Aaron
The most irritating book I've ever read. Irritating in that uniquely American way, with all the usual faux pas related to identity. It's schmaltzy, overwrought, and littered with sentences that pained me to read.
“It's what his muscles know, especially that largest muscle in his inventory - his soul.”
🤮🤮
The best word to describe this book would be “earnest”. The author's love of Australian monotremes and marsupials carries through and is a pleasure to read at times. Ashby is clearly deeply knowledgeable in this area and passionate about his subject matter. He does stray into socio-political territory frequently throughout, in fairness making some important and valid points about colonisation and how we frame Australian species as ‘primitive' or inferior in relation to northern or European mammals, a pervasive attitude that may well be contributing to their ongoing destruction.
Ashby repeatedly and naively analyses historical wrongs (and they were wrongs) through the lens of today's standards, which can grow tiresome. It's obvious how harmful these actions were, his overt moral outrage and condemnation is not required and comes across as immature frankly.
Sadly in the final chapter things really went off the deep end. Ashby takes a wild reach way outside his area of research and actively peddles a trope and book which has done a great deal of damage here, one described by Senior Indigenous Fellow and sitting UNPFII member, Hannah McGlade, as “not very truthful or accurate, ideological and subjective, misleading and offensive to Aboriginal people and culture”.
There IS of course a point to be made about how terra nullius and colonial brutality toward, and misrepresentation of, Aboriginal peoples have also contributed to destruction of native species. But uncritically championing the cherrypicked arguments of a single controversial author (or two if we count Gammage, lifted straight from Pascoe's own references) is not it. Ashby presents an enthusiastic summary of dark emu in the tone of a paid promotion. It speaks to academic laziness, without the rigour and balance one would expect from an academic and museum director like Ashby.
The undercurrent too in this final chapter is a persisting eurocentric attitude that sophisticated nomadic hunter-gathering is simply backward and primitive (ironic given Ashby's defence of ‘primitive' monotremes) and that Aboriginal peoples are somehow more worthy of respect if they practiced large scale agriculture in the European style..
I appreciate the earnestness with which Ashby writes, his deep love for Australian wildlife that I share, and his good intentions in learning from the harms of colonisation. Some reflection is needed on the final chapter, however, and why he didn't take the time to delve more deeply into a complex and nuanced matter before publishing.
It seems obvious to write that Vassilis' story relates a deep yearning for freedom..but how else to say it?
His words are an affirmation that even in this neoliberal hellworld there can still be pure life, struggle, brotherhood between strangers, romanticism.
Vassilis' is an anarchism of the mountains and the village. In contrast to that of the city or campus, it is refreshingly undogmatic. His story is the spirituality of struggle; it is fluid, playful, messy, human, and full of quiet rage which spills over into frenetic crescendos of confrontation and nights spent sleeping under the stars.
Coming from a similar background and holding similar disdain for cosplaying middle class ‘anarchists' maybe I wasn't the intended audience for this one..
There was some wisdom here. Some critical thought. But also dogma. I lost count of the number of times the term ‘white-supremacist patriarchal capitalist society' was deployed.
Hunter's early life experiences read like trauma/poverty porn to me, possibly written that way to shock a middle class reader? But to those familiar with these kinds of encounters it wasn't particularly novel or worthwhile. More just fucking horrible.
It was reassuring at times to hear class being centred with the rage and passion it warrants, but where that fell flat was in tying social position to character- ie that all the author's ‘good'/empathetic/collectivist characteristics came from being poor and all his ‘bad'/domineering/evil characteristics came from being white or being male. This incessant categorisation of struggle is a dead-end for the left, it's cult-like and leads us into a state of constant self-flagellation, unable to build anything. Was hoping for something more with this book
I was loath to read this, holding onto long term distrust of ‘outsiders' (not necessarily journalists either) writing about a youth culture that means a lot to me. The tendency is to either overhype, moralise, or just miss the point completely. Montague, perhaps by virtue of his own local terrace experience, did none of these.
1312 surprised me, it even managed to articulate the energy of terrace culture I've always struggled to put into words- the things that make it one identifiable culture despite an array of political and stylistic contrasts - to FEEL football not just to watch it, to fight for your community, to reject authority and commercialisation, and to test the boundaries of state and society.
Despite the culture's origin in passion, drama, and the values mentioned above, it's fair to say that the picture of modern ultras scenes painted in the book isn't particularly romantic, nor optimistic. There is the ugliness of the far-right and their connections with nationalist elements of the state (practically acting as police in several instances, so much for 1312!) and with capital (profiteering, merchandising, connections with suspect businessmen, even extortion).
Then there's the loud, cringeworthy virtue-signalling of groups (particularly in Germany and the USA) who call themselves left-wing. Groups who aren't able to simply live their values, but have to wear them as a badge for self-promotion and moral superiority in such a way as to render them plastic, insipid. It's so disappointing, embarrassing even, to read about these groups calling the police on and pressing charges against their political enemies (again, so much for 1312). The way that fans uncritically support the commercialisation of liberal values in America was particularly unsettling to me.
So yes, it's true, three quarters of the book did not paint a nice picture of a culture that I love. But the honesty of this book is what makes it stand out. Besides, much like the process of one generation replacing another on each individual terrace, new scenes in new regions emerge as the most subversive, innovative, and exciting- it's the same process on a macro, global scale. These new scenes are almost always derided as copycats by the old guard, just as younger generations of ultras are dismissed by their elders, but they bring new energy and new life to the culture.
Montague could've stayed euro-centric, as most covering this topic do, but to his credit he takes a broader approach and the book is far more interesting for it. North Africa, Indonesia, Turkey and Greece seem to be among the most interesting scenes at the moment and there were encounters in the book that left me with real hope for the future of this culture and the integrity of its anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate, localised values.
It's worth mentioning too that there is appeal in Montague's level-headed honesty, he doesn't feel the need to hype up every scenario. In recollections of high-energy moments he describes them as such, but when things fall flat as they so often do in football (flop, as we say here) he delivers these recounts with deadpan, and often comical, honesty.
I didn't expect to, but I loved this book.