Ballardian

In Diary: A Fascist’s Guide to the Premiership, published in New Statesman, JG Ballard previews the themes he unpacks in Kingdom Come. In this piece, JGB asks if the “English working class [is] re-tribalising itself” as a result of “football crowds rocking stadiums and bellowing anthems … taking part in political rallies without realising it, as would-be fascist leaders will have noted”.

Indeed. I’m about a third of the way through Kingdom Come and I’m finding it far more localised and inward looking than previous Ballard. I’m wondering how the theme of football fascism will translate to other territories… Probably really well. Racist attacks sprung on immigrant communities by clockwork sporting mobs happen here in Australia, too. The difference being that it’s more likely to be surfers than football fans who are the reactionary nationalists (as happened on Sydney’s Cronulla beach last December).

And we have identikit Bentall Centres (the Centre being the inspiration for the foreboding Metro-Centre in Kingdom Come).

As usual, JGB has his finger on the pulse, but as far as the football fascism goes, isn’t he some way behind John King who was identfying nationalist, mobile-phone-linked mobs in his ‘Football Factory’ trilogy? Of course, Kingdom Come rapidly springs off into other directions, so perhaps this is a minor point.

In any case, I hope that with this book we see more reviews of JGB from outside England…having said that, here’s an absorbing review from M. John Harrison, published in the Times, which raises some very interesting points about the ‘Ballardian template’: “we … understand with a shock that it is the author who feels bored and trapped, not the characters”.