots are supposedly caused by “Muslim extremism” and immigration, I feel compelled to keep pointing out that, actually, the Paris riots have been caused by statism. As I said before:

The modern nation state requires, and typically creates, a violent urban underclass. The growth of that underclass is a result of state socialist / state capitalist / fascist public policy. The existence of that underclass provides a low-grade internal threat to the middle-class that serves to bolster the mythology the State promulgates to apologize for its own existence.

Some of the reactions to that around the net have included the predictable reactionary myths — claims like:

• I’m supposedly making excuses for black Africans who fail to successfully compete with white Europeans. That misses the point entirely, because the essense of my critique is that market-distorting governmental obstacles to competition serve to keep the oppressed down artificially. I mean, “Hello?” They’re not allowed to legally work in the case of many immigrants. You think that might be some kind of monkeywrench in the process of building a productive, middle-class life? I do.
• Some claim the riots are over lower-class greed — that welfare payments are not seen as big enough and that this is an unethical lust for unearned wealth. That claim, though, perhaps willfully misses the point. The grains of truth in conservative critiques of the welfare state, which are in turn mere pale echoes of the more rigorous libertarian critiques of it, ought to be informing those who say this sort of thing. After all, they are somewhat likely to consider themselves “conservatives”. So, let’s review. The social democratic welfare state is bad for the poor precisely because the welfare system is a trap. So, then, why not remove the things that hold people back, instead of whining about how ungrateful they are when they denounce what meager rations your kind has allotted them in lieu of allowing them to produce for themselves? The answer I say, and which you won’t admit, is this — the welfare system is a cornerstone of the power of the elite. It will not be removed by reform. It will have to be circumvented by revolution.
• Some say that pointing to poverty and injustice is mere making of excuses for thugs. That’s not true at all. Widespread poverty and injustice are actively manufactured by the State. It’s not excusing thuggery to point out that reactionary policies create perverse incentives to become a thug.

Some final words of wisdom:

“There is nothing — nothing — that illegal immigrants can do to a county like America that is one percent as bad as what legislation persecuting illegal immigrants can do to it.” — A Herring of a Different Color, by L. Neil Smith

Tags: Politics //