Four souls have departed this mortal coil in Mexico City, trampled in the ecstatic throes of World Cup revelry. The headlines scream of tragedy, of a nation’s joy curdled into grief. But let us be honest: this is not tragedy. This is the predictable outcome when a civilisation surrenders to the cult of spectacle.
We in Britain, smug in our island insularity, now find our tourism officials wringing their hands over ‘security risks’. As if the Roman holiday of the Colosseum, with its organised slaughter, were any different. The mob is a fickle beast, and when you give it football and tequila, you are merely borrowing time until the inevitable bloodletting.
Consider the historical parallel. The fall of Rome was not heralded by barbarians at the gate, but by the bread and circuses that anaesthetised a populace into stupor. Today, we have World Cup and social media. The victims in Mexico City are not martyrs to a cause, but casualties of their own ravenous appetite for entertainment. They died for a goal, for a flag, for the transient high of collective delusion.
Our tourism authorities now prepare advisories, as if risk can be managed with pamphlets and warnings. They will tell you to avoid crowds, to stay in designated areas, to have a contingency plan. But they will not tell you the truth: that the very premise of mass celebration is an invitation to chaos. Every gathering of thousands, whether for football or a royal wedding, is a potential cattle stampede.
The Victorians understood this. They built their great exhibitions and jubilees with meticulous order, with iron fences and police lines. They knew that the crowd is a wild animal, and they kept it caged. We, in our decadent age, have forgotten this. We clap and cheer and call it ‘passion’, while the bodies are scraped off the pavement.
Mexico City is not exceptional. London, Paris, Madrid: every city is a powder keg when the masses are stirred. The only difference is the timing. The World Cup is a global orgy of irrationality, and we are all participants, waving flags and singing anthems, pretending that the deaths of four people are an anomaly rather than the norm.
So let the tourism officials convene their committees and draft their risk assessments. But do not imagine that they can outsmart the laws of human nature. The mob will have its sacrifice, one way or another. The only question is whether you will be among the honoured dead or the gawping survivors.
As for me, I will stay home with a good book and a glass of claret. Let the world burn in its carnival of fools. I intend to watch from a safe distance, and perhaps write a column about the decline of Western civilisation. Again.
