Re: Hooligans Game Hack
Nelson Suggs
According to Life magazine (30 July 1941), the comic strip artist and political cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper introduced a character called Happy Hooligan in 1900; "hapless Happy appeared regularly in U.S. newspapers for more than 30 years", a "naive, skinny, baboon-faced tramp who invariably wore a tomato can for a hat." Life brought this up by way of criticizing the Soviet U.N. delegate Yakov A. Malik for misusing the word. Malik had indignantly referred to anti-Soviet demonstrators in New York as "hooligans". Happy Hooligan, Life reminded its readers, "became a national hero, not by making trouble, which Mr. Malik understands is the function of a hooligan, but by getting himself help."
I pull over and get out and walk towards the bridge. The sky is so dark that I can no longer see the river. The banks are similarly night-cloaked but if I squint into the gloom, I can just make out the faint light of headlamps scattered up and down among the shadows of trees as people dip for hooligans in the rain, all of them hoping for the best.
By any measure, Vova has a comfortable life. His mother is a flight attendant, and so his room in the family's apartment has pictures and posters from the places he has traveled. He is studying to be a graphic designer, and he loves surfing. He also has an affinity for poetry (including Pushkin and Yesenin, who wrote about, among other things, hooligans in the early 1900s). Vova enjoys literature, particularly the writings of famed German novelist Erich Maria Remarque. In a coffee shop one afternoon, we briefly debate The Night in Lisbon versus All Quiet on the Western Front. (Lisbon is his favorite book of all time.)
Yet in the evenings or on weekends, Vova says, he goes to the forest. He says he is part of a group of hooligans known as IX Legion, which supports a professional soccer team, Dinamo Moscow, and which fights against other groups supporting other teams. These fights almost always take place in the woods, away from the eyes of the police (or anyone else, really). These fights have no written rules or regulations, have no certified referees or officials, and while it is generally considered gauche to murder someone at one of these fights, everything short of that is pretty much fine.
"In a fight, everything is different," says Vova, who fights with a group of hooligans known as IX Legion. "It requires anger, some kind of rage or something like that." Logan Cascia/Special to E:60 Films
Will there be trouble during the World Cup? Russian officials have repeatedly said they don't expect any issues. But no one can say for sure, including the hooligans themselves. "It won't happen in Russia because our police services work a lot better" than in France, says Vlad, who is a friend of Vova's and also a member of the Legion. Vlad seems fairly certain about this too. Except then Vlad reconsiders and says, "Maybe some small conflicts will occur." And a few moments later, he reconsiders again and says, "Small conflicts are bound to occur but not because Russians will provoke them."
Vlad's opinion is common among hooligans. So too is his approach to privacy: He does not share that he is a hooligan with many people in his life because "it is not a social thing; it's personal." Like Vova, he doesn't want his full name revealed because "there is a lot of tension right now" surrounding hooligans and the police, and Vlad says the crackdown from the authorities over the past year has been considerable.
Anton chooses to fight everywhere. Anton is a bouncer and a boxing coach and an instructor at a gym in St. Petersburg that specializes in training hooligans. Anton loves fighting, loves talking about it, loves the language of it.
E:60 showcases the best in longform television journalism, including Russian Fight Club, an in-depth look at the rise of new hooligans in the World Cup host country. The episode airs Sunday at 9 a.m. ET ESPN.
The only significant rule -- and one that is distinctly Russian -- is that foreign objects are not allowed; hooligans in other countries in Europe often use brass knuckles or knives, but Russians fight with fists only. Head-stomps, knee-drops and repeated face-kicking are commonplace.
But I didn't. I dropped my hand, grabbed the other side of his shirt and we wrestled some more before the other guys jumped in to break it up. That was it. At the time, it didn't seem like a formative experience, but in the years since, I have wondered why I didn't do it, or couldn't do it. I have wondered whether I missed out on something important. Most hooligans seem to think I did.
This idea of fighting as a personal release is one of the common notions most hooligans I speak with raise as a reason for fighting's popularity. The other is the baked-in nature of fighting within Russian culture. Within minutes, every hooligan brings up the "old village fighting" of ancient times in Russia, a reference to something known as stenka na stenku, or wall on wall. These mass fights between neighboring towns featured hours of bare-knuckle battling and involved everyone from young children on up to the most distinguished boxers. Some accounts say they took place as early as the 11th century.
In the early days of Russian hooliganism, the English hooligans -- who were glamorized in a 2005 movie called Green Street that was very popular in Russia -- provided inspiration for everything from clothing to chants to songs to drinking and punching.
Now that has changed. Ruslan, a 20-something who is a member of a hooligan group known as Red-Blue Warriors, says he believes he is part of the third generation of Russian hooligans. The first was "drinking guys that would fight chaotically," especially in and around the stadiums. The second was a group of "guys who realized something was wrong and change was needed." Ruslan's generation, he says -- in Putin's Russia -- has grown to embrace mixed martial arts, adhere to a healthier and more athletic lifestyle, and operate with something akin to a fight-club mentality. Many hooligans, including Ruslan, even graduate from the forest to become legitimate MMA fighters. On a few occasions, Ruslan has fought an MMA match against an opponent he used to battle in the woods.
This shouldn't be surprising. After all, there is a popular website, fanstyle.ru, dedicated to full coverage of hooligan fighting. There are thousands of fight videos on the internet. There are message boards all over the Russian version of Facebook, with thread after thread where pictures of injuries from fights are posted and analyzed in the comments. In 2013, a feature-length Russian movie, Okolofutbola, which glorified the new hooligan lifestyle (and used hooligans in some of the roles), was a massive hit in Russia.
This is, I suppose, what makes the Russian authorities so concerned about the new hooligan movement as the World Cup approaches. Sure, Russian hooligans generally say they don't want to fight regular fans. They say they want to fight other hooligans (unless, maybe, you're English, in which case they might want to fight you just because they assume you're a hooligan too). The casual, there-for-a-good-time soccer fans at the World Cup really shouldn't need to be worried about groups such as Rude Boys or the Legion or RB Warriors.
Then he listens, patiently and kindly, as I tell him that even after spending all this time with hooligans and learning about what they do and how they do it, I still don't understand why they do it.
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