Class warfare breaks out in heat of desert ‘utopia’
It is designed to serve as a weeklong snapshot of utopian socialism, with 70,000 kindred spirits sharing everything they have while surrounded by thumping trance music in the middle of a desert in Nevada.
However, the Burning Man festival became less an experiment in ‘‘commerce-free’’ countercultural living and more a site of class warfare as angry protesters stormed and trashed a camp frequented by the rich and famous.
The White Ocean Camp, which was co-founded by the British DJ Paul Oakenfold in 2014, had come to represent everything that purists claimed was ruining the festival’s vibe.
An oasis of exclusivity on the fringe of the site, it was originally funded by Timur Sardarov, the son of a Russian oil magnate, and Oliver Ripley, an American entrepreneur.
Oakenfold helped to arrange the roster of DJs who played on the camp’s stage in its first year.
However, rather than raising the kudos of the Black Rock Desert event, the camp only served to increase tensions as the Burning Man changed to be less Glastonbury and more Gilded Age, with Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires flying in by private jet.
Last week matters came to a head when the proles staged a revolution against the rich ‘‘parasites’’ in their midst.
The compound was stormed by a band of protesters who cut electrical cords, glued shut the doors of luxury camper vans and dumped 200 gallons of drinking water, flooding the area.
The reactions from festival veterans were mixed. ‘‘This is supposed to be about love, happiness, sharing, giving and appreciating. It is unbelievable that there are angry people here,’’ said one.
Others cheered the bandits as modern day Robin Hoods, delighted that they had taken ‘‘Burning Man back from the parasite class’’.
A manifesto for the festival, which has run for 30 years, calls on attendees to be self-sufficient; they are supposed to bring virtually everything they need to survive in the desert with them. Only ice and coffee are supposed to be bought and sold on site.
There is also supposed to be a radical ‘‘gifting’’ culture, where festivalgoers cheerfully divide all that they have. ‘‘What Burning Man is all about is sharing,’’ Oakenfold told Journal in 2014.
However, the The Wall White Street Ocean Camp was what is known as a ‘‘plug and play’’ – a luxury campsite built and run by hired hands for the select few who got to enjoy it. Other attendees complained that it was guarded by unfriendly bouncers.
Such set-ups have become controversial. Silicon Valley millionaires now pay up to US$25,000 (NZ$34,000) each to sleep in air-conditioned yurts while chefs serve them lobster and steak.
Attendees have included Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook tycoon. They have been joined by an army of executives from companies such as Twitter and Uber.
As one pundit put it, Burning Man has been transformed into ‘‘a secret game of I-can-spend-moremoney-than-you-can’’.
The White Ocean Camp Facebook page said: ‘‘A very unfortunate and saddening event happened . . . Something we thought would never be possible in OUR Burning Man utopia.’’
The attack, they said, was ‘‘an absolute and definitive confirmation that some feel we are not deserving of Burning Man.’’
Resentment has been festering for years. The festival, which is a seven-hour drive from San Francisco, was granted its own private airport in 2009.
In 2011 all 50,000 tickets were purchased for the first time. That meant that the only way to gain access was to go online, where tickets were on offer at grossly inflated prices from enterprising capitalists.
It’s all very far from the original ritual. The festival first took place on Baker Beach in San Francisco in 1986. Revellers gathered together and burnt a straw effigy of a man. It moved to the desert in 1990 after the authorities at the original venue took exception to the burning.