Gonzo Journalism, Part 1

A look into The Motorcycle Gangs, A portrait of an outsider underground by Hunter S. Thompson.

"After two weeks of intensive dealings with the Hell’s Angels phenomenon, both in print and in person, I’m convinced the net result of the general howl and publicity has been to obscure and avoid the real issues by invoking a savage conspiracy of bogeymen and conning the public into thinking all will be “business as usual” once this fearsome snake is scotched, as it surely will be by hard and ready minions of the Establishment. "

This article is an example of a style of writing I am becoming increasingly interested in as of recent known as Gonzo journalism, in which there is no clear aim in the writing but rather a total immersion into a topic with social commentary coming directly from the experiences of the writer themselves. Because of this the writing is almost always in a first-person perspective.

The example I am going to use today is a mix of both Gonzo and traditional journalism written by the pioneer of the style Hunter S. Thompson. This piece would later inspire the first fully fledged piece of Gonzo known as Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. In this precursor piece Hunter breaks down various police reports detailing the heinous actions of the gang contrasting them with his own personal experience in meetings with the Hell’s Angels.

Demonstrating an incredible knowledge of current affairs and use of vocabulary he shows the reader the true narrative of fear mongering in news publications of the 1960s. This was the midst of the Vietnam war and America as a people were desperately in search of a common enemy. The Vietcong only served as scapegoats to the spread of communism and no one really knew who was fighting who and why.

As a result of this treacherous political climate politicians and law enforcement alike were desperately in search of an evil both total and totally manageable. As a result, socially complex activities such as drugs and gang activity were grossly simplified into something that could be cured. Hunter makes note of this as he says, “The unarticulated link between the Hell’s Angels and the millions of losers and outsiders who don’t wear any colours is the key to their notoriety and the ambivalent reactions they inspire.” Hunter sees that the issues associated with Hell’s Angels aren’t what they seem. For every member of the gang there are millions of degenerates doing the same thing. However, the difference is that because they share an insignia, they seem to pose a larger threat. By placing blame onto the gangs themselves it provides a scapegoat for larger issues at hand such as how many people were left behind by society after the Second World War similar to how Vietnam was treated as the enemy when America’s real enemy was the fear of irrelevancy after the war.

Hunter is able to completely detach himself from the situation because of his lack of aim with his writing and show the wood from the trees, by losing an aim he loses a bias as the only motivation for his work is both curiosity and the search for the truth.