The British rioters acted as if the government, the police, and the law lacked legitimacy. I freely grant that they didn’t think this through. They didn’t write manifestos or shout clever political slogans. But neither was theirs a silent scream: they stole, and burned, and sometimes killed, because they could. They embodied the change the political protesters kept calling for. While the latter rejected the political and economic system under which they lived, the rioters acted out the consequences.
