The F.A.T. Manual
185
Hot Line Riot from 1982
Sure Oh, is there no one else? I’m also called Clark Gable… (Other boys voice:) Goran! Oh knock it off, there is no Goran (Girl:) So where are you from? (Clark Gable:) Enköping. Are you going to Fridhemsplan tonight? Well, I don’t know. (Beep beep beep beeeeep… Please dial…) [2] But already a few weeks later the number of youths had exploded. Social networks and rumors, like viruses, spread exponentially. One tells another. They tell two more. The four become 8, then 16, 32, 64 and so on and so forth. Not only that. Along the way they may also encounter a true hub, an extremely well-connected supernode. That’s when the spreading completely explodes. Such a thing must have happened between the 9th of September and the 17th of September that we now move to. “A beautiful autumn evening in September 1982 a few dozen motley attired young people gathered at Fridhemsplan: ordinary schoolchildren, no organized motorcycle gangs. Neither the city’s few punks and anarchists were represented except by a few delegates. Continuously new youths arrive from the depth of the underground metro station. No one knew where they came from and what their intentions were. The didn’t seem to demonstrate for or against anything. They just stood there in loosely connected groups, talking to each other.” Hans-Magnus Enzensberger [3] Their numbers soon reached a thousand people. Nothing like this had ever been seen: uncontrollable, yet so calm. Perhaps they had a secret plan? Maybe they were under the influence of something? Maybe they were looking for trouble? The police though it was better to be safe than sorry and decided to disperse the crowd. They were everywhere, says Commissioner Kjell Andersson. On the roof of the bus shelter and the election booths, in the trees and the power lines. But they scattered when we arrived. [4] Instead, the crowd move to the nearby Rålambshovs park without marching order, without slogans, without predetermined plan. The youths gather on top of the footbridge at the park, the police close