Britain’s 2011 riots and Occupy shared a common origin in economic inequality

Evidence

What were the social conditions that had become so unbearable? Many analysts agreed that the tragedy of Britain’s riots was set into motion by neoliberalism’s successful transformation of society: a program that was most comprehensively executed in the UK and the US. Indeed, research from the London School of Economics based on interviews with 270 people who had participated in the rioting reported on the predominant theme of inequality: “no job, no money.” The terms of reference in nearly every study sound the same drumbeat: lack of opportunity, lack of access to education, marginalization, deprivation, grievance, hopelessness. And although the London riots differed substantially from other protests that preceded and followed, most notably the Indignados movement that began with a large-scale public mobilization in Madrid in May 2011 and the Occupy movement that would emerge on September 17 in Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park, they shared a point of origin in the themes of economic inequality and exclusion. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 132

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing knowledge of protest movements and moral panic theory from One Square Inch/Communication as Culture reading. — connects to: Unbearable inequality fueled the 2011 London riots as social revolutions — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 131; Petty-bourgeois factions drove Tea Party and Occupy protests — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization…, 188; The near-simultaneous 2011 protests revealed a shared deep crisis of neoliberal capitalism — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 88 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Petty-bourgeois factions drove Tea Party and Occupy protests #complicates (0.80) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 188