A “wilding” in Africa

As the below devastating quotation from a Paul Theroux book makes clear, “wilding”—the joyous mob pursuit and slaughter of a helpless individual—is an African Thing. Which means that when white countries import blacks, they are importing people for whom wilding is part of their ancestral culture. The wilding may be suppressed by a vigorous dominant white culture, but if that culture loses its confidence and authority, the wilding will return, exactly as is now happening in one U.S. city after another, as well as in Britain.

Read the below description, then recall the videos of the parishioners in Barack Obama’s church making joyous ecstatic noises, hooping and hollering, when Jeremiah Wright invoked total hatred of the evil white man. That was the “middle-class,” “Christian,” “assimilated” version of a wilding.

Bill from Maryland writes:

This topic reminded me of a description of mob violence in Africa in Paul Theroux’s “Dark Star Safari,” a chronicle of his journey through sub-Saharan Africa from Egypt to South Africa. The “Star” in the title is used in the antique sense “Heavenly Body,” and should be understood as “Planet.” Sub-Saharan Africa is “dark” not only in the obvious way, but also in its mysteriousness and inaccessibility to the Western mind; to be there is to be on another planet, a different world.

As chapter nine opens he is heading south into Kenya and has reached the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi. His companion is Kamali, a professional guide:

“Look, see the thief,” Kamali said.

It was a sight of old Africa, a naked man running alone down an embankment and splashing across a filthy creek, pursued by a mob.

“They have taken his clothes. He is trying to get away in the dirty water of the river.”

But he was surrounded. People lined both banks of the creek, holding sticks and boulders, laughing excitedly at the man, who was so panicked he did not even think to cover his private parts but just ran, his arms pumping, splashing in the disgusting muck.

I had forgotten how cheerful, even jubilant, such murderous crowds in Africa could be, particularly these spontaneous mobs in pursuit of a weak marked man trying in vain to flee—a thief, a political outcast, a member of a despised tribe. The isolation of such prey vitalized the pursuers and made them shout with joy as they went after him, the toughest men swaggering at the front, the older men cheering them on, the women ululating, the small children screeching and jumping up and down at the sight of all this motion. The vigor, the macabre good humor of the chase, and the idea of certain death were intoxicants. Years before, I had seen similar mobs in Malawi and Uganda, always a large number of excited people persecuting one or two victims. Then, what had frightened me most was the mob’s sense of fun. Fun was still a factor in massacre. Perhaps the reason was simple: weak, idle people, suddenly granted power and the opportunity blamelessly to beat someone to death, are given a snorting animal energy and become joyous in their triumph.

The laughing crowd surged toward the naked man, swinging sticks. “They will kill him,” Kamali said. Then the traffic began to move.

Anthony O. writes:

Re “A Wilding in Africa”: This kind of activity also showed up in Britain in the form of the more extreme types of football hooligans. It was well documented in “Among the Thugs,” by one Bill Buford.

The level of selective brutality employed by bands of these thugs was a real eye-opener, and a kind of foreshadowing of the direction of Britain lamented by Theodore Dalrymple. The violence didn’t involve whole villages including women and children, as in the Theroux example, but it did resemble the “wilding” we have seen domestically in Central Park, St. Louis, or wherever. Perhaps as the lower classes in Britain sink further into the mire of illegitimacy and self-indulgence, we will eventually see such scenes.

I agree to some extent with comments you’ve made about the “energy” and “vibrancy” of third-world immigrants (though these adjectives can genuinely refer to more benign expressions, such as dance, dress, pageantry and cuisine), but as the hooligans have amply demonstrated, native populations can find their way to such “energy” too.

John O. writes from England:

Here’s an interesting account of black on white violence in Africa … with a twist. Blacks are systematically murdering albino blacks.

I first heard this story on BBC Radio 4 a week or so back. I was even more surprised to find it in greater detail on the BBC homepage.

My guess is that if the victims in this story had been “real” whites in, say, South Africa or Zimbabwe, the BBC would have downplayed it, or ignored it completely.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 13, 2008 12:17 PM | Send