Whether it's 'yellow vests' tearing the centre of Paris to shreds, Greek youth firebombing the police or anti-anything anywhere in the world, we are now accustomed to seeing young men with hidden faces and hoodies attacking authority in an organised, very aggressive, systematic way.
In my eyes this is not dissimilar to the football hooliganism that was so prevalent in the UK and throughout Europe only a few years ago (some parts of the world still enjoy the pleasure...), where young men allied to one team attacked anyone associated with whoever their opponents happened to be on that particular day. Football hooliganism - and the violence that went hand-in-hand with it - was a curse to anyone who wanted to watch and enjoy football in the 1980s, especially in the UK. For once central government took intelligent, decisive action and dismantled most of the apparatus behind the violence, stopping by and large the 'cancer' in its tracks. Families have flocked back to football grounds, or would have if the cost was not prohibitively high.
The violence has not entirely disappeared, however, but keeps finding different ways to be expressed because - and this is something we hate to admit - this type of violence is sport for the young men involved, a kind of game, strange entertainment of sorts, a bit of a caricature, much like the drunken fights on a Saturday night used to be. Most of the people involved are doing this for fun, granted not your ordinary day-to-day fun yet fun nevertheless, but those of us not so inclined refuse to comprehend and accept this; we find many, sometimes even seemingly reasonable, ways to interpret and excuse what should be unacceptable behaviour.
A few weeks ago in the centre of another European capital - Athens - extreme scenes were repeated during a demonstration against an agreement that included the awarding of any form of the name Macedonia to a small neighbouring country, formerly part of Yugoslavia, that has already been known by a variant of the name (the simplest, really, Macedonia) throughout the world for years. This may be wrong and, indeed, the agreement may even be a bad one for Greece, but how does it improve people arm themselves with staves to attack the police or break anything they can get their hands on. This is done for fun, as a sport! It can be done with little fear and, because there are few if any consequences for the troublemakers, is disgusting, senseless and costs society plenty (not just in monetary terms) to put right; that's before people are seriously hurt or, even, killed during these 'games'.
This is not an anti-demonstration rant. If you are protesting against your government you are perfectly entitled to do so, openly and loudly! You must, however, if you insist on claiming to belong to a civilised society, observing the rights of others around you while you do so. What you are not entitled to do - ABSOLUTELY NOT! - is inflict damage on other human beings (yes, policemen count as human beings, duh!) not involved directly in your protest and/or threatening you in some way. The cretins who label themselves as 'anarchists' or some such should realise that this automatically puts them outside the protection of society and the law - if they choose to deny other peoples' rights due to their 'beliefs' they voluntarily surrender their own.
Violence is as damaging and repulsive as it can seem seductive; in the end it achieves little and proves nothing. The easiest thing in the world is to tear down and destroy - little skill is usually required, after all - so it is a counter-productive activity, alien to most. Perhaps its enthusiastic proponents would be less keen if they ran the risk of either a good beating or severe legal punishment, or both; some of the fun would surely pale if that were the norm. In any case society needs to respond to the challenge, and quickly, in order to protect the innocent majority. Let us not forget that it is this majority that mainly carries the weight in our western societies, and more often than not pays the price that enables a civilised society to exist at all.
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