boredom is always counter-revolutionary

I don’t understand football. I mean this in the very literal sense, of not understanding the rules (I am overstating this, of course), but also in the wider sense of not really understanding why people invest so much energy and enthusiasm in it.

Nor do I fully understand the historical influences behind football supporters, particularly the sectarian identity of Rangers supporters; and nor do I condone futile violence or hooliganism-as-ritual.

But yesterday’s events in Manchester offer an example of a (misguided) contemporary form of public anti-authoritarian mobilisation. King Mob – a British amalgam of European Situationist and American Black Mask/Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker influences – proposed the politicisation of football hooligans as a means of giving an anti-capitalist movement some muscle. For anyone who now asks whether mass social uprisings are possible in advanced capitalist countries (a la May 68): here is one answer, but its not so pretty as a poster on the Sorbonne and some hip students.

Manchester, May 2008

Paris, May 1968