Robb Allen

There's a scene in The Dark Knight where Alfred explains to Bruce Wayne that some people simply cannot be reasoned with. They aren't interested in money, personal gain or anything you might ordinarily associate with someone's motives. As Alfred famously puts it, "Some men just want to watch the world burn." I've been thinking about that scene while watching what's happening in France. People keep trying to make sense of the destruction. Why burn down buildings? Why smash up businesses? Why destroy the very places ordinary people depend on? What exactly is being achieved? But perhaps that's where people are making a mistake. They're assuming the destruction has to make sense according to their own understanding of what constitutes a rational objective. It doesn't... When you're dealing with people consumed by ideological fanaticism, particularly those who have absolutely no respect for the country, its history, its culture or its institutions, destruction itself can become the objective. And this is what concerns me about the increasingly aggressive attempts to impose ideologies completely at odds with the values upon which European civilisation was built. You don't necessarily need to conquer a country militarily to change it beyond recognition. Undermine its institutions, intimidate its population, normalise disorder and gradually make people afraid to defend the very things their society was built upon. Not every rioter has to share that objective. Some are ideological extremists, others are opportunistic criminals, and some are simply enjoying the chaos. But the consequences can be much the same. The mistake is assuming that because their actions make absolutely no sense to you, those actions cannot possibly serve a purpose. Sometimes the destruction isn't an unfortunate consequence of the objective. Sometimes the destruction IS the objective.