Why are we not rioting? Part 3 — The Anglo-American speculative edition

In England, police are warning about a “Summer of Rage” to be ushered in by riots during an April meeting of the G20 group of nations in London. Economic conditions might inspire even the middle class to take to the streets. Back in the States, Glenn Beck and his Fox News friends had fun teasing out a vision of Armageddon-by-”Bubba” militiamen in a recent worst-case-scenario gabfest. Another guy named Glenn — Salon’s Greenwald — calls out Fox for ”war-gaming” (Beck’s words) the end of civil society in America.

Video and text excerpts after the jump.

Greenwald:

In one sense, all of this drooling rage is nothing more than the familiar face of extreme right-wing paranoia … But it’s now inflamed by declining imperial power, genuine economic crises, an exotic Other occupying the White House, and potent technology harnessed by right-wing corporations such as Fox News to broadcast and disseminate it widely and continuously.

The United Kingdom’s Guardian:

Britain’s most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming “footsoldiers” in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police’s public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become “viable targets”. So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis.

Beck, tracing the origins of a future American civil war to a Republican governor’s refusal to take federal stimulus funds:

We have military exercises going on in Iowa right now. We have a battalion, I believe, in Maryland. People are training for civil unrest all over the country. I believe the answers they give, and they say: “This is for this sort of this kind of unrest or this kind of unrest.” Except, we just had in our stimulus package, a way for, if your governor says no to the money, the legislature can go around the governor and go right to the feds. It’s this kind of thing that would make the federal government say, you know what, we can call up the National Guard. We don’t need your governor to do it. Do you believe those scenarios or is this crackpot stuff?