Finished Bill Buford’s book ‘Among The Thugs’ for the second time. It leaves you shaken and disturbed. He talks specifically about the violence found in football supporters in the mid-80s – the famous English “hooligans”, and the thrill and exhilaration found in a crowd – a violent crowd – that seems to be in our basest nature. His insights could be written about the rioting crowds who looted and burned this past August.
Here’s one extract: “.. a bloated code of maleness, an exaggerated, embarrassing patriotism, a violent nationalism, an array of bankrupt antisocial habits. This bored, empty, decadent generation consists of nothing more than what it appears to be. It is a lad culture without mystery, so deadened that it uses violence to wake itself up. It pricks itself so that it has feeling, burns its flesh so that it has smell.“