As Mark mentioned below, the house of the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland was attacked yesterday. We should not kid ourselves that this is confined to a rapidly crumbling Britain. A group called NACA recently organized a 400-strong protest at the house of one blameless investor where there was obvious trespassing involved. And the threat to reveal the names and addresses of AIG bonus-receivers is very real. Brendan O’Neill of Spiked has an excellent article on this phenomenon today, in which he points out that this violence is actually the result of self-loathing by the elite:

The attack on Goodwin’s home reveals much about the nature of ‘anti-capitalist’ protest today. In physically acting out the disdain for bankers that was first generated by politicians, Britain’s state broadcaster and right-wing tabloids, the stone-throwers unwittingly reveal that ‘anti-capitalist’ agitation these days is little more than an external, physical expression of capitalist society’s own self-loathing. This is not a properly radical or truly independent movement for progress; it is not about understanding contemporary capitalist society in order that we might improve it or change it. Rather it is a screech of rage legitimised by mainstream society’s own discomfort with its creaking economic system. Even worse, the anti-banker sentiment can easily translate into an attack on aspiration itself, as witnessed in many observers’ frequent slips between attacking ‘greedy’ bankers and attacking ‘greedy’ mortgage-grabbing, credit-card-zapping members of the public. With their propagandising and action against ‘the greedy’, ‘anti-capitalists’ merely make a forceful display of the elite’s own loss of faith in wealth and ambition.

If we’re not careful, the populist mob might once again become a force in American politics.