I can’t help but think of Tiya Miles’s book “The Haunted South” with it’s scrupulous evocation of dark tourism. She shows how whites travel to old plantations to experience sentimentalized ghost shivers which are, of course, the shivers of slavery’s effects.
“Dark tourism” is about entering contested or distressed spaces without empathy or serious engagement. It’s a Disney effect, a global phenomenon, made possible by both inadequate engagements with history and the long effects of television.
From Auschwitz to Chernobyl to Savannah the privileged tourists roam.
The jury in Kenosha was persuaded that Kyle Rittenhouse entered town without any real understanding of the events unfolding before him. He was a tourist with his AR-15. He was merely armed to the teeth and out for a little “look around.”
His was the ultimate MAGA walking tour with lethal effect.
The deadly reality of history is removed from dark tourism. You know the place where nothing is real.
Read Tiya Miles.
Planet of the Blind 