J.K. loaned me a pile of books.
Among The Thugs by Bill Buford
“This is, if you like, the answer to the hundred-dollar question: why do young males riot every Saturday? They do it for the same reason that another generation drank too much, or smoked dope, or took hallucinogenic drugs, or behaved badly or rebelliously. Violence is their antisocial kick, their mind-altering experience, an adrenaline-induced euphoria that might be all the more powerful because it is generated by the body itself, with, I was convinced, many of the same addictive qualities that characterize synthetically produced drugs.”
The author embedded himself in British football hooligan culture for about ten years, and the result is part-narrative, part-discourse on the nature of crowd violence. An individual act of violence is a different beast from the violence of the crowd, and although the book dates from the 1990s, the topic is still relevant. In August of this year, a reported gang-rape of a young doctor led to mass strikes across India; right here in France, a man in Avignon is on trial for facilitating the rape of his drugged wife by some fifty to seventy men. Does the presence of others trick one’s brain, inuring one’s conscience to committing a crime?
