Twenty-five years ago I wrote an article titled The Backpack and the Résumé, after crossing paths with a young man who was looking for work handing out photocopies with his university degree; and I wondered when, instead of a résumé, that guy would carry in his backpack a Molotov cocktail. Now I know. All too often cars burn, shop windows are smashed and streets become branches of chaos: police, hooded youths, extreme violence and opportunistic politicians: some call for a hard line, others want to appropriate the spectacle, some uncover an international conspiracy or point to immigrants, to the far left, to the far right… Each person chooses villains and adorns themselves with half a verónica of moral superiority. The next day they sweep away the ruins, merchants complain, insurers search for the fine print and television announces the return of normality. One more, and until the next. The extraordinary thing at this point isn’t that angry youths destroy the city where they live. The strange thing is that it surprises us.
Official version: criminals, hooligans, savages with no respect for coexistence. And there is some of that, of course. He who cracks a pedestrian’s skull or burns a worker’s car isn’t drafting a manifesto of social justice; he’s a son of a bitch doing harm. But the explanation wobbles. The uncomfortable question is why Europe manufactures in series individuals for whom breaking something is the only way to exist. And the answer isn’t in the outskirts, the borders or the mosques. It lies at the heart of our contradictory factory of desires and resentments.
The deal seemed easy: study, work, pay taxes and you’ll have a home, a family and a month at the beach. It wasn’t paradise, but it seemed possible. Today you can have a university degree and be an Amazon drone. Moreover, the thing has a cruel twist: in addition to blocking your future, they set up storefronts so you know what you’ll never have. Thus, a neighborhood kid breakfasts while another of his age wakes up in a Dubai mansion, drives a Ferrari and shares a pool with a girl whose merit consists of posing for selfies that flaunt her cleavage. Message: this is success, kid. Wake up or screw yourself.
Poverty alone does not explain the violence. Millions of poor people work, look after their loved ones and endure humiliations with a dignity that those who humiliate them often lack. Another thing is the certainty of being fooled. It is not the same to lack something than to believe it has been stolen from you. Hence the difference with other outbreaks: the revolutionaries of yesteryear, with their fondness for shooting even their own, had ideas. They wanted to swap one order for another, though they often gave birth to monsters. Now it’s different: you don’t storm the Winter Palace, you don’t burn the car dealership, and you don’t loot the high-end clothing store. You don’t seek power, but to cause trouble, humiliate it for a while. It is rebellion without utopia, anger that doesn’t even aspire to win. If you cannot change your fate you can always ruin someone’s business or life.
Thus, an anonymous troublemaker breaks a storefront and a swarm of journalists, news broadcasts and politicians arrive. Whoever is nobody feels like the protagonist when fear and others’ anticipation grant them the power life denied them. The victims are modest neighbors, small shopkeepers; but resentment is not a school of critical thought: it fires indiscriminately. Many are immigrants, some say. Children of foreigners who do not share our civilized customs. But they did not disembark yesterday from a dinghy. They were born here, studied in schools and learned to desire what everyone desires. We have raised them and their frustration is shaped by the Europe where they grow and fail, misled by promises and abandoned in contradictions.
Because beware of this: exemplary citizens also take part in the hate fair, though they do not burn containers. Just observe the public discourse filled with tribes, enemies and resentment, with millions of people convinced that their happiness depends on others’ misfortune. Political parties — that business where so many useless scoundrels thrive — know that resentment yields more votes than solutions. Some burn cars and others poison social media. In response, the hardline league demands policemen, laws and prisons; and the feel-good crowd demands subsidized projects, certain that three republican flags and a charity marathon dissolve decades of ill will. Others’ fault, of course. Never their own.
No, we are not witnessing the destruction by hordes of savages of a civilized society, but the proof that this society produces citizens unable to find a place within it. We can reduce inequalities, make housing cheaper, improve schools, combat discrimination, and each of those measures would change lives. But one thing is to alleviate symptoms and another to cure the disease. No one votes for someone who dares to say that their children will live worse. On the contrary: we demand the hope of slipping through the back door to success, or the clumsy imitation of those who actually make it. We transform normal life into a shameful failure, and now we ask why so many young people are furious. The answer is simple: when you discover there will be no luxury hotel, no pool, no Ferrari, you conclude that you have been jerked around. Then you come to the conclusion that violence is also a form of success.
And, well. Societies gradually get used to their decomposition, if it arrives slowly. But in the meantime it is worth remembering that the barbarians no longer come from beyond the border. Like in the final stretch of every civilization, they are inside. We have spent decades handing out lighters and now we are shocked that the streets burn. The past belonged to the privileged and then to the revolutionaries, but the future belongs to the resentful. The privileged wanted to keep his world and the revolutionary to transform it, but the resentful will settle for watching it burn. They do not appease someone who knows that all promises are lies.
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