Who Gets to Riot?

Take 2020. During the same summer that saw Black Lives Matter protests rock American cities, a parallel wave of demonstrations challenged COVID restrictions. One group was cheered on, the other crushed. Cases of vandalism and looting during the BLM protests were brushed aside by officials and media, as they called those protests ‘mostly peaceful.’ In contrast, lockdown critics were treated as a threat to public order, put under surveillance, publicly shamed, with some even facing arrest.

The distinction wasn’t based on whether one had committed violence or not. BLM protests caused widespread property damage, especially in poor and minority neighbourhoods. Entire blocks were looted by locals who, in effect, trashed their own homes and stole from their own stores. COVID protestors, on the other hand, questioned the legitimacy of state power. They rarely broke anything. But they challenged the rules themselves, and that was the real problem.

Nowhere was this clearer than during the Canadian trucker protests. Peaceful but persistent, they called into question the state's authority. In response, the government froze bank accounts and threatened livelihoods. The message was unmistakable: anarchic violence might be forgiven, but open disobedience to the state would not.

The same pattern shows up elsewhere. In France, whole suburbs regularly go up in flames like clockwork. Rioters torch their own schools and housing blocks. Authorities contain the damage, let the rage subside, and move on. In Germany, pro-Palestinian protests filled the streets for weeks before the state stepped in. It looked chaotic, but the chaos was managed.

The Safety Valve Theory

Letting people riot might be a feature, not a bug. For years, Western states have adopted a quiet strategy of releasing social pressure through selective tolerance. Angry mobs are allowed to vent as long as the damage stays local. A few burned-out shops, a couple of smashed police cars—then it is back to business.

This is the modern-day version of divide and rule. Keep the unrest localised and contained, and the system is maintained. But no tactic can be employed endlessly. The more the state normalises controlled disorder, the closer it moves to a real loss of control.

In practice, governments have already accepted the idea that some areas will remain functionally ungovernable. Urban no-go zones, gang-controlled neighbourhoods, politically radical districts—these are tolerated as long as the mayhem coming out of them doesn’t spill over into others. 

Sooner or later, managed unrest becomes unmanageable collapse. When that moment comes, it won’t be recognised as such. It will simply happen, and people will look back and realise its roots go back much further.

Sleepwalking Toward the Inevitable

Some welcome such an outcome. For those who have grown tired of postwar liberalism’s hollow rituals, a collapse seems overdue. They see mass democracy as a tired masquerade and long for a rupture. But liberalism, for all its flaws, has proven hard to kill. Declared dead many times, it continues to drag itself forward.

Even so, nothing lasts forever. Every protest, every riot, every small fire leaves a wound. Eventually, matters come to a head, calling for a reckoning. No one knows the date or the place. But we do know every story must end eventually.

Statement

Western liberal democracies are not heading toward open civil war but sliding into a state of chronic, low-level disorder. Unrest is tolerated as a way to relieve societal discontent. Riots are permitted as long as they remain localised. Dissent that targets the legitimacy of the state, however peaceful, is swiftly suppressed. The message is clear: violence is acceptable, open defiance cannot. What appears as control is often just managed instability. In time however, the threshold for ungovernability lowers. Collapse, when it comes, will not announce itself. It will already be underway, all the signs of it obvious only in retrospect.