So a group of Irishmen in Belfast tarred and feathered a drug dealer because the police in the UK don't do jack crap about crime. The Telegraph article is interesting because it largely bemoans how brutal and inhumane this punishment is, and how vigilante justice betrays Western values or something. It's interesting because the first thing I though when reading it was, "Whoa. Crime is totally out of freaking control if citizens feel they have to go to such extremes to keep their communities safe." When will Brits realize that wringing their hands over the poor, poor criminals is why they're in this mess in the first place?
Saturday, February 16, 2008
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5 comments:
I can't imagine why the criminal element isn't intimidated by the police over there. How can you not respond to the threat: "Stop! Or I'll say 'stop' again!"
Perhaps their problems would be solved with the introduction of Sharia law.
OK, I'll bite.
Vigilantism in Belfast is not about put-upon citizens driven to desperate means in order to fill the gap left by a criminal-coddling, liberal state.
It is about paramilitary organisations such as the IRA and the UDA (formerly terrorist organisations, now diversified into organised crime) establishing themselves as the true authority in the areas they control, rather than the police. This goes back decades - Belfast hospital surgeons are world leaders in reconstructive orthopaedic surgery, after dealing with countless "kneecappings" of teenage joyriders over the years.
If you want a grid through which to interpret stories like this, don't think "posse" or "citizen vigilantes", think "Moqtadr-al-Sadr" or "Don Corleone".
Paramilitary history or not, the fact is that the article is far, far more concerned with locals taking things into their own hands than their claim that the police won't deal with drug dealers. From the sound of the article, it sounds like the ideal British society is one where there is no justice whatsoever, vigilante or otherwise.
I should add that I was also amused by how horrified the writer was that this fellow who was selling crack to kids got tarred and feathered...oh, the inhumanity of it all! The idea that a criminal would be punished by inflicting some bodily harm on him! What barbarism! He just needs to be "rehabilitated," that's all. From my cowboy American perspective, that sounds like just desserts.
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