Two extraordinary heists in France have hit the headlines this week: an armoured truck guard from Lyon drove away with eleven million euros after 10 years of good and faithful services. A postman quietly made off with a million euros. The masters behind these non-violent thefts were ordinary people with no criminal records. They had planned their hold-ups down to the last detail, executed their plans without masking their faces, and then quickly vanished into thin air. No one was robbed at these thefts, just the institution of banking.
These heists have not triggered any indignation or hostile opinions. Au contraire, a collective cheer has sounded off from the people. These thieves (who are still at large as I write, even though most of the funds stolen in Lyon have been retrieved) have quickly become wonderfully popular: blogs, T-shirts, Facebook groups and other networks have been created in their honour. What we can gather from this startling worldwide infatuation with these men is revelatory about several dimensions of the current societal climate:
1. The tremendous discredit of a worldwide financial system. It can be robbed without a single protest because the system itself is viewed as a scam. This is a fact, at least when it comes to the American banks which were largely responsible for setting off today’s recession.
2. The friendly support for the little man, the powerless citizen, the anonymous worker, once he proves himself clever enough to work around a heavily guarded and powerful system. It has come to a point where a great number of fans openly express their admiration and go so far as to openly praise the looting: one robs the bank, as one robs the music industry, and this is once again a prophetic sign.
3. The fragility of the financial system which can be so easily fooled, whether on the web by sophisticated traders, or in the material world, by crafty amoured truck guards. In both cases, real money that people use and desire meets virtual money which the financial system handles in immeasurable amounts.
4. The disproportionate amount of efforts made to locate and punish the robbers when this involves security guards, compared to the efforts made to find law-breakers who are bankers. For the former, this means prison. For the latter, this means tax havens and bonuses.
5. The inevitable decline of the whole of society when thieves are more highly regarded than honest ordinary people. This is a society which is incapable of maintaining its people’s loyalty; this loyalty becomes even harder to earn when the legitimacy of the financial system is challenged, a system on which we all depend.
6. The necessity to re-think all systems of security, whether they be physical or virtual, which have been discredited by routine and attacked today from all sides.
7. Finally, and above all, the need to recreate legitimacy when it comes to our relationship with money, wealth and fortune. Fortune should be considered as a fair consequence for being useful to society whereas it should be looked down upon when the one accumulating it gives nothing back to society but a mocking regard.