Football fan abuse thread

[dontcallme]

I did understand the context, dude - hence my apology.

But I highlighted your post not to directly challenge it but to demonstrate that it’s indicative of a received wisdom that has permeated our society: one that treats those who commit regrettable acts as not motivated by their life experience, but purely due to their stupidity. When we use that approach, what we’re really saying is that that person has less worth, and so we should feel no compunction over meting out a harsh and severe punishment. Again, not suggesting that you’re expressly saying that, just that the idea fuels an intolerance towards people who we think ‘ought to know better’.

Unfortunately, as a species we very rarely know what’s ‘better’. We all do stupid things. And that means we have to always hold onto our compassion, even for those who commit evil. ‘There but for the grace of God’ and all that...

All well and good but you did state “Really, dude? Are you saying that there is a threshold of intelligence that qualifies whether someone should be treated as human by which I mean flawed?”

That was very directly challenging my view. I maintain if someone can’t determine the difference between screaming abuse at a tv screen and at a person then they are to blame for getting punished.

The level of punishment is something to discuss and I agree that we can punish people too harshly for what they have done in the name of sending a warning to others.

 

[rez9000]

It's a great post but I have to wholly disagree with your conclusions.

The whole de-platforming thing just simply isn't true, it's a narrative, one that's been spun with great success by Bannon. Look I'm very aware that there are people who call themselves "liberal" who try to stop SYL speaking at Oxford Uni or protest about football pundits making locker room misogynist remarks off camera.

It's interesting you pick up on the Bobby Madley case, I haven't seen the video, I'm not even sure it's been released but I have seen his excuses and his victimhood apology. The thing with this case is that he's portraying himself as the victim and that's part of the problem, people when caught out, rather than just apologising and admitting liability they portray themselves as the victim. The Madley case is interesting because that's exactly what has happened. You see the thing is, we (the public) didn't even know about the sacking until he opened up in his victimhood blog, about how he's been the victim of fat-shaming and that he's been the victim of a friend "leaking" his private message. How about you just don't take the piss out of disabled people and think that doing so is so funny you share it with others? I mean seriously...

It's like Alex Jones railing about being de-platformed from Facebook, how about Alex not being a conspiracy theory nutjob who claims that victims in a school shooting are actors and defaming the parents or how about Katie Hopkins, stop saying racist shit and accusing a cookery book writer of pissing on the cenotaph, then maybe she may still have a column and wouldn't have to sell your house to pay your libel damages.

Look I'm all for freedom of speech and I wish there was more of it, I'd rather the racists were openly racist so I can call them a racist.

One thing I am confused about in your post is that you used to go protesting but it was taken over by armchair liberals? I mean that doesn't make sense if I'm honest.

What I will say, although I could go on for a while, is that there is a massive difference between ignorance and stupidity. I genuinely don't believe anyone is stupid, it's about education on why bigotry is wrong and normally you can have that argument but atm it is shut down with the "woke" shit or "snowflake" bollocks. The number of times I've seen genuine racist shit online being questioned and then shut down because the person says that they're being called stupid and/or a racist when that's not what happens, it's just engagement and questioning of belief.

Free speech is a two-way street and people also have the free speech to call out racism, homophobia and religious bigotry, that's how free speech works. Shutting down debate is wrong but we have as a society agreed that we have the freedom to love and to believe who we want, that's freedom, if people don't like being called racist, stop being a racist, otherwise, as Bannon has said: "wear that badge with pride".

Sorry, went and came back to this a few times so may be a bit disjointed.

What I'm trying to say is that as a society we have decided that racism, homophobia and religious bigotry are wrong, people can believe they are not and that's their choice in a free society but they cannot abuse people and we have literal laws to stop this, now if people want to repeal those laws then they have to vote for a party offering that, none of the political parties is (although BJ loves a little dog-whistling), but the laws on equal rights and freedom of belief aren't going anywhere and those opinions/abuse have no place in a football stadium either.

I've done what I keep promising myself I shouldn't - involving myself in a pointless argument. I've already obviously hurt someone's feelings (I'm sorry for upsetting you @dontcallme ) for what? I'm going to say one last thing and then I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place - let people believe whatever keeps them warm in the night.

'We as a society' have decided? Are you sure? Because if that's the case, then 'we as a society' decided (just as an example) to invade a country and contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents? Now, I didn't hear many liberals suggesting we keep silent and accept that decision (I certainly didn't as I protested). Another example: didn't 'we, as a society' choose to leave the European Union? Again, I don't see liberals quietly accepting that result...

This is the problem: the liberal wants the things they support to be treated as a fait accompli and the things they oppose to be questioned and questioned and questioned until they get the result they want, at which point it's then sacrosanct and not to be questioned ever again.

No-platforming was around loooooong before Bannon's appearance at the Oxford Union. It's been used by the shirll liberals against such right-wing luminaries as... Germaine Greer. Or that doyen of bigotry... Peter Tatchell. Do you know why the pontificating Canterbury Christ Church University Student Union wanted to no-platform him? Not because he'd made comments that some found offensive, but because he criticised them for their no-platforming policy. Tell me, does 'newspeak' have one 's' or two...? When 63% of NUS members support no-platforming, society is ill.

This isn't a question of what the law is. It is a question of whether we want to fix the problem or not. Zero tolerance won't solve the problem - it will only make it worse. How many times do we have to have that rammed down our throats before we get it? Aren't the examples of Prohibition and the War on Drugs enough to see what zero tolerance leads to: the thing you want to destroy doesn't go away, it just moves to the margins, festers and grows and then comes back at you more virulent than before.

When you indefinitely ban someone who has offended, all you do is foster more hatred. Let's say a hypothetical person has some grievance against someone they identify as black. It doesn't matter if it's ridiculous or not - it exists. They then use a racial epithet and is indefinitely banned from attending football matches. Who are they likely to blame? Themselves? Or do you think they will then add another thread to their already erroneous narrative? That's what the liberal simply doesn't get.

And that, @dontcallme , is what I was trying to highlight - that when one labels people with simple terms, one reduces that person to that label, marginalising them. That makes it more likely that they will question whether they have a place in society. Their argument will be that if they don't have a stake in society, why should they feel compelled to abide by its mores and conventions? Only a child believes that someone can be forced to think a particular way.

Which is why the intolerant approach of the liberal doesn't work and makes things worse. My point around Bobby Madley wasn't whether what he did was morally wrong or justifiable; it was about whether we have the right to judge the private discussions that someone has. Because that's what your armchair liberal (and you know who I'm referring to, Pipey - stop arguing semantics) wants: to control behaviour and thought. That's not liberal, that's fascist and all it does is foster more bigotry, intolerance and hatred. The bigot will point to those trying to force him to think differently and say, "they don't listen to me, why should I listen to them?"

I mean, seriously, how many times have we heard the old saying, "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar"? Or have I been hearing it wrong? Is the correct idiom actually, "you catch more flies by shoving them away, marginalising them and refusing to understand why they think the way they do than with honey"?

That's me done.

 

[Spurs' Pipe Dreams]

I've done what I keep promising myself I shouldn't - involving myself in a pointless argument. I've already obviously hurt someone's feelings (I'm sorry for upsetting you @dontcallme ) for what? I'm going to say one last thing and then I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place - let people believe whatever keeps them warm in the night.

'We as a society' have decided? Are you sure? Because if that's the case, then 'we as a society' decided (just as an example) to invade a country and contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents? Now, I didn't hear many liberals suggesting we keep silent and accept that decision (I certainly didn't as I protested). Another example: didn't 'we, as a society' choose to leave the European Union? Again, I don't see liberals quietly accepting that result...

This is the problem: the liberal wants the things they support to be treated as a fait accompli and the things they oppose to be questioned and questioned and questioned until they get the result they want, at which point it's then sacrosanct and not to be questioned ever again.

No-platforming was around loooooong before Bannon's appearance at the Oxford Union. It's been used by the shirll liberals against such right-wing luminaries as... Germaine Greer. Or that doyen of bigotry... Peter Tatchell. Do you know why the pontificating Canterbury Christ Church University Student Union wanted to no-platform him? Not because he'd made comments that some found offensive, but because he criticised them for their no-platforming policy. Tell me, does 'newspeak' have one 's' or two...? When 63% of NUS members support no-platforming, society is ill.

This isn't a question of what the law is. It is a question of whether we want to fix the problem or not. Zero tolerance won't solve the problem - it will only make it worse. How many times do we have to have that rammed down our throats before we get it? Aren't the examples of Prohibition and the War on Drugs enough to see what zero tolerance leads to: the thing you want to destroy doesn't go away, it just moves to the margins, festers and grows and then comes back at you more virulent than before.

When you indefinitely ban someone who has offended, all you do is foster more hatred. Let's say a hypothetical person has some grievance against someone they identify as black. It doesn't matter if it's ridiculous or not - it exists. They then use a racial epithet and is indefinitely banned from attending football matches. Who are they likely to blame? Themselves? Or do you think they will then add another thread to their already erroneous narrative? That's what the liberal simply doesn't get.

And that, @dontcallme , is what I was trying to highlight - that when one labels people with simple terms, one reduces that person to that label, marginalising them. That makes it more likely that they will question whether they have a place in society. Their argument will be that if they don't have a stake in society, why should they feel compelled to abide by its mores and conventions? Only a child believes that someone can be forced to think a particular way.

Which is why the intolerant approach of the liberal doesn't work and makes things worse. My point around Bobby Madley wasn't whether what he did was morally wrong or justifiable; it was about whether we have the right to judge the private discussions that someone has. Because that's what your armchair liberal (and you know who I'm referring to, Pipey - stop arguing semantics) wants: to control behaviour and thought. That's not liberal, that's fascist and all it does is foster more bigotry, intolerance and hatred. The bigot will point to those trying to force him to think differently and say, "they don't listen to me, why should I listen to them?"

I mean, seriously, how many times have we heard the old saying, "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar"? Or have I been hearing it wrong? Is the correct idiom actually, "you catch more flies by shoving them away, marginalising them and refusing to understand why they think the way they do than with honey"?

That's me done.

You've either not read what I wrote or totally misunderstood it, I have never advocated de-platforming and I don't advocate the protests against free speech.

Free speech is what I am advocating and did in my post but free speech is a two-way street and some people can advocate for de-platforming if they want to...that's their free speech, just as Britain First can advocate for white-only Britain or whatever they want...that's their free speech.

You can't have it just one way, that's what you're saying the liberals are doing but it's bollocks, it's a trope, the rise of Trump/BJ and Brexit prove that it's not the case and it is just successful selling and advertising of a meme (in the original Dawkins context, not the social media phenomenon). The global financial crisis and its after-effects had consequences and the Western world wasn't ready for it, add into that the repercussions of 9/11, the War in Iraq, Arab spring and most importantly the Syrian civil war with the following refugee crisis and you have a perfect storm of having other people to blame for the economic downturn rather than looking at the people who caused it (the bankers and deregulation) and the following choices/consequences...the politicians.

There are laws in place against hate speech and there are protected minorities in this country, now you can protest against those laws if you want, you can vote for parties who wish to repeal them but they are laws that Governments that we have voted in have passed and you and I have to accept them. You can say they are Draconian, you can say they are wrong but that doesn't make them not the law. I protested against Brexit, does this mean that Brexit isn't happening? I think we all know the answer to that.

The Madley thing wasn't private once his "friend" took it to his bosses who fired him. Is that "PC gone mad" or is that a private organisation (in this case the FA) making a commercial decision on whether their business will be affected by it? The same for Facebook and Alex Jones and the same for Hopkins and the Mail. These are private companies who have chosen to not employ/platform people because it hurts their brand and of course their financials. I mean shit we've got Donald J Trump announcing he wants to start WW3 on Twitter first with N Korea and now Iran and there may be some that advocate removing his account (he's definitely broken Twitter rules) but his account is active because it drives traffic and by proxy revenue.

Students by definition are more radical, I watched an interesting interview with Peter Hitchins on 'Ways to change the world' in which when he was a student confessed to being a radical Leninist/Trotskyite but that radicalism rarely stays and Mr Hitchins is a prime example of that.

I think there should be an open far-right party in Britain and an open far-left one but there won't be because they won't be able to survive commercially as they won't get the votes in our broken system. UKIP have sort of moved there in the latest election and garnered nationally 22,817 votes, I mean that's not enough to win a seat in most constituencies let alone have any political impact.

As for your point of not demonising the racists and trying to get them to listen to the other side, it doesn't work, it has never worked...the only racists who choose to not become a racist are the ones who choose to, now that maybe because of a personal event or they suddenly decide to listen, it won't be because we've enticed them to not be racist, racism is normally ingrained from childhood and from parents or family members indoctrinating them, it can certainly be reinforced by events and/or casual racism in society but I've watched a few interviews with ex-Aryian brotherhood members and Combat-22 members and it is normally an individual event that gets them to listen, that's not something we can engineer but we can try to influence tolerance whilst outside of the home and while the kids are at school.

I guess what you really have to ask is going to football better now than it was in the past? Is the fact I can safely take my under 10 nephews to a football match better than not? Is it better for black players on the pitch better now that there is a zero-tolerance attitude taken or not? Because I think we all know that the answer is that it was worse in the past as the attendance figures and money can attest, has it taken away some of the atmosphere, yeah probably but then I'd personally rather less atmosphere if I don't have to worry about getting into a fight afterwards tbh

Honestly, I just don't have time to bother arguing with racists they're wrong, as are flat earthers but people can believe what they want to believe, that's the joy of living in a free society

 

[dontcallme]

I've done what I keep promising myself I shouldn't - involving myself in a pointless argument. I've already obviously hurt someone's feelings (I'm sorry for upsetting you @dontcallme ) for what? I'm going to say one last thing and then I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place - let people believe whatever keeps them warm in the night.

'We as a society' have decided? Are you sure? Because if that's the case, then 'we as a society' decided (just as an example) to invade a country and contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents? Now, I didn't hear many liberals suggesting we keep silent and accept that decision (I certainly didn't as I protested). Another example: didn't 'we, as a society' choose to leave the European Union? Again, I don't see liberals quietly accepting that result...

This is the problem: the liberal wants the things they support to be treated as a fait accompli and the things they oppose to be questioned and questioned and questioned until they get the result they want, at which point it's then sacrosanct and not to be questioned ever again.

No-platforming was around loooooong before Bannon's appearance at the Oxford Union. It's been used by the shirll liberals against such right-wing luminaries as... Germaine Greer. Or that doyen of bigotry... Peter Tatchell. Do you know why the pontificating Canterbury Christ Church University Student Union wanted to no-platform him? Not because he'd made comments that some found offensive, but because he criticised them for their no-platforming policy. Tell me, does 'newspeak' have one 's' or two...? When 63% of NUS members support no-platforming, society is ill.

This isn't a question of what the law is. It is a question of whether we want to fix the problem or not. Zero tolerance won't solve the problem - it will only make it worse. How many times do we have to have that rammed down our throats before we get it? Aren't the examples of Prohibition and the War on Drugs enough to see what zero tolerance leads to: the thing you want to destroy doesn't go away, it just moves to the margins, festers and grows and then comes back at you more virulent than before.

When you indefinitely ban someone who has offended, all you do is foster more hatred. Let's say a hypothetical person has some grievance against someone they identify as black. It doesn't matter if it's ridiculous or not - it exists. They then use a racial epithet and is indefinitely banned from attending football matches. Who are they likely to blame? Themselves? Or do you think they will then add another thread to their already erroneous narrative? That's what the liberal simply doesn't get.

And that, @dontcallme , is what I was trying to highlight - that when one labels people with simple terms, one reduces that person to that label, marginalising them. That makes it more likely that they will question whether they have a place in society. Their argument will be that if they don't have a stake in society, why should they feel compelled to abide by its mores and conventions? Only a child believes that someone can be forced to think a particular way.

Which is why the intolerant approach of the liberal doesn't work and makes things worse. My point around Bobby Madley wasn't whether what he did was morally wrong or justifiable; it was about whether we have the right to judge the private discussions that someone has. Because that's what your armchair liberal (and you know who I'm referring to, Pipey - stop arguing semantics) wants: to control behaviour and thought. That's not liberal, that's fascist and all it does is foster more bigotry, intolerance and hatred. The bigot will point to those trying to force him to think differently and say, "they don't listen to me, why should I listen to them?"

I mean, seriously, how many times have we heard the old saying, "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar"? Or have I been hearing it wrong? Is the correct idiom actually, "you catch more flies by shoving them away, marginalising them and refusing to understand why they think the way they do than with honey"?

That's me done.

Lol, no part of my posts suggest any hurt feelings. I just don’t see the connection between your posts and what I have said.

Making out this is a liberal issue is quite weird.

 

[nailsy]

I just don't understand the hatred that you see in some fans at games.

 

[Marty]

I just don't understand the hatred that you see in some fans at games.

The people who have most hate in them are usually the ones least satisfied with their lives in general. You see the same culture in an even more extreme way on social media.

 

[Gassin's finest]

I've no idea why you'd keep going to watch a sport that makes you angry.

 

[nailsy]

Porto's Marega walks off after alleged racist abuse

Porto forward Moussa Marega walks off the pitch during his side's 2-1 win at Vitoria Guimaraes, claiming he was subjected to racist abuse from fans.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[riggi]

I've no idea why you'd keep going to watch a sport that makes you angry.

It’s a release from the working week.

 

[Gareth88]

Porto's Marega walks off after alleged racist abuse

Porto forward Moussa Marega walks off the pitch during his side's 2-1 win at Vitoria Guimaraes, claiming he was subjected to racist abuse from fans.

www.bbc.co.uk

Great finish and fair play to him