Dark tourism
is usually considered an ultramodern phenomenon; a selfie-obsessed movement
propelled by cheap international flights, crumbling global politics, and post-COVID
disposable income. Its roots, however, lay much deeper, submerged at least as far
as the slums of Victorian London, and probably a lot deeper than that.
In
August 2021 the Daily Mail reported
that 21-year-old student Miles Routledge, more commonly known as Lord Miles (having bought a lordship online
for 15 pounds sterling), had become trapped in war-torn Afghanistan amid the
Taliban takeover. Lord Miles had resigned to the fate of his probable execution
in a viral social media video amassing a sizable online following in the harrowing
process.
Abandoned
by the British Embassy in Kabul after jetting into the warzone on holiday, the
Loughborough physics accademic bivouacked himself in an United Nations safe house
among fifty others of different nationalities. Speaking to The London Times last year, the student explained that he had decided to visit Afghanistan after watching content
on YouTube. Prior to his hiding Mr. Routledge had posted photos of himself smiling
beside heavy machine guns aboard armed military convoys.
Since
his ordeal Lord Miles has rebranded his image as a YouTuber, internet
celebrity, and card-carrying war tourist. Returning to the conflict zone in
2023 for the third time Lord Miles was detained by Afghan authorities for eight
months. Undeterred by this experience, Miles described his imprisonment as “a
holiday” with a lifestyle akin to “living the lap of luxury.” Perhaps the only detail barring Miles from attempting to return to Kabul is the
obligatory immigration black-listing a prison sentence naturally occasions.
This
all happened during the surgency of the vacation movement known as dark tourism.
Ethically questionable tour operators across the globe offer flights and
accommodation into war zones and places of recent upheaval. On the ground,
guides and tour operators fix excursions and day trips. One can fire an M1
Bazooka at a cow within reach of the Killing
Fields in Cambodia, dip into hot springs in radioactive Ramsar, Iran, go cherry picking just outside Chernobyl, purchase a key-ring in the Dachau Concentration Camp gift shop, or scramble
down the Cu Chi Vietnamese foxholes, where US Soldiers eventually found God in
the 1960s.
North
Korea, East Timor, and the mountainous ethnic political tinderbox of
Nagoro-Karabakh have all been ticked off the proverbial bucket list by
Norwegian Erik Faarland whose next dream destination is San Fernando in the
Philippines to watch locals crucified in homage to Jesus Christ. Unsurprisingly,
Eriik usually travels alone, his wife preferring a paperback novel and a
cocktail on the beach in Majorca to being nailed to a cross in San Fernando.
At some point the amateur anthropologist
must become the budding social detective. When and where do sinister dark attractions
cease to become morbid titillations satisfying instead more serious historical
investigations?
“It’s
not a new phenomenon,” says J. John Lennon (non-Beatle), a professor of tourism at Glasgow
Caledonian University, in Scotland, who coined the term ‘dark tourism’ with a
colleague in 1996, “There’s evidence that dark tourism goes back to the Battle
of Waterloo, where people watched from their carriages the battle taking
place.”
To
find documented evidence of dark tourism, one could do a lot worse than turning
their attention to Victorian London towards the turn of the century. Oh yes, Jack London. The city, my home city, was then a
bustling metropolis of stark contrasts as the Industrial Revolution had firmly
entrenched itself bringing prosperity to the elite, and profound social
challenges for the poor who inhabited the overcrowded slums as the city rose predatorily
above them. Nowadays the lines of poverty are less divided in London. It's all over the fucking place.
In
1902, American author Jack London decided to outfit himself as a typical London
pauper and walk the mean streets of Whitechapel. Just a decade following the
world’s most infamous serial killer had claimed the lives of five women on the
streets in 1888, the East End of London was still one of the most dangerous districts
in the world. Overcrowded housing, poor sanitation, and omnipresent poverty
charactered these slums. Perhaps the greatest example of dark tourism lays
within the pages of London’s seminal work published after his seven weeks living
in the inner-city ghetto of London, entitled The People of the Abyss.
“I
went down into the under-world of London with an attitude of mind which I may
best liken to the explorer. I was open to be convinced by the evidence of my
mind, rather than by the teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words
of those who had not seen and gone before.”
The themes of London’s London are bleak –
destitution, inequality, and resilience. Like the dark tourist today he is
traveling into an uncomfortable new world. The author is shocked at the suffering, yet heartened by the togetherness of the people."If you're in trouble," John Steinbeck once wrote, "go to the poor people - they are the only ones who will help - the only ones."
Back in London's day, around 1890, there were
no tour operators, nor guides willing to enter
Whitechapel. The online umbilical cord of safety afforded by social media was
yet to be invented. The author struggles to find a guide or tour operator inclined
to take him east. Approaching a Thomas Cook travel agent representative
in the West End, the response to his request to tour the other side of the city
is met with an exhalation of amazement. No bloody chance. The
agent counters: ‘You can’t do it, you know,’ ‘It is so, ahem, unusual.’
Before venturing into the abyss, London stops at a
clothing store to purchase second-hand rags in order to fit in with the
locals. As the days pass he is amazed at the massive waste of human potential
wandering the streets in search for food, shelter, sleep, and work. London couldn't help but feel a
sense of sheer waste, a vast reservoir of untapped human potential trapped in a
cycle of deprivation and despair.
“Also,
as I looked at the mite of a youth with the heart of a lion, I thought, this is
the type that on occasion rears barricades and shows the world that men have
not forgotten how to die.”
Jack London, was, of course, a real warrior. His sensibilities were
earnest. This is a far cry from the ‘lap of
luxury’ experienced by Lord Miles at the hands of the Taliban. Yet if we
substitute the written word and book for the camera and the social media
platform could Lord Miles have a claim as a serious contributor to the canon of dark tourism?
It seems unlikely.
