And how would Mary like it if these Dionysiac revellers turned up at her house or business, threatening all manner of violence? Somewhat amusing, the risible Mayoress of Seattle did not order CHAZ/CHOP to be cleared out by the police until the ‘protestors’ turned up at her house. She cares only for herself, not for normal law abiding residents and businesses.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Well I wouldn’t call looting, burning and shooting people – often in cold blood – Dionysiac. Since they took over part of Seattle, BLM have contrive to kill two people. Both of them, needless to say, were black. And a number of black business owners were killed in the riots. Just a couple of days ago, they simply shot someone who had accidentally driven into the vicinity of one their ‘protests’. A protesters who had been been excluded by the BLM organisers for being too mad even by their standards shot into the protesters and killed a photographer.
A more accurate comparison would be with Dostoevsky’s ‘Devils’, which I happen to have read not long before it all ‘kicked off’.
No, it’s definitely Pure Dionysian in it’s shocking abrupt nature. The Greeks knew all about violence and realised its dualistic nature, to appeal and to disgust.
Geoff Cox
3 years ago
There is also sex at play here. Young people turn up at these events because they hope there’s a quickie in it for them. Also, lets face it, violence / danger is a turn on for a lot of people – women included I’m told.
Mark Corby
3 years ago
What on Earth has this to with Euripides, and his posthumous play The Bacchae? Is this salacious view of the Ancient World a gross distortion?Or an obsession driven by the sexuality neurotic world of manic monotheistic Semitic tradition, dignified as religion?
Virginia Tilley
3 years ago
Somehow I don’t think Mr. Bailey’s comment goes to the point being made here. For one thing, Googling his reference, I find nobody saying that “BLM” has “killed” anyone. The “autonomous zone” has a problem with night-time security, with armed people moving about, but it’s not been confirmed that these people are BLM or anyone in particular. More likely, they are Boogaloo, since Boogaloo bois are armed, which BLM people typically are not, and the bois go around at night to preserve their anonymity. But that’s just a dollop of distraction Mr. Bailey managed to insert here.
The interesting question is whether the BLM demos are representing also a kind of primal urge to group, demonstrate and celebrate socially binding inspirational experiences. Crowds do this generally and people love them; football and baseball stadiums are erected in honor of this. The more interesting question is what this Dionysian element signifies for understanding the BLM movement. Perhaps there’s a bit of covid cabin fever contributing to this rush to the streets, as well as frustration with the presidential campaign, all crystallizing around Floyd’s murder much as the Arab Spring crystallized in Tunisia around the self-immolation of a street vendor. Veterans of epic moments like this are both pleased and cautious, watching this one, as we know they mostly tend to dissipate when it rains too hard or some discouraging thing happens or when a token victory is made. Or simply when people have to get back to work. The exodus of leftists from Nicaragua after the Triumph was striking, leaving only the Christian activists to stick out the unglamorous job of actual governing a wrecked society in a crippled economy. (Disclosure: I’m not Christian.)
But there’s also the question of whether Dionysian impulses are a problem in themselves. I think not. The lesson from the Greeks was that you deny the God at your peril. Bacchanals are sacred because they express something essential and precious about the world and about human experience in it. The stuffy, the repressive, the straight-laced and tied up, the sexually repressive, the “authorities” who ban dancing, singing and music, the anti-human movements among human society are all committing a crime against the gods and will pay. Perhaps this applies to the elder white Fox News viewers who are all sniffy about BLM and scenes of what they see as mayhem, just as it applied when they sniffed at “hippies” in the 60s.
To me it seems the anti-human movements are emanating from BLM and its supporters. Have you not noticed who is doing the censoring, the silencing, the closures and the firings? The ones imposing weird sexual ideologies on us and our children? It’s certainly not elderly Fox News viewers. There is nothing celebratory about looting, rioting, and race-baiting.
In a weird turnaround it’s the conservatives who have become countercultural and ‘liberal’. Woke culture is a social disease perpetuated by adults who are driven, not by an internal set of values, but by Twitter likes and manufactured outrage. They are ghoulish narcissists who will cannibalize anyone who holds a mirror up to their sordid behavior.
This is nothing like the Bacchanal celebrations of Ancient Greece. This is more like Al-Qaida destroying cultural artifacts because they are offended by them and punishing people because they are not pure or ‘woke’ enough.
“Googling his reference” That could be your problem Virginia. Google is not a reliable or honest source. There were four murders at the Seattle “summer of love” as well as numerous rapes, sexual and general assaults. Whether they were largely or solely by BLM affiliates we will probably never know. There were many activists, some reasonable folk caught up in the madness of the moment as well as some so seriously deranged they were there solely for the mayhem.
And how would Mary like it if these Dionysiac revellers turned up at her house or business, threatening all manner of violence? Somewhat amusing, the risible Mayoress of Seattle did not order CHAZ/CHOP to be cleared out by the police until the ‘protestors’ turned up at her house. She cares only for herself, not for normal law abiding residents and businesses.
Well I wouldn’t call looting, burning and shooting people – often in cold blood – Dionysiac. Since they took over part of Seattle, BLM have contrive to kill two people. Both of them, needless to say, were black. And a number of black business owners were killed in the riots. Just a couple of days ago, they simply shot someone who had accidentally driven into the vicinity of one their ‘protests’. A protesters who had been been excluded by the BLM organisers for being too mad even by their standards shot into the protesters and killed a photographer.
A more accurate comparison would be with Dostoevsky’s ‘Devils’, which I happen to have read not long before it all ‘kicked off’.
No, it’s definitely Pure Dionysian in it’s shocking abrupt nature. The Greeks knew all about violence and realised its dualistic nature, to appeal and to disgust.
There is also sex at play here. Young people turn up at these events because they hope there’s a quickie in it for them. Also, lets face it, violence / danger is a turn on for a lot of people – women included I’m told.
What on Earth has this to with Euripides, and his posthumous play The Bacchae?
Is this salacious view of the Ancient World a gross distortion?Or an obsession driven by the sexuality neurotic world of manic monotheistic Semitic tradition, dignified as religion?
Somehow I don’t think Mr. Bailey’s comment goes to the point being made here. For one thing, Googling his reference, I find nobody saying that “BLM” has “killed” anyone. The “autonomous zone” has a problem with night-time security, with armed people moving about, but it’s not been confirmed that these people are BLM or anyone in particular. More likely, they are Boogaloo, since Boogaloo bois are armed, which BLM people typically are not, and the bois go around at night to preserve their anonymity. But that’s just a dollop of distraction Mr. Bailey managed to insert here.
The interesting question is whether the BLM demos are representing also a kind of primal urge to group, demonstrate and celebrate socially binding inspirational experiences. Crowds do this generally and people love them; football and baseball stadiums are erected in honor of this. The more interesting question is what this Dionysian element signifies for understanding the BLM movement. Perhaps there’s a bit of covid cabin fever contributing to this rush to the streets, as well as frustration with the presidential campaign, all crystallizing around Floyd’s murder much as the Arab Spring crystallized in Tunisia around the self-immolation of a street vendor. Veterans of epic moments like this are both pleased and cautious, watching this one, as we know they mostly tend to dissipate when it rains too hard or some discouraging thing happens or when a token victory is made. Or simply when people have to get back to work. The exodus of leftists from Nicaragua after the Triumph was striking, leaving only the Christian activists to stick out the unglamorous job of actual governing a wrecked society in a crippled economy. (Disclosure: I’m not Christian.)
But there’s also the question of whether Dionysian impulses are a problem in themselves. I think not. The lesson from the Greeks was that you deny the God at your peril. Bacchanals are sacred because they express something essential and precious about the world and about human experience in it. The stuffy, the repressive, the straight-laced and tied up, the sexually repressive, the “authorities” who ban dancing, singing and music, the anti-human movements among human society are all committing a crime against the gods and will pay. Perhaps this applies to the elder white Fox News viewers who are all sniffy about BLM and scenes of what they see as mayhem, just as it applied when they sniffed at “hippies” in the 60s.
To me it seems the anti-human movements are emanating from BLM and its supporters. Have you not noticed who is doing the censoring, the silencing, the closures and the firings? The ones imposing weird sexual ideologies on us and our children? It’s certainly not elderly Fox News viewers. There is nothing celebratory about looting, rioting, and race-baiting.
In a weird turnaround it’s the conservatives who have become countercultural and ‘liberal’. Woke culture is a social disease perpetuated by adults who are driven, not by an internal set of values, but by Twitter likes and manufactured outrage. They are ghoulish narcissists who will cannibalize anyone who holds a mirror up to their sordid behavior.
This is nothing like the Bacchanal celebrations of Ancient Greece. This is more like Al-Qaida destroying cultural artifacts because they are offended by them and punishing people because they are not pure or ‘woke’ enough.
“Googling his reference”
That could be your problem Virginia. Google is not a reliable or honest source.
There were four murders at the Seattle “summer of love” as well as numerous rapes, sexual and general assaults. Whether they were largely or solely by BLM affiliates we will probably never know. There were many activists, some reasonable folk caught up in the madness of the moment as well as some so seriously deranged they were there solely for the mayhem.