Anti-immigrant mob violence in England was not surprising, says author

The outbreak of anti-immigrant mob violence in England this summer was the perfect pretext for the expression of semi-organized brutishness, some of the rioters with extensive criminal histories.

Even in times of social peace, few sounds are as terrifying to me as that of young English people enjoying themselves in a certain kind of pub. Violence can erupt at any time in these establishments..

Bob Greene : From what point can one criticize a culture or subculture? Greene : Who is to say what is better or worse, higher or lower, more desirable or less? Downward cultural aspiration becomes a signal of political virtue, a proof that one sympathizes with the insulted and injured.

Greene: For a long time, the idea has held sway that our society is totally unjust, that it has been responsible only for cruelties and miseries, and not achievements.

David Frum : If evil genius arose to organize them politically, they could and would do untold evil.

If they thought they had a political cause, there is little that they would stop atâunless they were stopped, Frum says.

He says social media have partly dispensed with the need of a leader, at least to start the kind of jacquerie seen recently in England .

The supposed cause was the murder of children and the injury to the others, following an online rumor that the culprit was an asylum-seeking Muslim .