Excellent analysis of the riot in
Vancouver.
Booze-fueled, consumerist über-nationalism.
I did receive this incisive bit of analysis from Dru Oja Day, an editor at the Media Co-op. “If you ask people to pour all of their emotions and anger into a game, then a major event (Montrealers have rioted after first round game 7 wins!) is going to occasion some outbursts. Hockey commentators like Hockey Nights’ Don Cherry are constantly associating hockey with the troops overseas (he went to Afghanistan and fired a live shell, for chrissakes) and promote fighting and big open ice hits. We shouldn’t be surprised.”
. . .
As one of those real heroes, Harsha Walla said to me, "There is a sense that people rioted over a 'stupid apolitical hockey game'. While I too wish people were motivated by social justice issues, the hockey game is NOT apolitical by any means. The riots were a fundamentalist defense of a type of nationalism, most evident in the beatings and stabbings of Bruins fans in Vancouver last night. NHL hockey is not simply a game, it is representative of obedience to consumerism and is part of the state's attempt to forge a false identity - despite vast differences and inequalities across race, class, and gender, through the spectacle of sport."
The state does reap what the state sows. We should remember that as the hand-wringing by police and government officials commences in earnest.
The piece also points out that bystanders were safer at an idiotic hockey riot than at the G8/G20 protests last summer.
Do NOT help identify the idiots. Soon -- very soon -- it will be you and me the cops will ask for help in identifying.
