A major reactionary argument is that since the early eighteenth century, since the reign of throne and altar, war, state political repression, state violence against respectable citizens, underclass crime, and minority crime have all risen enormously, that the overclass and underclass are attacking the productive, and the attack has been escalating.
Scott’s anti reactionary FAQ points out that murder is pretty much the same as ever it was. Quite so. Those crimes that the state tolerates are increasing – thus burglary, assault, and mugging has soared everywhere, whereas home invasion burglaries, where the criminals riotously enter an occupied dwelling, have only soared in those countries such as Britain where home invasion is tolerated.
Scott tells us that Victorians felt profoundly unsafe from crime:
Violent attacks by strangers were seen as grave cause for concern. There was a disproportionate amount of attention paid to violent nighttime assaults by strangers in urban areas, called “garroting” and similar to what we might call “mugging”. There were garroting panics in 1856 and 1862
He neglects to tell us why the Victorians panicked.
The Victorians panicked because, over the course of several weeks, two people in the city of London were mugged, a crime that they had no words for, never having experienced it before.
Scott points out that crime has diminished over the last few decades, neglecting to acknowledge that this is a short term and small decline compared to the long term trend of a gigantic rise in private and state violence.
The cause of the decline is pretty obvious in San Francisco. Police are kicking black ass. The highly progressive far left elite piously averts its eyes while its police force does extremely racist and reactionary things to protect them from minorities.
It seems the same thing has been happening everywhere.
Although progressivism moves steadily ever leftwards, in any one area of policy there are waves. First a large movement left. Disaster ensues, as with freeing the slaves, then a small movement right, as with Jim Crow. Then after a while, another large movement left.
Crime has diminished somewhat because we are in the small movement right phase with respect to crime. From what is happening in New York city, looks like the next large movement left phase is about to resume, whereupon we will see gentrification end, white flight resume and New York head off in the footsteps of Detroit.
Crime has risen because of movement left. It fell because, for a little while, we moved a little bit right on crime. But since progressives always need each to be lefter than the other, they can only move rightwards on crime by moving leftwards on something else – and in due course, are coming back to moving leftwards on crime.
