On being in the crowd at the Olympic Stadium

Olympic Stadium
Aerial view of the Olympic Stadium in April 2012
Location

We are seated in the Olympic Stadium. It is the 110 metres hurdles for the Heptathlon.
The British competitor when announced is greeted with a roar
that is well...a tad disturbing in its intensity.  Then as the 'Brit' elegantly eases over the
hurdles like some graceful deer, the sound increases, this ululation of 80,000 people.
I look at the spectators around me, respectable looking people, standing, waving, jumping up and down, frantically waving their Union Jack flags they are almost foaming at the mouth in their nationalistic fervour.  The word 'aryan' came to mind for this spectacle. Implant nationalism into the common man and it can become a frightening spectacle.

When I express this to other people they respond by saying '...don't be such a killjoy.'

Yet, we are in a dangerous age when we have been primed by television that 'eye' in the corner of the room that can appeal to a mass audience.


I though of the weekend before when I wearily trudged back from work and avoided Hyde Park as Boris Johnson (London Mayor)
stoked up a 75000 crowd with his excellent rhetorical skills. Soon they were chanting his name,
"Boris, Boris, Boris".

I though of how the mass, the crowd when primed by nationalism can become fodder for
an able rhetoritician.