Among the Thugs

Interesting in regard to football hooliganism and pack mentality. A very good read! ( )

This is a horrific and almost unbearably detailed look at British football (soccer) fan violence. The author, the editor of Granta, includes very little football, but rather follows the ``supporters'' on their Saturday jaunts during the 1980s. British football fans and their loosely organized ``firms''- -with their bizarre ties to white-power groups, skinheads, and the National Front--were involved in scores of deaths, countless riots and skirmishes with police and rival supporters, and untold damage to property in England and across the continent. It is the ``precise moment in its complete sensual intensity'' when the crowd goes over the edge and erupts into heedless violence that captures Buford's attention as he attempts to understand such ferocious behavior. He finds that ``violence is their antisocial kick, their mind-altering experience,'' and notes that ``this...is the way animals behave....'' Following his own brutal beating at the hands of Sardinian riot police, a despairing Buford concludes that, in a society that offers little to look forward to or to believe in except ``a bloated code of maleness, an exaggerated, embarrassing patriotism, a violent nationalism, an array of bankrupt social habits,'' youth, out of boredom, frustration, and anger, will use violence ``to wake itself up.'' It is a unique book in my experience documenting the fan culture of soccer in England. The mass violence seems to provide evidence to support the conclusions of those who study the psychology of crowds. These are crowds unlike any I have ever experienced. Buford is a very good writer and his account is mesmerizing. ( )

In the late 80-ies, Buford, an American living in England happens to find himself on a Liverpool supporter train somewhere in Wales. The experience is smelly, loud, violent, scary and disgusting. It’s the heyday of British football violence, and things are happening at virtually every game, both home and abroad. And Buford finds himself asking the question what it is that makes young men run amok every Saturday all over the country – and why the fact that they do is more or less looked upon as some sort of natural disaster. The interest quickly becomes an obsession, and Buford spends years watching games in packed cages, and running with the firms and hooligans. And after being in the middle of the horrorshow when Man U:s Red Devils trash Turin, sending over sixty people to hospital, he is even accepted as someone who can be let in on the truth: It is about the violence, not the game, of course it is. At times Buford tries to quit, but even though he’s never a part of the violence himself, he finds it very difficult to leave. He’s become addicted to the sweat, the piss, the blood.

You might need some utterly basic knowledge about football to fully appreciate this book, know just a little bit about European teams and their connotations. But mostly this is a fascinating read about how groups work. How a group makes collective decisions and how it channels it’s energy. On top of this, Buford is a very good stylist, with a nail-biting ability to describe frozen moments like the very second a crowd becomes a violent mob. One should be warned that the violence described is extremely graphic and detailed. This is at times a very disturbing book. At times, I feel an intense relief that the book is dated. We have come a long way in these twenty years. Still, in Sweden , the firms are on the rise again, and I know many who hesitate to bring their kids to the high risk games and derbys.

Among the thugs is part freakshow, part horror story and part journalism, and should be of interest to anyone in groups and psychology. Football interest is optional. ( )

When Bill Buford started investigating the extreme violence among the soccer “firms” in the UK he was early into his tenure of being an American in England and as a result looked upon as an outsider when approaching the members of the different groups. With perseverance through continued attendance at soccer matches and his presence at several brawls between the firms and other soccer fans, he became more accepted as part of them and gained access to the leaders of these ultra-violent clubs. Buford started out wanting to understand everything about the culture of the firms and what motivated such behavior, but by the end he seemed to be as involved in the culture as the other members.I was shocked by the violence in this book and completely horrified by the behavior of these most ardent soccer fans. Though these men chose the life of being in these firms and fighting amongst one another which is appalling enough, they often brought innocent bystanders into the fray. The willful destruction of property and the lack of respect that they had for the establishments they visited and the people that waited upon them were extreme. I cringed while reading the entire book- there were several violent beatings that made you wonder if the person could have possibly have escaped without being extremely disfigured and handicapped for life, if indeed they were able to survive at all- along with the destruction of property, excessive drinking and aggressive acts towards women. It is hard to talk about because the events that occurred and the level of violence is so fantastical as to almost not be believed.I was ambivalent about the author’s role in reporting on what he saw and where he went, and was acutely conscious of my own complicity while reading this book. As it progresses he was more deeply involved with the soccer hooligans and swept along in the power of the crowd and the adrenaline rush of each mounting situation. I could see his excitement about being one of the boys and was disturbed by it, but aware that I wouldn’t be privy to this information without his investigation. At the same time I don’t think equal consideration was given to finding the underlying causes and motivations of the violence, nor to any of the solutions which law enforcement might have be been considering to confront this issue. One of the things that made this book so scary is the groups seemed to be unchecked and virtually unstoppable and it was much like a weekend job for the participants, who throughout the week held down jobs, which though blue collar were usually highly paid, and had families.Some of the firms were linked to virulently nationalistic groups that pretty much hated everybody and had no qualms with using deadly force against those not fitting into their definitions of what was racially or culturally acceptable. Buford attended their meetings, leaving when overcome with disgust for their politics and violence. He would eventually stop his investigation of the firms when he reached a breaking point with what he had immersed himself in. He had become overwhelmed by what he sought to understand.While Among the Thugs may not have provided the reassurance that there are workable solutions to the mob mentality and group violence, it certainly provided a startling look at and overview of the situation, and it definitely paints an indelible picture in the mind. It’s a book that I will not soon forget. ( )