Riots: festive nihilism and subworldification

Riots: festive nihilism and subworldification

By Jure Georges Vujic

Source: https://www.polemia.com/emeutes-nihilisme-festif-et-inframondisation/

Georges Jure Vujic is a Franco-Croatian writer, geopolitician and director of the Institute of Geopolitics and Strategic Research in Zagreb, author of the books Le Géoconstructivisme - L'Art de faire et de défaire les Etats (Paris, ed. de l'Académie de géopolitique de Paris) and Les Convergences liberticides - Essai sur les totalitarismes bienveillants (ed. L'Harmattan).

The recent nights of rioting and looting in several French cities are a good illustration of what Philippe Muray analysed, namely a criminogenic version of the general 'festivisation' of society (homo festivus), albeit with a social and media declension of a violent, criminalised and destructive hyperfestive being.

It's true that the sad spectacle of hordes of impoverished youths looting brand-name shops with impunity while filming themselves on their smartphones, a festive nihilism well relayed, amplified and disseminated in real time by social networks, still leaves us dumbfounded. Of course, the acceleration and contagion of this festive, brutal and juvenile nihilism can largely be explained by global social tiktokisation, which pulverises geographical and temporal determinants. The toxicity of social networks, far from being ideologically neutral, since it propagates a worldview of consumer and techno-ludic alienation, enables not only a mimetic criminogenic contagion, but also the narcissistic and individual scripting in real time of the destructive prowess of the reality videos of the actors themselves. Reality, stripped of its origins, its purposes and its consistency, gives way to the eternal present, a diminished, fantastical and narcissistic form of hyperreality. Because it is broadcast in real time on social networks around the world by a kind of 'jokerisation' of minds, we are witnessing a media escalation of urban violence that is both mimetic and 'playful', whose only challenge is to make vandalism and violence ever more sensational and better than in Haiti, Mexico City, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. Despite the millions of euros sunk into the infrastructure of urban integration policies in the suburbs, the city is becoming a kind of playground (Muray referred to the contemporary world as a "globalised amusement park"), mortifying and criminogenic, analogous to virtual war games.

Festive nihilism and the nihilism of denial

This outpouring of urban violence, which has spread in a self-destructive intoxication, is of course only a symptom of the deeper nihilism of several unstructured generations against a backdrop of mass immigration. Nihilism, beyond its doctrinaire dimension, reveals a state of mind that lacks any form of representation of meaning, a hierarchy of values, an axiological horizon that carries meaning and a future. So, contrary to what one might think, the brutal and destructive nihilism of suburban gangs, which can be personified by vandals, looters and arsonists who combine hyperfestiveness and violence, can only develop thanks to another, more insidious nihilism, the nihilism of the conformist "last man standing", which can also be that of the elites or the silent majority, who refuse any form of action, plunged into denial of reality and the immobility of compassion or passive consternation.

Festive nihilism, on the other hand, is ferocious, irruptive and sporadic, part of a logic of conquest and demarcation of territories, but always present in a latent, devastating, narcissistic and gregarious state. The nihilism of denial, which corresponds to the "what's the point", is silent, polite, civilised and in a posture of powerlessness and defence, scrupulously respecting the social conventions of the moment, which stubbornly refuses to face up to the reality of a fractured, violent society, reduced to a refusal of choice and a refusal to assume any responsibility whatsoever. And it is in this sense that it is a nihilism of submission.

Rioters or insurgents?

Even if the discourse of apology and the misery of the 'new wretches' of the suburbs seem incongruous and inappropriate here, it is interesting to note that in Les Misérables, Victor Hugo contrasted riot and insurrection. A riot is a chaotic moment of destruction. Insurrection, on the other hand, is the moment when a group that is aware of itself and wants to build something projects itself politically into the future. The sequences of looting and vandalism during the first few nights of festive rioting in no way corresponded to a political or ideological insurrection, and were purely motivated by material and ostensible considerations (looting of major brand shops) and destructive impulses. However, the sequence that followed this wave of looting, with the coordinated destruction of places and symbols of the nation (schools, libraries, town halls, leisure centres, transport, fire stations, etc.), which of course also involved the bobos, antifas and black blocs, could very well be likened to forms of insurrection against public order. It's important to remember that this logic of conflictuality and insurrectionary legitimisation is at the heart of the radical left's revolutionary ideology, which makes no secret of the fact that it refers to the Constitution of 1793 (Article 35: "When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is, for the people and for each section of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties"). Thus, the attempted assassination of the mayor of L'Haÿ-les-Roses could well be part of a strategy of chaos and terror designed to drive out and contain the State's public powers from territories controlled by criminal groups, highly communitised, who intend to establish their domination over these portions of territory. On the other hand, given the organised nature of the riots, the use of urban guerrilla techniques and the large number of weapons used, there is every reason to believe that these are organised and easily mobilised groups.

Social inframondisation (subworldification)

So restoring a fictitious and submissive public order, with the sole aim of being granted yet another reprieve "so that business can get back to normal", will only postpone and exacerbate the same causes and effects, which in the future will be even more devastating. In the absence of any form of verbal visibility or demands, this gratuitous violence condenses in a paroxysmal and very violent way the problem of social and family disaffiliation, the collapse of all forms of authority (parental, school and social), but also that of the breakdown of identity, of the feeling of belonging to a nation and of enclosure in an ethnoconfessional communitarianism that functions like a parallel society, a counter-world governed by its own laws and cultural codes, a sort of zonal sub-world. But aren't we witnessing a societal inframondisation (subworldification) of global postmodernity, a general inversion of values, with the cult of materialistic, rootless individualism and transgression elevated to the rank of norm, celebrated by what Muray calls the 'matons' (prison warders) and 'mutineers of Panurge' and the 'rebellocrats'? As Philippe Muray observed, we are indeed experiencing an anthropological regression, against a backdrop of generalised indifferentiation and the 'reanimation' of the species and society. On the other hand, hyperfestive as the dominant narrative of the liberal ideology of the market and the all-economy combines very well with the figure of homo violens, the violent man, and explains how hyperindividualistic mimetic violence remains motivated by the same mimetic desire for possession, full of resentment and hatred, while this will to conquer motivated by identity and social frustrations suddenly appears to constitute a victim unconscious that determines and directs the dynamics of violent secession. The festive nihilism we have witnessed over the last few days feeds on the culture of impunity (the nihilism of denial), and these two phenomena are perfectly soluble in the globalised crime society, which, from suburban kingpins to drug cartels, are the main levers of territorial and community secession.

Jure Georges Vujic
12/07/2023