Watching the coverage on TV yesterday evening – channel-hopping between BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera and the retro madness that is Russia Today – was to watch endless footage from inside Colonel Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli. A place that appears to be somewhat less secure than the Braddafi compound aka the set of World War Z in Glasgow’s George Square.
What all the channels were showing (apart from Russia Today, which had some impenetrable London-Libya conspiracy theory) was the rebel forces running amok, letting off steam and AK-47s – and looting.
It’s a funny old world. Just a couple of weeks ago, these same channels were providing wall-to-wall coverage of teenagers and young adults smashing things with gusto, grabbing whatever trophies came to hand and running away with assorted swag, loot and booty – while the news anchors came over all sombre and disapproving and any number of pundits, from David Starkey downwards, were wheeled on to say what a terrible thing it was, must be stopped, it’s the collapse of civilisation as we know it, etc.
Now we once again have wall-to-wall coverage of teenagers and young adults smashing things with gusto, grabbing whatever trophies come to hand and running away with assorted swag, loot and booty (admittedly not Adidas tracksuits or iPhones, but showing a similar fondness for household electricals – a fridge featured prominently and there appeared to be a brief sighting of that Croydon-disorder mainstay, the flat-screen TV).
And the news anchors, on-the-scene reporters and studio pundits? Almost swooning with excitement, not much sombre disapproval on display. It’s the dawn of a new democratic era, the latest manifestation of Arab Spring civilisation, blah-de-blah. No sign of Dr Starkey, yet, though.
Mind you, the Gaddafi compound fully merits being looted and generally trashed, given what a laughably poor-taste 99p-store-alike it is. Several rebels/looters were to be seen clutching what appeared to be replicas of Oscars – gold or (more likely) gold-plated mock-Roman masks, designed in the grizzled-visage style of old Muammar himself, a man who could walk through the curtain on Stars in Their Eyes and say “Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be Charles Bronson”.
What is it with tyrants, tinpot dictators and general uppity-ego types when it comes to bad taste, especially with regard to domestic décor? Think of Saddam’s palaces. Think of the Trump Tower. Horrible tacky kitsch, the lot of it.
Or even if the taste is half-decent (Mussolini’s Roman palace, Imelda Marcos’s shoes – they surely weren’t all plastic rubbish – or Derry Irvine’s Pugin wallpaper), there tends to either be offensively large amounts of it, or it’s unbelievably two-fingers-to-the-populace expensive, an incentive to loot if ever there was.
Then there is the chess connection, arguably yesterday’s most curious twist in a relentlessly curious story. The head of the world chess organisation, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, played a small but significant role in the regime’s, ahem, endgame when he confirmed that the bold colonel was not only still alive but still in Tripoli, having talked to him on the phone. “Do not believe the lying reports by Western television companies,” Gaddafi said. “I want to express thanks to everyone in the world who feels for the people of Libya. I am sure that we will be victorious.”
Ilyumzhinov has his own qualifications in the tinpot department, being a former president of the Russian Federation republic of Kalmykia and president of FIDE – the chess equivalent of FIFA – since 1995. To say that there has been unhappiness and intrigue in the upper echelons of chess during his tenure is putting it mildly, so there were wry smiles accompanying the hand-wringing in the polite world of the chess bulletin-boards after Ilyumzhinov was filmed playing chess with Gaddafi during a visit to Tripoli just two months ago. The two leaders, so some said, were well matched.
Not that this is anything new, there being a long and not entirely noble history of dictators interacting with chess players. Fidel Castro was much in evidence at the celebrated chess Olympiad in Havana in 1966, when the players were feted like footballers. “This huge organization provided 150 cars for the guests, so that each team had a chauffeur and a car,” wrote Bozidar Kažić in the official history of FIDE events. “Superlatives will be used in describing this organization for a long time to come!”
And there was the sad sight of Bobby Fischer playing Imelda Marcos’s husband in 1973 when the reigning world champion was starting to find reasons not to face proper chess opponents. (It’s debatable as to which of Ferdy and Bobby had the most reactionary political views.)
But – as Lyse Doucet pointed out on Newsnight – Gaddafi was unlikely to be playing chess last night. The real question now is where is he? Spirited away to his home town of Sirte? Hiding in some tarp or tent upcountry in the desert? Growing a beard in a Saddamesque underground pit?
No one knows. It has, thus far, been impossible to locate the whereabouts of Gaddafi’s bolthole, and I refer honourable readers to the answer I gave earlier.
A final thought. If you watch only one piece of TV coverage during the entire Fall of Tripoli, you could do worse than to make it the Sky News interview with the man who found – and proudly donned – Gaddafi’s cap. You know, the absurd generalissimo-style braided peaked affair that was a perfect encapsulation of the self-importance and ostentatious decadence of the man and his regime. And now it’s to be seen perched rather jauntily on the head of some lanky freedom-fighting looter. Kind of sums the whole thing up, somehow.
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