Riots against lockdown in Europe

[Downriver]

The scenes of young people burning down a COVID testing facility in the Netherlands and burning the Danish PM at a stake in protest against lockdown have really shaken me. Would it happen here? Who is organising this? Fascists? Sometimes I read comments against lockdown on here and I think such a mood is being primed.

The government's response is disastrous and stupid. The argument that 'but it's what all the other governments have done so it must be correct' is wrong on multiple levels, and also stupid.

However, I don't think that rioting is the answer. I think the only thing our government cares about is not being blamed for stuff and getting favourable opinion polls.
We need people to stop supporting these measures, and for the social censure of those who don't support them to stop.

As for crying nurses - I have some sympathy but I still don't think it's justified to keep everybody locked up, losing their business, their minds, and their hope.
I've cried at work many times because it's been so busy and stressful. I've felt like I've failed students by not being able to cope with everything. I don't think that the solution to it is to close the doors and make them stay at home so that I'm not stressed out.....

@ineedaholidaynow

Many people on other threads talking about booking holidays, I assume they are not all over 80

People will book. I’d be a bit wary with hotel quarantine discussion.

Not sure if still a possibility but it may not be refundable and you’d have to do hotel on return.

Sorry I mean before the London riots.

@layladylay234 so ordinary people go off and burn down a testing centre, and they are not fascists, eg people who have a death drive and hate others? Do me a fucking favour!

I think closing the bars upset people and the curfew thing is striking a nerve as it harks back to nazi occupation but in the town they are in, youths have been causing trouble throughout. Destructive boredom

So the riots were because of the introduction of a curfew ? They didn't riot before this new restriction ?

Let's hope this nightmare is resolved quickly

And obviously without violence which just provides the perfect opportunity for some to take advantage and achieve their ulterior motives

I found this re: the left vs right issue over coronavirus.
The artist makes the point that things have been shifting for a while, then accelerated by covid.
There's less left and right split now, more authoritarian and libertarian.
This explains why so many on the left support lockdowns, even though they hit the poorest and weakest in society the hardest (both economically and in terms of disease burden - it's because they're no longer traditional left, they're authoritarians now.

Fort the diagram, sorry:

I have already seen posts being spread around Facebook in the uk for “ take back your business on 31st January “ so encouraging people just to open up and inferring if enough people do it then the police won’t cope .

I blocked that particular friend ( she is a lefty but I don’t think that is relevant )

She was also spreading rumours that the government know there is a cheap cure but won’t use it . So I asked why all other governments were not using it as well . She had no reply .

As it happened if she had googled it she would see there are trials of the drug happening at the moment . But that would be too difficult to comprehend.

Hello from Copenhagen! Yes, on Saturday night a motley crew of football hooligans, right-wingers, and other riff-raff rioted after a peaceful demonstration. Police estimate that there were a total of 50) demonstrators and 100 rioters out of a total population of approximately 2 million people living in metropolitan Copenhagen. The three men responsible for the burning if the effigy of the prime minister are not only widely condemned but have also been arrested and appropriately charged.
Nobody - save for a selection of numbskulls - approves of neither demonstration nor riot. Should the mood here is quite low - we're all sick of the pandemic - there's a common understanding of the need to stay home in order to leg the vaccination process run its course.

@Temptashun

So would you be willing to go back to normal and sign a disclaimer that said if you were ill with the virus you would accept you may not get a hospital bed ? And the same for all your family ?

When I dare to enter discussions such on such topics as 'value of life' after Lord Sumption's comments last week, there are a LOT of people telling me that their life is as important as their children's - of equal value.

There is definitely a good debate to be had around this. I agree with you. As things are the moral values and philosophy of liberalism that underpin our laws and so much of our culture, and also the way we form our subjectivity has led to this point where all lives are equal. The individual before society, and the individual apriori to society, and a situation where we accept that the individual is born equal to all others. This is a more civilised position than the way we valued life in the middle ages when we absolutely would have sacraficed a child or two.

Sorry for the wall of typos! I hope you can still make sense of what wrote.

@snygghygge

Thank you for your perspective. Sounds about right .

I’ve just booked my holiday for Xmas!

I think this thread shows all the posters that wailed about how bad the U.K was and every other country had it soooooo right and we are fucking the world up.

It’s way to cold to riot plus all our rioters are on benefits and are actually financially secure right now.

However I’m surprised the locked up students havnt kicked off yet. They have had it bad.

@secretllama

This was obviously going to start happening. You just can't lock people down for the best part of a year without backlash. Not condoning the actions but come on, I'm just shocked there isn't more tbh.

Also, kind of goes against the MN narrative that everyone else in the world is just obediently getting on with it and only British people are selfish entitled rule breakers.

Totally agree.

Not saying I agree with it but a year of telling people they cant hug their loved ones is going to piss people off. Add that to loads of redundancies, no means to earn a living, isolation, suicides, low mental health, lack of schooling, people run ragged and stressed to the max- of course you'll get a push back. Its like an air mattress- you press down on one part and the other side pings up.

The curfew - from 9 pm to 4.30 am - came into force on Saturday. You can be out for work, or walking the dog, and in emergencies but not otherwise. And the police is enforcing.

The riots have a different flavour in Urk than they have elsewhere in the country. Someone upthread already commented on that. Urk is very insular in nature, and very authority-defying, lots of smuggling, not wearing seatbelts or helmets, you name it. Very strictly religious as well, and I wouldn't think youth would be tolerated to defy religious strictures so have to do something else.

There's some talk about more rioting being organised via apps like telegraph. They've arrested 200 people. The rioting outside of Urk seems to be from organised rioters/hooligans.

The Netherlands has been a lot looser during the period of the UK's first lockdown. My SIL was selling her flat, and was easily traveling 100 miles on public transport to organise viewings and the like. Likewise my DB was visiting my SIL (widow of other DB) weekly to help out with her property, building work, repairs and the like. Never any issues with that at all. My SIL still visits her friends, even yesterday, and it doesn't seem to be an issue. I know of shops, including clothes shops being open during UK lockdown, though pubs/restaurants were closed I think, just take out. I think schools were also still on. That has changed this time 'round, though, although I don't know about the schools as my rellies don't have school-age kids anymore.

Now, my 2 DB and 3 SIL live in an area that was relativly low in numbers, but those have been creeping up quite a lot. My older DB has still gone to work (though fewer people in the office) and are visiting clients.

@Downriver

UK tends to have riots in the Summer, historically. But it is the fact it is young people that interests me. It is not those under massive stress of wfh and homeschooling etc. I just want to know the demographic, the motives, whether the Q people have got into their heads.

Young people have wasted a year of their youth in these useless and pointless and senseless lockdowns. I was very very surprised they accepted it so easily up to now. It would have never ever been accepted before the era of the internet.

@snygghygge

Hello from Copenhagen! Yes, on Saturday night a motley crew of football hooligans, right-wingers, and other riff-raff rioted after a peaceful demonstration. Police estimate that there were a total of 50) demonstrators and 100 rioters out of a total population of approximately 2 million people living in metropolitan Copenhagen. The three men responsible for the burning if the effigy of the prime minister are not only widely condemned but have also been arrested and appropriately charged. Nobody - save for a selection of numbskulls - approves of neither demonstration nor riot. Should the mood here is quite low - we're all sick of the pandemic - there's a common understanding of the need to stay home in order to leg the vaccination process run its course.

So just riff raff. MN has a few that want to join with the riff raff and riot too. I suspect most are just bashing away their frustrations on the keyboard though. Most of us are pretty fed up of the same 4 walls so to speak. Deep down perhaps most realise that there aren't too many solutions other than lock down to reduce the numbers until the vaccine does its job and infection numbers decrease

If there are other solutions then

Temptashun - gosh that is so right. We are now divided by authoritarian and libertarian. There is no middle ground and I see this every where

And will those young people who aren't using the health service (I mean, apart from being born and having their jabs and being taken to the GP when they were ill, or A&E when they broke their arm playing} be happy when it's their GPs being thrown on the scrap heap? Or is it just some generic 'old person' so they don't need to worry?

They don’t need to worry in any event about this particular demographic (would it be too cynical to suggest the core Tory-voting demographic) who have been absolute top of the priority list at every single turn. This is a group now retired, who could have been instructed to shield (along with vulnerable workers whose jobs should have been protected with some of the knee-jerk legislation they keep wheeling out) while the rest of society kept the economy afloat. As it was, these workers were not given priority and many have now sacrificed their livelihoods. At this rate there won’t be a hospitality industry to go back to and shops are folding on the high street right, left and centre.

The 'scrap heap' for the elderly demographic ensure they are first in the queue for immunisation, as opposed to prioritising those in hospitals and care homes - the greatest at-risk environment - along with people providing essential services like teachers and supermarket workers. As for boiling down to an either/or choice of sacrificing either people’s lives or capitalism, the dots people don’t seem to connect are that economic health is directly related to mental health. Those who lost everything as a result of the sacrifices expected from them are the ones who’ve truly been flung onto the scrap heap, along with these are our young people. Their physical and mental health matters too.

@snygghygge

Hello from Copenhagen! Yes, on Saturday night a motley crew of football hooligans, right-wingers, and other riff-raff rioted after a peaceful demonstration. Police estimate that there were a total of 50) demonstrators and 100 rioters out of a total population of approximately 2 million people living in metropolitan Copenhagen. The three men responsible for the burning if the effigy of the prime minister are not only widely condemned but have also been arrested and appropriately charged. Nobody - save for a selection of numbskulls - approves of neither demonstration nor riot. Should the mood here is quite low - we're all sick of the pandemic - there's a common understanding of the need to stay home in order to leg the vaccination process run its course.

Thank you for this post. Really interesting to get the basic story and not the pumped up MSM version.

@Katie517

To be honest people are getting fed up. They are losing everything they have ever worked for and young people feel like they are having their futures stolen. So it wouldn’t surprise or shock me if we had similar here. Anyone who dares to question lockdown is labeled as a fascist or a covid denier so there is very little people can do to air their frustration aside from protest.

I do think there is a huge disconnect from those sitting comfortable in their big houses with outdoor space and a stable income or furlough enjoying zoom quizzes and baking and those who are struggling to keep businesses afloat, live in poverty or suffering from mental health issues caused by isolation.

Just the fact that you were surprised by people protesting and asked if they were fascists proves my point!

Exactly this.

we have completely disregarded the natural growth required for children and young people in the name of saving very old and usually sick people. This is at the tipping point of being immoral to young people and it really is enough now - they have done their bit. I'm not surprised at all if they start to get angry.

Well-put. Neither am I.