5/21/2023 0 Comments Skype repixIt is unclear to me what their specific function is at this event other than maintaining the general image of order. Their eyes don’t need specific training because the football uniforms have already arranged themselves as targets. They are presumably looking for hooligans. They carry batons instead of machine guns. Then I see bigger amounts of riot police wearing body armor, helmets, shields. They, both during the Euro Cup and every day, are presumably looking for terrorists – their eyes trained in the implicit racial profiling procedures. I’ve become used to seeing these jarring characters everywhere from the train station to the harbor. There are large numbers of soldiers armed with automatic machine guns. Packs of repressed men stumbling through landscapes that will only ever exist as their toilets, performing a nationalism that allows the violent repression of their waking lives to take a justifiable, if explosive, form.Īgainst this backdrop (but I struggle to determine what elements constitute the background and foreground) I identify three different types of French authorities. It is as terrifying as it is known, as predictable as it is awe inspiring. The rest of what I see is probably too obvious to describe. “Two things are at stake: France’s image and security,” said Pascal Boniface, the director of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations in Paris…” (NYTimes) His body has assumed this position to stage the snapshot. But then I notice the phone in one of his hands and see how his other hand is busy positioning an empty bottle of Heineken in front of a giant English flag he has hung as a backdrop for this self-motivated, self-sponsored advertising. I had already seen many men sprawled comatose on the ground, drunk and sunstruck, and at first glance, this seems like a similar situation. An Englishman somewhere between his mid-40s and 50s is on his knees and elbows on the ground, assuming a prayer position that looks not unlike the position of Muslim men at prayer. I approach a scene that unfolds in front of me and makes me sorry I don’t have my camera with me. It is absurd for me to try to get through the crowds, but I am already out and a certain stubbornness kicks in. My French roommate David told me that during the last World Cup, the authorities passed a law making it illegal to show any flags in public two days before the biggest Algerian match. They all have giant flags hanging from their rails half of them Russian, the other half English. I reach the old port to find it full of enormous luxury yachts. I leave the apartment and already feel a certain charge in the air and in the people I pass. It is Saturday and I go for a jog on my normal path, around the old port. I am almost completely oblivious to this event happening minutes from where I live. On the second day of the Euro Cup, England plays Russia at the Marseille stadium. At what point does the ratio of masked security to spectator tip over? Can we imagine a future where there is one undercover agent for every spectator? Would that still pass as celebration? I remember thinking: what is actually being performed in this mediated spectacle when one fifth of the crowd is only there in spectator drag? I imagined being in the crowd, myself performing spectatorship, with the knowledge that every fifth person I brushed shoulders with was an authority masked as spectator. The report estimated that one in five people in the crowd were undercover security agents. I haven’t read the specific numbers related to these Euro Cup events but a few years ago I remember reading a report about security at Times Square on New Year’s Eve. ““We must say the truth to the French people: 0 percent precautions means 100 percent risk, but 100 percent precautions does not mean 0 percent risk,” Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, said in late May.” (NYTimes).Īside from military and police, countless undercover security agents in plain clothes mix with the crowds. Marseille has one of the largest fan zones in France, expecting some 80,000 people. The biggest fear is that terrorists will attack the big outdoor fan zones. Security forces are completely overstretched as they perform various drills to practice for the likely event of a terrorist attack. Several days ago I read an article in the New York Times, describing France’s counter-terrorism preparations. I write this from Marseille on the second day of the 2016 Euro Cup.
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