As a free born Englishman you will have to Physically force me on to my knees and for that you will have to kill me. Due to this rubbish this country is more divided than any time in my life, congratulations you BLM racists
Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up Andrew. The mongrels who pretend to be British (insert desired colour, religion, creed) can be all they want to be with a British prefix. I am however, an Englishman. I was asked on a beach by an Aussie selling pineapple slices, on hearing my voice, declared ah, British. Wrong my friend was the sharp reply. I am not a paddy, a taffy or a jock, I am English. He stared at me blankly but a little offended. Mind if I call you Antipodean I asked. A wide smile appeared on his face as he remarked fair dinkum mate. He left a pineapple lighter and a lesson learned.
Are you for real, or is this an Alf Garnett wind-up routine ? ‘Mongrels’ that’s your word ? Brilliant
You know who the English are, don’t you? Basically a hodgepodge of Romans, Danes, Celts, Germans and French. Most of Europe ran the place at one stage or another. Apparently there’s also an amount of Greek DNA in the mix.
And you think you can call other people ‘mongrels’ ?
Left out Africans and Middle Eastern types, who sailed up and down the western coasts of Europe going back many centuries, and some of whom settled in Ireland, France, and Spain.
Come on Kevin, the English, as the name implies, are mainly of German/Teutonic stock. The problem with the word Mongrel is that it is a bit too close to Mongol for comfort.
However none of this really matters, for all of us have lived in “this precious stone set in the silver sea” etc, and what a blessing that has been don’t you think?
Yes, I have read much about it in that excellent publication Current Archaeology. Off course it rather blows the old theory that the ‘migrant’ Saxons exterminated the existing Romano-Celtic population, which is comforting.
Ask a Scotsman if he is British or Scottish, Same Welsh or Irish. It only ever seems to be a problem when an Englishman declares more precision about his heritage.
You’re dead wrong – most of the groups left virtually no DNA traces – English people are in the main Anglo Saxon and have been for over a thousand years – this has been widely proven – to call us mongrels is politically motivated and used by those who want more migration – ” you English have no identity and are mongrels anyway – so what does a few more million matter “
Oh how I agree with you Andrew. I am appalled at how my country is being destroyed by not only BLM, the activists, celebrities, in fact any of the agenda driven lot. The one question I would like to ask all these PC people is why they were not taking the knee before the George Floyd incident. There have been many situations where black and indeed white people have been killed under the most horrendous conditions. And don’t tell me it is because the police were involved………does dying at the hands of someone else only matter when the police are involved. No this is hypocrisy of the first order! I too believe there are a huge number of people who feel like we do but as every day goes by with no one dealing with these issues, the pathetic, immature and woke groups in our society will become more powerful.
Meanwhile the black on black carnage continues in Chicago . . .last night 2 killed, 15 injured at a party. (14Mar21) Almost 400 black on black shootings in Chicago alone resulting in injuries this year alone. Blacks don’t care. Zero protests. While they are 13% of the US population, they commit 54% of the crimes. (My next door neighbors are black and they hate what’s going on.) (from California)
The utter shock from the commentators on the beautiful, rude piercing of their comfy echo chamber was a joy to behold. Newsflash guys….Twitter isn’t the real world.
What is the real world in the UK? Here in the US, where I”m writing from, racism is a fairly serious problem of which BLM and the police violence that inspired it are only a few of many aspects. Given the political and cultural structure of the country, it seems that only public violence or threats of violence make any impression on the situation; pious appeals to man’s better nature don’t do the trick. Thus those who are concerned about the effects of their pigmentation on their welfare and prospects are encouraged by experience to support vigorous, even excessive forms of activism. I guess it is difficult for you all in the UK — where there is no racism, right? — to understand what’s going on over here.
If “police violence” was what “inspired” BLM, why didn’t they organize nationwide protests for victims of police violence like Justine Damond, or Tony Timpa?
Tell that to all the mainstream journalists, the administrations of universities, the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, your workplace’s HR dept, your child’s school, and last but not least, Twitter.
Ian Barton
3 years ago
Millwall (and most other) fans lack the cowardice now endemic across so many groups and institutions.
Football does not belong to the “woke” virtue-signallers, who need to be “put back in their boxes” whenever they interfere like this.
Perhaps it is really the opposite. The politicians claim to be wearing a scientific cloak that is allowing them to protect us from climate change and a not very serious virus, but the cloak is the means to spreading propaganda. It is time we took it off them and saw them naked with nothing to offer.
The only thing that is wrong about the emperors new clothes (written by a person with a a very astute understanding of human nature) was the ending. They would have just killed the child, or shut him up for sure.
Everybody hates them: they don’t care. In this context “everybody” means those who worship in the Church of Woke.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
No, these mindless, unknowing fools should not be on their knees to an avowedly Marxist organisation that aims to destroy the nuclear family and the West. I was very pleased to hear that the Millwall and West Hams fans booed this nonsense. And equally pleased that Millwall lost 0-1 at home to my not-so-mighty Rams.
Calling middle class wokeness Marxism shows your lack of political understanding. It isn’t Marxism or ‘cultural Marxism’ (whatever that is). It’s not even Left Wing. It’s quasi-religious intolerant authoritianism masquerading as progressivism, practiced by the economically privileged precisely to avoid those Marxist keystones of redistribution of wealth and working class solidarity, changing nothing while virtue signalling their moral superiority.
I’m afraid it is, old chap. Haidt makes the connection in The Coddling of the American Mind. ‘Identity politics’ is straight out of the Marxist Frankfurt School playbook.
Loathe as I am to do the work for you, I do find Wikipedia very useful:
“Marcuse argues that “the realization of the objective of tolerance” requires “intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed.” He makes the case for “liberating tolerance”, which would consist of intolerance to right-wing movements and toleration of left-wing movements.”
“Lewis Carroll, “”When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more or less.” This is the Liberal way.
I more an Orwell person myself. Although wafty word-soup type French intellectuals do have their place, I just haven’t been able to work out exactly where that is….
Marcuse was an evil man but that Essay was rejected by most leftists at the time. He was probably a Marxist though. The roots of wokeness are far more varied than that.
Re ‘the roots of wokeness’ – see my first post with reference to Haidt. The argument that Marcuse, of the Frankfurt School, might be at the root of identity politics is his (though I agree with him). The Marcuse Wikipedia quote in my second post re ‘liberating tolerance’ is meant to illustrate this. I agree that there are other roots – Crenshaw and Foucault for two. Though Marcuse strikes me as the main one given his popularity in the 60s and 70s and the influence that will have had on US college teachers then and now.
White privilege itself was a term defined by a woman called Peggy Macintosh. She isn’t a Marxist. More a feminist. It did then get latched onto by followers of Foucault. Standard Marxists were left in the dust though as the whole thing moved to race not class. It does seem like Marxism though, replacing class with race. But the roots are varied.
And my point has been a school of anything a Marxist doth not make. A case in point; Jacobin magazine is an American socialist magazine that came out of the black civil rights movement. The academics at Jacobin magazine are at loggerheads with BLM over their divisive identity politics leading the middle class racists in BLM to call those Jacobin academics ‘Uncle Toms’. I would argue that the staff at Jacobin magazine have a better understanding of Marxism than the intolerant haters at BLM who are happy to take their 30 pieces of silver from any corporation willing to offer it.
Also, the Spiked editorial view which is ‘old’ left and very anti-BLM, precisely on the basis that middle class identity politics deflects from class injustices.
Which is precisely the old socialist argument against the ‘New Left’ of the BLM which is based on the 30’s Frankfurt School of critical thinking, popularised in the 60s by Marcuse. And which might explain, re your original post, why from the Jacobin POV BLM are Marxist, while they themselves do not want to be known as such.
The BLM outfit has openly declared that they are Marxist Pete. Agreed, middle class wokeness is mostly mindless, cowardly, quasi religious virtue signaling. Marx deserves a fair dollop of blame though, he developed the moral and philosophical justification for resentment. That is what we are seeing being played out, as if the terrible, final consequences of that most evil emotion weren’t obvious enough in the twentieth century.
BLM calling itself Marxist doesn’t make it Marxist. Surely the proof is in the pudding? Why do you think wokeness sits so well with Harry and Meghan’s aristocracy? With every major corporations exploitative practices? Let’s not kid ourselves.
Hi Pete, I’m not sure it really matters what it’s called (unless you are concerned about giving Marxism a bad name) as we generally seem to be in agreement that it’s all a load of Boll*ocks. Interesting discussion though.
It’s bourgeois LIBERALISM and about division serving the ruling class elites. Wasting your time arguing with people who can’t separate that from CLASS analysis. This tactic has been used throughout the ages, known as divide and conquer. No “solidarity” or economic analysis, state analysis, LAW analysis or unification about the fact that police are STATE violence and in the US they kill many unarmed people of all races, particularly mentally ill people. Furthermore, the IDEALISM of BLM which centers “transwomen of color” is thoroughly anti-Marxist as it is the most individual lunacy possible. Marxism is about material reality, not about pretending you can magically become the opposite sex because…..magic……it’s IDPOL which is the epitome of LIBERALISM. It is its logical terminus.
And of further fun, BLM never states that it is black males who kill black “transwomen” (males) while expecting the rest of atomized society to accept responsibility for things caused by……. while pretending this “oppression” is the result of “systemic racism”. Have any of the rest of you gone to their “statement of purpose” page? Try it before spewing about shifting the blame of LIBERAL ideology (fact) onto Marxism. Corporations taking up the “cause” as advertising and calling for book burnings, using the state to criminalize people for using the wrong “think” or “pronouns” and who exhibit “microaggressions” is FASCISM which liberalism creates. Using the “anti-state” rhetoric of “defund the police” is PROPAGANDA as these groups all NEED the police to CRIMINALIZE the rest of us using the STATE and corporate machinery to do it. Nice try at deflection from the actual make-up and root cause of this, though. Because these groups call themselves Marxists (being completely ignorant of Marxism) doesn’t make them remotely Marxist. Apparently most of you are clearly shown to be completely ignorant of Marxism or you’d recognize liberal IDPOL immediately. Try reading a few books.
No, not at all. It’s very neoliberal in its outlook. Hence the corporate, political, financial and judicial Establishment being able to co-opt its very principles.
No, not at all. It’s very neoliberal in its outlook. Hence the corporate, political, financial and judicial Establishment being able to co-opt its very principles.
That’s simply not true, it’s an error of reasoning.
Businesses hop on board the woke bandwagon because they think it will make the money. That’s all.
Politicians hop on board because they are adept at giving lip service. It doesn’t cost them anything (they believe) and it makes them look good.
I’m not sure how the judicial Establishment can be described as being supportive of wokeness, though. The police, perhaps, because they too are always looking to improve their image and think this is a good way of going about it.
None of that justifies calling BLM neo-liberal, though.
The fact BLM takes money from corporations at every available opportunity justifies calling them neoliberal, though. It’s certainly not something a Marxist organisation would be comfortable with doing.
I’m happy to admit the shorthand “Marxists” is something of a grab bag, in the absence of anything more accurate, to cover Progressivism, Social Justice, Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics, Political Correctness,, Wokeness etc, Yoram Hazonay, in his excellent essay on Quillette “The Challenge of Marxism” elaborates: “The story of how “neo-Marxism” emerged after the First World War in the writings of the Frankfurt School and Antonio Gramsci has been frequently told, and academics will have their hands full for many years to come arguing over how much influence was exerted on various successor movements by Michel Foucault, post-modernism, and more. But for present purposes, this level of detail is not necessary, and I will use the term “Marxist” in a broad sense to refer to any political or intellectual movement that is built upon Marx’s general framework as I’ve just described it. This includes the “Progressive” or “Anti-Racism” movement now advancing toward the conquest of liberalism in America and Britain. This movement uses racialist categories such as whites and people of color to describe the oppressors and the oppressed in our day. But it relies entirely on Marx’s general framework for its critique of liberalism and for its plan of action against the liberal political order. It is simply an updated Marxism.”
So, what is Marx’s ‘plan of action’ in the most general terms? My impression of Marx (from reading some of his stuff) is that he was long on analysis and short on plans of action. People who came along later (for example, Lenin, or, to go really far afield, Marcuse) who claimed to be Marxists read whatever they wanted into the analysis.
BLM calling itself Marxist doesn’t make it Marxist.
The founders are anti-capitalists: I can’t think of any school of thought that is anti-capitalist other than radical environmentalism, theocracy or Marxism. (I don’t think there are many people advocating feudalism at the moment.)
Why do you think wokeness sits so well with Harry and Meghan’s aristocracy?
Because they’re confused, bandwagon-jumping hypocrites desperate to play a relevant role. Harry doesn’t want to admit that his privilege does not come from his white skin but from the fact he’s from the royal family and utterly loaded. So it’s convenient for him to talk about “white privilege” because that makes it sound that he’s no “worse” than other white people.
For Meghan, the focus on racial identity is a good way for her to justify marrying into the most privileged white family on the planet.
With every major corporations exploitative practices?
Companies do whatever they think will increase their profits. That’s all.
For a long time, the BLM website clearly stated its Marxist, anti-Western, anti-nuclear family belief system. The organisation has now changed its name to the Black Liberation Front or similar and has, I believe, hidden its real beliefs.
On the plus side, if they were take power, Lineker would be stripped of his wealth and his various properties handed out to BLM officials.
That’s the point; Lineker wouldn’t be stripped of his wealth by these people. BLM habitually take donations from rich corporations. They and their middle class white allies (who, incidentally all seem to live in middle class white enclaves) have a main aim of dividing people on the grounds of race, sex and gender. They do not promote equality of opportunity.
Sorry Fraser, but if you look at totalitarian states, those in the right circles get and keep everything they want. Under BLM, Lineker wouldn’t need to hide property deals via Panama as he’d be free to do what the hell he liked with his millions.
As would all the PL players. Apart from the very newest players, the majority of players are multi-millionaires who quite happily tolerate screwing the fans of their hard-earned entrance fees. The average weekly wage in the PL is 60,000 pounds a week, with some, like Rashford on 200,000 pounds a week, not to mention his 10 million pounds a year sponsorship deals, and Pogba on 350,000 pounds a week! Perhaps I should start supporting the disgusting and vile BLM or BLF, pinching my nose hard just long enough to see its aim achieved of screwing the playing parasites. What a perverse pleasure that would be!
If woke is Marxist then a hell of a lot of capitalists and corporations are Marxist. It isn’t. It’s no threat to the ruling classes, surely you realise that if it were a danger to that class then the narrative of the BBC, the mainstream media in general, the CEOS around the world would be hostile to it.
IMO, you may very well be correct that BLM-inspired Wokeism may not entirely match original Marxist philosophy but that is a distraction because what is happening is clearly what has always happened when anyone has tried to put Marxism into practice. Of course it always goes badly, and not because “they just didn’t do it right” but because in order to be implemented it requires the destruction of the very things and people that any functioning society needs to prosper.
So the philosophy may not be pure unadulterated Marxism, but the tactics certainly are. Having recently, and finally, read Gulag Archipelago nothing that is happening right now surprises me in the least. cancel culture. public shaming. social exile. indoctrination of children. erasing history. abrogation of personal rights and freedoms. You name it. It’s there.
So yes in that sense it’s Marxism. It’s also Bolshevism, Stalinism, Trotskyism – a whole bagful of isms and a healthy dollop of anarchy.
The bottom line is that it will end badly – like it always does.
Really? So an IDEOLOGY that is IDPOL and liberalism is Marxist because you finished reading the Gulag Archipelago? Did you read about the imperialism of Europe and the murder they inflicted across the globe before or after that book? Just curious. How about the murders of indigenous peoples for European IMPERIALISM in the US alone? And WHAT does the gulag system have to do with Marxism. I’ve read Marx and never saw a single reference to a gulag system. I live in a classical liberal political economic system (constitutional republic) that has 65-100 million with criminal records (interfering with their employment rights) and 7 million constantly under the thumb of the state through jail/prison/parole/probation and ankle monitoring every year. Clueless much?
Oh dear! You seem very unhappy – are you OK? I’m sorry that you seem unable to reconcile the advertised pre-release joys of Marxism with the well-documented abject human misery that has resulted any time anyone has ever tried to implement it. Perhaps when you were hyperventilating you missed my point that the tactics required to make Marxism work are the problem – no matter how appealing the philosophy may be to some. Marxism – and it’s assorted variations and interpretations has never worked because it is so impractical and unrealistic it can never attract enough willing volunteers to make it work. “Attendance is Mandatory”. So to claim that Marx never said anything about gulags may be truthful yet disingenuous because they and other tools such as re-education camps were required to deal with refuseniks and other enemies both real and imagined. It’s like “Anyone who refuses to join my non-violence Protest for Peace will get a punch in the face”
Yes I’ve read GA but I’ve also read King Leopold’s Ghost regarding atrocities in Africa but I’m guessing that for every story of imperial misery there are a dozen tales of socialist disaster. Socialism or communism – call it what you like – and go ahead and debate the fine points of what Marx actually wrote – it matters not. The numbers don’t lie. The sufferings under imperialist colonialism pale in comparison.
Do injustice, inequality and racism exist in liberal democracies? Only an idiot would say No. Then work at fixing it because the ideas proposed as a replacement are proven duds.
And under Imperial Colonialism education, infrastructure, democracy, rule of law, industry, international trade, were introduced. Communism did not do anything like this.
Those who are in prison or otherwise “under the thumb of the state” surely only have themselves to blame for their predicament if they have transgressed laws?
It has nothing to do with Marx’s philosophy. In fact it is – it’s not even an adulterated version. It is counter to the analysis of capitalism and material conditions for revolution. It’s ultra liberalism – the kind that is rapidly eating itself and becoming it’s own opposite – when liberals go fascistic.
In what sense is wokeness ultra-liberalism, given that it moves the emphasis away from the individual and seeks to restrict freedom of speech? What’s liberal about that?
Just as someone can say “BLM aren’t Marxists just because they say they are”, liberals are not liberals just because they say they are. If they are in favour of restrictions on freedom of speech, they are not liberal.
Current circumstances has also encouraged me to start reading Gulag Archipelago – you’re right, it’s all there, and I’ve only got as far as the late 1920s…..
As does calling everything Marxist when it’s obviously neoliberal. The funny thing about the right is its inability to take responsibility for the logical conclusion of its own political ideas.
I will try to explain what cultural Marxism means.
Marxists believe that our western capitalist democracies are unjust, founded on exploitation and generally evil. Marxists believe that what is required is not tinkering to implement gradual improvements, but tearing the entire structure down and replacing it with something else, i.e.a system based on Marxism.
When it became perfectly obvious that all attempts to impose Marxist economic doctrines on society led to greater poverty and widespread misery, stagnation and grey conformity, and that the Marxist system could only be kept in place by authoritarianism and massive human rights abuses, those who still hated western capitalist democracies thought it would be a good idea to try another approach.
This is ‘cultural Marxism’: western capitalist democracies are still uniquely evil, but this time the emphasis on their asserted non-economic failings: racism, sexism, various -phobias and, more recently, fascism and white supremacy.
What links cultural Marxism with economic Marxism is a) the idea that western capitalist democracies are irredeemably evil; b) the startling disconnect between that assertion and reality, both in economic terms and in ‘cultural’ terms; c) the authoritarianism that is apparent in the opponents of western democracies, including a desire to restrict freedom of speech and even of thought; d) the fact that the opponents’ utopia is a muddle of contradictions and impossibilities and, most importantly, exists only in their heads – no such ‘fair’ society as they seem to be imagining has ever existed.
In defence of the players, it is the Premier League (and FA) who have encouraged this awful ritual, and they haven’t “got the gonads” to instruct clubs to stop it.
One thing you can be sure of, is that the employees at those two organisations will not be “taking the knee” at the start of their working days.
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
This is an uusually mild column from Douglas Murray. Just as these idiots “ordered” to behave in this nauseating manner by the FA mindlessly continue this perverse behaviour, so I find myself instantly turning away and muttering words of disgust reach time I see it, it has become a reflex reaction.
I have been writing short stories,and being a fiootball fan one of my stories is about football, and ironically I used Millwall as an example – I won’t explain exactly what yet, wait for the story to be published – but it correlates very well with their suppporter’s behaviour.
As Douglas Murray writes – in this context long overdue. This silly inane empty gesture copying an American footballer who lost his career because he was insulting his country by refusing to acknowledge a very long established American tradition that is an expression of loyalty and love of one’s country – has no business on an English football field.
The stupidity of the FA in continuing to fail to recognize that, and instead support a virulently anti-American, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, anti-capitalist, thug organization that openly advertises its destruction of civilized society intentions deserves all the ridicule people can throw at it.
Safe to road test jokes and opinions at home? Maybe not for long. Even the ability to have one’s jokes or opinions tested (and improved) at home could be eradicated by the Hate Crime & Public Order (Scotland) Bill or, if the Law Commission gets its way, by removing the “dwelling” privacy exception from hate speech legislation. Cue the disgruntled family member turned informant.
Yes, it’s quite frightening when one thinks of the consequences should such legislation occur. In addition to the scams around covid and the climate, I’ve been enormously disappointed that Boris didn’t come out more strongly when BLM was causing mayhem in London. He could immediately dispatch the Law Commission’s recommendations into the long grass, which they deserve, but has said nothing, leading to the suspicion that he’s bought into the metropolitan progressivism nonsense. Isn’t it amazing, too, that it takes Millwall supporters to remind us of common sense?
Sam Leigh
3 years ago
On Fulham Supporters Facebook page (around 12000 members), someone did a poll, “No right or wrong/ judgement, do you think players should ‘take the knee’ before the game? Just reply Yes or No without explanation”… It was 80% No, 20% Yes.
There had been multiple debates on the issue in the group previously and people in favour of players taking the knee seemed to outweigh people against judging by comments and how ‘forceful’ they were.
However, when this poll asked people to merely express a ‘yes/no’ view without a debate and so removed the threat of being accused of racism; the results were exactly the opposite to what you would have thought from the previous discussions where that accusation was regualrly deployed.
I’m not surprised. When asked by pollsters, people will say what they feel comfortable admitting to. In a private vote the truth comes out.
David Uzzaman
3 years ago
“Britons never, never, never shall be slaves”. (Conditions may be amended and freedoms withdrawn at any time without notice. Please ensure you read the terms and conditions in full.)
That was because the slavers from the Barbary were taking British people as slaves in very large numbers. North Africa and Arabia really were the big players in African slavery, and white slavery with millions of East European children sold into slavery to the Muslim nations over the years. An interesting group of Christian slaves were the Mamlukes, Christian slave soldiers, the last great battle, which destroyed the Egyptian Mamluke army occurred under Neapolitan. Also KSA only outlawed slavery in 1962! But it was tolerated for decades after.
Presumably by Neapolitan you mean Napoleon Bonaparte? Are you sure you are not confusing the Mamlukes with Ottoman Janissaries?
Although some Britons were enslaved by Barbary Pirates they can hardly de described as “very large numbers”. Perhaps you are making an oblique reference to the spectacular raid on the Anglo Irish settlement of Baltimore, Co Cork, in the 1620’s?
G H
3 years ago
Of course footballers or anyone for that matter shouldn’t take the knee. Their problem is that footballers currently have little option. If I were a professional footballer at that level (in the current climate) I ask myself, what would I do if I objected to the idea of giving homage to a political belief I intensely dislike? It would be a very brave footballer to take a principled position. So I have some sympathy for the footballers who are told to do this. The irony is that those footballers, many of whom are black are more privileged and live a much more coddled life that the spectators who pay good money to watch them. I also have borderline contempt for the organizations that promote this nonsense. The FA and the BBC are the prime culprits. Fortunately I watch non league football where the knee taking has not so far permeated. Talking to supporters at my local club, the consensus is we would turn our backs on the players if the knee taking occurred.
When that player started taking a knee, he had already lost his starting place in the lineup, so let’s at least be accurate. The NFL has a long history of giving jobs to wife abusers and assorted others with checkered pasts, so Kaepernick’s issue was not taking a knee, it was the perception that his best days were behind him. Plenty of other guys who took knees or raised fists kept on playing.
you are not correct, Kaepernick’s behaviour was seen as an unnecessary direct offense to American patriotism and inappropriate on the playing field of sports, and that’s why he became unemployable in football, his gesture belonged to be debated in the political arena,
for those who know a little about American sports, equally divisive and seen as inappropriate has been the insulting behaviour of the captain of the American Women’s soccer team who won the world cup.
As the privileged representative/ambassador of the country she has been viewed with distaste by most people. Her personal political views did not belong in the sports arena, when you are representing your country.
Aren’t a lot of the Premiership footballers enjoying “black privilege”?
Richard Marriott
3 years ago
No, of course our footballers should not be taking the knee – it is demeaning and abject behaviour which just annoys the majority.
Alex Wilkinson
3 years ago
Let’s be honest, the booing comes as a surprise to absolutely no-one in the real world.
Wait til they hear the cacophony that will be unleashed when the stadiums are full.
I do hope they keep it up so we can enjoy that glorious spectacle.
David Sherman
3 years ago
The woke London elite have stolen our state institutions, they’ve stolen the Labour Party from the provincial working class, they’ve stolen the Conservative Party from free-enterprisers and they’ve stolen our free speech. Stealing the knee from defenceless black Americans really is very small fry.
Being afraid to be the first to get up off their knees, lest they be denounced as a not anti-racist reminds me of the footage of those terrified to be the first to stop clapping when Saddam or Stalin had finished a speech.
The public simply recognises what the elite pretends does not exist, namely that BLM is a political movement determined to take resources, respect and rights away from ordinary people and hand them over to self appointed activists who have no authority or right to these resources.
Boo indeed.
vince porter
3 years ago
Black Lives [do] Matter. Unfortunately, too many Blacks, in the country that gave us the slogan, seem not to have heard. Gun violence, single mothers, teenage pregnancy, derelict fathers, etc… too little has changed.
Gary Lineker is one of the most annoying and most overpaid of the white privileged people on television. He should stick to commenting on 22 men chasing a ball around a field.
Actually I think the BBC would easily be able to find a prominent ex footballer to take his place introducing MOTD. The £1.75m salary is not for that. It’s because of the woke political stuff. That’s what they like. Even the footie on Saturday becomes politically palatable to them with his help. If said Crisp Seller had just kept it to introducing MOTD and perhaps SPOTY then Auntie could have kept the other £1.5m.
Alas for all us BBC licence payers his salary has been reduced to only 1.35 million pounds a year. Still, I’m sure his supply of crisps will continue to be free of charge.
Indeed. A presumptuous prat, overpaid, mediocre, and backed by Shearer and Wright, none of whom contributes anything original in their ‘analyses’ of games which isn’t already blindingly obvious to the viewer of MOTD.
Don’t watch it! Change will not happen unless the BBC lose viewers. If you can’t live without it then don’t complain. I no longer have a TV because I couldn’t bear the thought of contributing to the salaries of such as Lineker.
Why do you all hate poor Gary so much? I think it’s because he’s actually homed asylum seekers, so there’s all this frustration that the virtue-signalling diabtribe has to be choked back down.
Crisps are thought to be one of the least healthy popular food products in existence. If you subscribe to the Guardian’s thinking – which I would wager Lineker does – individuals bear almost no blame for their obesity or other health problems caused by unhealthy food. It is almost entirely the food producers that are to blame.
Why should someone who enjoys flaunting his morality not be mocked as hypocrite?
Because he allowed a rather well educated Balochi “asylum seeker” to stay in his home for a few days.
Alfred Prufrock
3 years ago
I am a Cardiff City fan and they are the same type of working class supporters as Millwall ( back in the day the punch ups were epic) It is crystal clear from threads on the clubs message board that they will not be putting up with any taking the knee nonsense. Some of the club officials and players read the boards and I suspect that they will drop the taking the knee nonsense as soon as fans are allowed back in.
This whole business illustrates just how divisive Critical Race Theory and BLM is. At the heart of this gesturing, is a lie. It is that BLM is just another expression of concern for racial equality. It isn’t. it is, in the words of Malcom X, about bringing about change by any means necessary. Even through dishonesty. Who knows what the motives of Millwall supporters were? There may have been an element of thorough going racists among them. There may have been a few principled Unherd readers. If so, each would have had very different motives for boo-ing. And yet, we are asked to believe, that those lining up to criticise them- the Linekers, the Dublins and the Rooneys, each would have had unique access to the workings of those boo-ers’ minds. For those dismayed by such mindlessness, “the knee” represents one thing and one thing only- solidarity with the FA’s Kick It out campaign. Except. of course it doesn’t. Misunderstanding, division, accusation and counter-accusation. And at The Knee’s heart- an organisation with defunding the Police and “disrupting the nuclear family” integral to its manifesto, Look at their web site if you don’t believe me.
Mark Corby
3 years ago
Jolly good for the Millwall supporters, even if they weren’t the first; I gather that accolade belongs to either Colchester or West Ham.
Incidentally wasn’t it a Millwall supporter who waded into Sinbad &Co during the London Bridge Terror Attack? He should have been given a Knighthood.
Perhaps someone from this erudite audience can explain why it is Football that has to carry this burden?
We don’t see National Hunt jockeys grovelling in the mud before the 2.20 at Ascot, nor do Professional Golfers routinely abase themselves on the 18th Green, nor has our Cricket team, perhaps surprisingly, been genuflecting in South Africa. So why on earth Football?
Class. It’s an assumption that the more working class supporters of football need education on racial tolerance. It’s assumed that the erudite audiences of rugby, cricket and golf are more civilized and tolerant.
Obviously based on what you find on forums like this one, it’s a deeply flawed assumption
Yes. In the recent internationals, some rugby players did, others didn’t – from the same team. Some cited religion, others that they didn’t agree with BLM politically, but made the sensible statement that obviously it had no bearing on their views about racism.
Cricket teams have made the gesture as well, so I don’t think the Football as oiks line is right……. let’s face it you can’t move for the entire population of celebdom banging on about their football team these days….
The Working Class have had far more life experience with black lives mattering to them via friendships, marriages etc. The Working Class game of rugby league has led academics, rugby union and the upper classes in accepting people based on their talent and character by 40 years.
Precisely Kevin, it was this sort of preposterous nonsense that so annoyed George Orwell as I recall.
The British people have no need of such a facile gesture. Their history is second to none. As Jeremy Smith (an American) on this forum, so appositely said a few days ago “the endless contribution to humanity by the British or the gentleness of its population”, tells one we have nothing to be ashamed of.
William Cameron
3 years ago
The Uk society is probably the least racist in the world and its police are probably the best trained and least racist in the world. Among those of immigrant origins, Indians and Chinese are streets ahead academically , economically and assinmilatively. Closely followed by Africans -All three do better than White folk and they set an example to us all. So who is kneeling in the Uk for what ? I suspect most of those footballers would struggle to explain in any detail.
You have a conditioned response to British Policing being best in the world, it is not very good at all, but the British People are mostly law abiding so it sort of works out. If British Police were to try to Police America the nation would descend into utter chaos.
I don’t believe Brits are more or less law-abiding than anyone else. The difference is guns. America will never leave the top of the global murder charts until it figures out how to get rid of them.
The French Police get stuck in mind… and black, white, young, old it doesn’t matter much to them… But I agree it’s Guns that make the difference…Death by Police here are low single figures, and most of them have been high profile knife wielders like the London Bridge/Parliament etc ones.
In the USA deaths by police are in the very high hundreds. And guns play a part in their whole spectrum of fear, apprehension and precipitate action by Police and criminals…so more *not showing of hands* over there ends up with shooting.
But given the manaical levels of doommongery going on in the media just now we seem to have remarkabley little kicking off really.
Have a look at FBI statistics which break down rates of violent crime and murder by demographics and regions in the US, the places where gun murder rates are highest (they are NOT the places with the highest rates of legal gun ownership) as well as stats on things like the type of weapon used in murders, and whether the weapon was legally owned or not. You may find them interesting. Also, Switzerland I believe has a higher rate of gun ownership than the US (almost every household has at least one firearm) but a very low violent crime rate. It isn’t all about guns.
Walter Lantz
3 years ago
Taking a knee. Tearing down statues. Re-writing history. Token BIPOC hiring. Riots and vandalism. Coerced apologies and self-flagellation. Suppression of free speech. Indoctrination and re-programming.
Just a few of the tactics used and/or promoted by the Woke-mongers. My response to purveyors and adherents of this nonsense is always the same.
Either you are stupid – or you think I am.
You are either supporting this garbage because you’re too naïve and stupid to see it for what it actually is and the damage it’s causing. Or You are a willing participant and true believer bent on destruction or an opportunistic chancer trying to further your own ends and you think I’m too stupid to figure it out.
Either way – be damned.
stephen f.
3 years ago
This political virus has infected Formula One now too, thanks mostly to the grievously oppressed Lewis Hamilton.
What does the kneeling accomplish? It is no more than a modern-day two minutes of hate wrapped in “look at me.” That’s it. These players have the pulpit, the name recognition, and the connections to do something, but that would mean, well, doing something instead of just posturing.
Since then, there has been a chorus of condemnation of Millwall supporters from every possible quarter. Well, of course, there has. How dare the proles dare voice an opinion that deviates from that of their betters. Have they forgotten their place?
I don’t think the players give the politics or the cause a thought one way or the other. Just as England players in 1936 were quite happy to give a Hitlergruß to be polite so they could get on with the footie. They want to play football, pass go and collect their millions. If the PR person says the players should kneel lest Gary lay into the club on MOTD then you don’t want to be “that guy” sat on the bench just to keep Gary happy.
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
Millwall and West ham,Ipswich Fans all boed The marxist Knee dropping. .I remember the hypocrisy of the Football league Fining Robbie Fowler ”For Supporting Liverpool dockers” Around 1997, and NOT allowing Poppies on Footballers shirts..the hypocrisy is nauseating..
Andrew Russell
3 years ago
I’m beginning to think that taking the knee just isn’t enough for footballers. How about lying prostrate on a wet pitch for about half an hour while punching themselves in the face? And then pledging 95% of their earnings to this worthy cause, not just for one week, but in perpetuity? I’d watch that.
How about lying prostrate on a wet pitch for about half an hour while punching themselves in the face?
They do that anyway to get an opposing player sent off.
John Ottaway
3 years ago
Black Lives Matter every bit as white lives. Of course that is a given. But BLM as a movement is highly political with aims contrary to those of the majority of the population of the U.K. or USA. I absolutely hate watching the players all take the knee before games. Football should not be political. I salute those Millwall fans brave enough to stand up to this nonsense. And utter rubbish spoken by Lineker saying they are all racist. No they are not, I bet they all have many black friends and colleagues whom they love and get along with just fine. It’s the organisation and what it stands for that they object to.
jack51
3 years ago
It’s always worth reminding ourselves that the vast majority of footballers are incredibly thick so looking for political insight will be a futile task.
Actually I always defend footballers on this subject. I don’t believe their intelligence distribution differs from the population as a whole. They can appear stupid, but this is because they are schooled not to say anything interesting, and are invariably asked very dumb questions. However, with regard to the population as a whole, never forget George Carlin’s words:
“Just think how stupid the average person is. Then remember that half of them are even more stupid than that.”
oh please, totally different skill and co-ordination, even in the England team there are some unbelievably inarticulate people who can barely verbalize a complete English sentence
Blimey Joe, lighten up. I would suggest that all you are saying is that intelligence can express itself in different ways. Sadly neither you nor I can convincingly display it in any format
Most people here couldn’t kick a ball – why we would think footballers could get their heads round a political issue?
They are just pawns albeit rich one’s.
Marcus Millgate
3 years ago
“UEFA states that clubs must not allow any message that is not fit for a sports event, particularly messages that are of political, ideological, religious, offensive or provocative nature, to be displayed within the ground.”
Millwall should take the FA to court
Terence Riordan
3 years ago
I never thought I would applaude a football crowd let alone Millwall.But I have. BLM is a political extreme pressure group conning people.BLM yes but not only BL.ALM yes…All Lives Matter. Yes there is personal racism still in every society, however as a society the UK is among the least racist and most tolerant of almost anybody’s persona or behaviour as lomng as it is not detrimental to others. I therefore feel quite annoyed at being lumped with the USA which I know from personal experience has a lot of problems we ,the UK ,have grown out of. I have also travelled the world and there are many “black” “non caucasian” countries where racial intolerance is a century behind. As for “taking the knee” no way to anybody exceptwhen I proposed.
Jay Williamson
3 years ago
Well done, Milwall fans. This is the only way to show OUR displeasure at people going down on their knees to the Marxist BLM.
Steve Dean
3 years ago
Millwall fans have a history (years of it) of unsavoury behaviour. They are not the only ones. Kick It Out has gone some way to eliminating racist behaviour in football, chanting and the use of bananas as a soft missile, for example is not tolerated. Maybe some feel this booing is an outlet for behaviour now banned…
Having been thwarted by the games hierarchy, the fans must feel some sort of frustration, as the same hierarchy finds it difficult to employ black managers/coaches in numbers comparable to player ratios. Only 6 black managers in the 92 top flight teams.
Interestingly, the next Millwall match is against QPR tomorrow. QPR’s Director of Football is Les Ferdinand, the only black man in this position in the top flight. Mr Ferdinand stopped his team taking the knee back in September, declaring the gesture “little more than good PR”.
I would like to suggest a solution, but not sure there is one. Booing what started out as an anti-racist gesture is wrong. Making an anti-racist gesture 6 months after a distant racist event, when the industry you work in displays racist tendencies makes me feel uncomfortable as well…
Sir Les is right, of course. He no doubt realizes the truth that if you keep taking the knee forever with no specific aim, then it becomes meaningless. Not only that but it creates a rift between those who do and those who don’t. Obviously that’s that some people want.
when I was growing up I don’t think there was a single black player, certainly none in the England team, now every leading team not only here but also in Europe has plenty, it took time, there will eventually be plenty of black managers, as the current group of good black players mature and find that they still want to use their skills and their greater understanding of the game to lead and manage the next generation, as the current (mostly white) managers who were mostly very good players themselves a few years ago, just remember, not every good player can also become a good manager, totally different skills required
Unfortunately, when denied any other form of protest, when your objections are ignored, you take whatever steps you can. This is why many people with just cause for concern are forced to extremes means. By contrast, a bit of booing is a minor inconvenience; they could have wrecked the place.
I hate arguments about percentage representation. Aren’t we suppose to hire people based on their ability? And BTW, playing the game and managing a club require different interests and skill sets.
I do not know the percentage of black players in the PL but I would hazard some 30-40%, with the black population in this country being just over 3%. Not bad, eh? All that nasty racism in the game from all the fans! I suppose an average wage of 60,000 pounds a week (Rashford on 200,000 and Pogba on 350,000 a week) demonstrates the entrenched and wide-spread racism in the game – really? As for black managers in the PL and Championship – you must know (I assume from your good knowledge of the game) that club owners will select those managers/coaches who they hope and believe will deliver success for their clubs absolutely irregardless of their skin colour. Sterling’s recent rant about there not being enough black managers in the PL is just another expression of the poor, under-privileged and oppressed victim of racism – a supposed grievance which is manifest nonsense as well as being insulting.
I feel the BLM thing came from America where society is incredibly different to ours. The biggest problem are guns. Police killings in the USA, and killings of police officers, are miles and miles above ours …and the heightened tensions that guns create feeds a situation of suspicion, fear and apprehension on both sides.
I don’t know what the point of BLM , and the extreme end that go on about Critical race Theory, which just seems reverese engineered nonsense at every level, actually is.
If it is to worsen race relations then they’re probably doing a good job…in the UK nobody thought everything was great, nobody thought there wasn’t much still to do…but things are improving and they are better.
The carictures of our society drawn by BLM and picked up by some of the major broadcasters in newsand even comedy, drama and light entertainment are doing far more harm than good. I can see exactly why Millwall fans did it…and more will as well.
The FA should try some thing other than just producing the PR platitudes if they don’t want to end up like the Labour party where virtually all major figures ended up looking as if, not only were they not really representing huge numbers of their core support, they simply didn’t like them any more..
Then were stunned to find these people didn’t want to vote for them last December.
Some good points but with one comment to add: the ‘hierarchy’ doesn’t employ managers – the owners of the clubs do.And owners of clubs are, quite rightly, interested in one thing only – success. Moreover, the owners, I suggest, are not remotely concerned about the colour of their managers, only their ability to achieve the owners’ aims. While black players are vastly over-represented in the Premier League and Championship division compared to their numbers in England with 33% in the Premier League and 3% in the country (where are those mouthing off about ‘equality’?), that’s fine by me because they have great skills and talents, but it’s also clear they do not, as yet, inspire owners to engage them for their managerial skills.
daveyboy103
3 years ago
Kneeling, especially ritual kneeling of this kind has ALWAYS indicated subservience.
Can anyone provide me of an example where this is not the case. I have not seen one yet.
It was started as an alternative ‘respectful’ gesture to standing for the American national anthem. But I agree, part of the problem is the uncomfortable optics. I’d prefer the raised fist 🙂
I agree with most here and believe this clever attempt by the Marxist to gain influence with such a name must be unmasked and stopped by means of the supporters withdrawing specially monetary support. The snowflakes who kneel to the black Marxist god haven’t a clue what they are doing nor whom they are supporting. These Marxists who attack our flag on the Cenotaph are people who wish to overthrow our state which was in its Imperial days the only and first world supper power which spent money to free slaves and not to make them in the entire history of man and in opposition mostly to black kings and Moslem kings who made a living out of slavery. The black lives Marxists should not be supported and fans should stop backing their clubs if out of ignorance their players support the Marxists enemies of England.
You think maybe it has something to do with the Marxists? You were a proud slave trading nation, you built cities on the money made from slaves. So you eventually stopped, big whoop.
Yes, England, like some other European countries, did cash in on a well-established and thriving trade in Africa where blacks enslaved vast numbers of their own tribes and others to sell to the Arabs. But England saw the evils of the trade after a while and spent a fortune and at the cost of many English lives to abolish it. So yes to your sneering ‘whoop’. Make that ‘WHOOP!’
nevilleseabridge
3 years ago
We have footballers, racing drivers, rugby players and others performing this ludicrous ritual for reasons of 1 virtue-signalling, 2 fear of the ‘cancellation culture’ or 3 damage to career/income.
Where does this madness end – snooker and darts? ‘Strictly’, perhaps, with Claudia Winkleman genuflecting sombrely before the cha cha cha? The Red Bull soap box derby? Maybe the school sports-day sack race to ready our youngsters for a lifetime of obeisance n demand?
An excellent question and one that you won’t hear asked on any mainstream channel or news platform.
Richard Marriott
3 years ago
Indeed. BLM has no relevance to this country – it is a hard left Marxist organisation forged by and exploiting the racial issues of the USA.
The USA indeed has problems going back centuries and its use of slave labour for agriculture, followed by emancipation leading to impoverished ghettoes of blacks in many US cities. Combine with often racist and brutal police tactics and you have a combustible situation which has been self evident for generations.
This is relevant in the UK? How?
Paul Emanuel
3 years ago
Let’s face it – do we really care. Dion Dublin is entitled to his opinion – as am I. I don’t take the knee and there is no likelihood of me starting. His opinion is, as he states, that I am therefore a racist. I’m not. His view, in my opinion, is two dimensional and bigoted. I have actively opposed racism all my life. The players may be genuinely passionate about this and if they are they will be spending lots of time and effort actively fighting racism whenever they find it. If all they do is take the knee that’s just virtue signalling and will do nothing of value.
Former Coventry and Aston Villa striker Dion Dublin, who had a loan spell at Millwall in 2002, added: “They don’t agree with taking the knee, which means they are racist. They don’t agree with Black Lives Matter; that says they are racist to me.
maybe they read the BLM manifesto, which if Dublin did, he failed at comprehending it. There is not one positive affirmation of men, and not one mention of fathers. Lots of the usual leftist claptrap re: trans people, gays, and the usual victimology.
That’s because dear Dion doesn’t know the difference between cheap meaningless gestures and thinking.
Rob Dixon
3 years ago
It’s not often I feel solidarity with Millwall supporters but now I feel a growing respectfor them… As Douglas says, Britain is not an inherrently racist place and, knowing that, we should all start showing some common sense and backbone. Like Harry the Dog.
Steve Olding
3 years ago
It wasn’t only the Millwall game where this occurred . West Ham and Colchester United matches too.It will be interesting to see how Sky react if this becomes a regular reaction from the paying public.
Felipe Anderson refused to take the knee at the start of a West Ham game earlier this season.
Deafening silence from the PL.
Paul Blakemore
3 years ago
If, as G Lineker asserts, these deplorables are a ”minority” then surely they must be in need of our understanding and sympathy?
X Xer
3 years ago
The lockdowns have at least something to do with keeping the public neutered and obedient, away from the pubs and spectator sports, for fear people will come together and make their own minds up about the risk and restrictions, and that once decided there will be too many to control and arrest.
The lockdowns have probably given people a respite from the obedience conditioning of mass spectator sports and group think social conditioning.
John Private
3 years ago
Having been a LFC fan and attended matches for many decades I can honestly state that I have not heard a racist comment or chant since the 80s and even then it was rare. If it were to happen now the culprit would be ridiculed, shouted down and probably reported to the stewards. This is the reality. We are predominantly not a racist society and we should be proud of this. I am a heretic in this new religion because I am my own man.
I think anti-black racism in the stands has mainly gone in the UK. I heard an Asian player being loudly abused a couple of seasons back at Fulham. It seemed like he was fair game in a way black players weren’t.
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago
If Pro footballers wish to show how anti racism they are, they should give at least 50-75% of their obscenely over-inflated salaries to causes like education for underpriviliged kids ( exclusively black, if they must).
Linekar seems to have offered accomidation in his pamatial home to refugees. Wonderful. More crisps to him!
To simplify things, BLM and the rest of the woke nonsense is all about dividing the working class (particularly blue collar) against one another on gender, race and on and on. After all these people have far too much in common and may pose a problem if they join forces once again. Meanwhile those who have historically exploited and looked down on these people get a big √ beside their name whilst they continue their bigotry and the useful idiots see nothing but what the bigots tell them.
agsmith.uk
3 years ago
It is remarkable that some white people have become spellbound by a movement which is, by definition, ‘racist’. BLM is a movement dedicated exclusively to the advancement of black people. A similar movement for white people would be, likewise, racist yet though it might have the same objectives for white people would be roundly condemned by those same people as being racist! How odd!
Jonathan Nash
3 years ago
Millwall’s song: “No-one likes us, and we don’t care” – the very antithesis of life on social media.
I think you’d find a pretty appropriate audience for it here
Alex Camm
3 years ago
I noticed that not all rugby Union players took the knee in the recent internationals. Am I right in thinking no comment was made about this.
Gerry Fruin
3 years ago
Oh! I’d be happy to take the knee and hear her Her Majesty ” Arise Sir what’s your name again?” 🙂 More seriously as a Yorkshireman anyone suggesting I go down on one knee or showing any form of intimidation to do so I can show them another use for the knee and it ain’t anywhere near the ground.
Who will be the first football manager to not rush to “disgust” and instead say, “I will talk to the fans”?
It would need to be a brave one.
nick harman
3 years ago
Just get on with the match, I think was the main sentiment expressed.
ncvireland
3 years ago
The events which led to the start of this odd ritual occurred in USA as a protest about the unfair treatment of people of colour in USA. It has minimal relevance in U.K.
your are half correct about the reason part, but you ignore how deeply insulting it was to the people, to the country, to the tradition, that is why the player lost his career, and imitating it in England is so inappropriate,
The events which led to the start of this odd ritual occurred in USA as a protest about the unfair treatment of people of colour in USA. Those events were based on a lie About 75% of civilians killed in confrontations with law enforcement are non-black. If one goes the “disproportionate” route to say that blacks are 13% of the population, they also carry about a bit more than half the homicides, and their victims are overwhelmingly black. Yet, those lives apparently do NOT matter, for they have no political utility.
Daniel Goldstein
3 years ago
Pretty much spot-on, Douglas. I went into Waterstones today and I was really disturbed by how many woke tomes were on display concerned with the matter of race. “Most people in Britain are clearly shown ” in poll after poll as well as their everyday actions ” to have little or no tolerance for racism. They want nothing to do with it.” The problem is that there are wide-ranging definitions of racism. Most of us won’t abuse someone of a different race or endorse ethnic minorities being treated badly by police. We wouldn’t condone a black man, criminal or not, being the victim of excessive force by a police officer. But in a predominantly white country, do we want to be obsessing about the needs of black people all the time? Did we even want so many of them here in the first place? That’s a tough statement to make, but the answer is probably no. Many people have voted with their feet and moved to whiter areas. So no, white Brits don’t hate people from other races, but they don’t necessarily want to be surrounded by them. It’s taboo to say so, but the nature of where people choose to live suggests it’s true. However, those preferences would be deemed as “racist” by the woke activists. This wasn’t a problem which Britain was so consumed with until the 1950s. Doesn’t mean that there was no racism, but as there were fewer people from other races, it was comparatively rare. The influx of ethnic minorities from abroad was a decision taken by the elites, and not the people of this country. This is not America, which has a very different history when it comes to race. I personally am glad that the football crowd booed – it doesn’t mean they’re all knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who support black people being unfairly treated. It means that they’ve come to watch a football match, and don’t want this near-religious act of political symbolism brought into the game. I think the comment sections on sites like this are where people can often express their “real” views away from the bear pit of Twitter. This whole movement is like trying to re-program our brains and police our thoughts. People do have unpalatable thoughts – they can’t be changed en masse.
I head a BBC commentator stating the players were kneeling to signify their stance against racism and “any and all kinds of injustice” suitable wide ranging and noble to be ultimately meaningless, unless they are generally concerned about the famine in Southern Madagascar, or the plight of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. It’s just virtue signalling and the media are fawning over it. Shame on them
Alison Houston
3 years ago
“Most people in Britain are clearly shown ” in poll after poll as well as their everyday actions ” to have little or no tolerance for racism. They want nothing to do with it.”
This is why BLM was invented, probably in a joint venture between the Intelligence Agencies in the States and Britain, just as with other change agents in the Balkans and during the ArabSpring and with the White Helmets during the Syrian interference. There isn’t sufficient division between ordinary people, minding their own business and getting on with their lives, so in order to wield power agents of the State, or at least the real establishment, where that differs from a group of elected representatives, must create it.
Hence BLM, XR and Antifa organisations all championed by a certain kind of corporation and followed by the posh kids and trendy headmasters of Public Schools. They are the establishment, they have the power and will use it to keep creating division in order to gain more and more power. In fact in booing Millwall fans were doing just what was expected of them. If they really want to rebel they should stop buying tickets.
If I may say so I think that is a conspiracy too far again Alison, although obviously it is true to say that all the corporations and trendy kids have jumped on board it all. I agree that the football fans should stop buying tickets but these people are addicts, they will always hand over their money to the football God.
They all laughed when Vanessa Beeley tried to tell the world about who funded the White Helmets. It became harder to laugh when politicians in the Netherlands stated openly they were no longer going to join with Britain, France the US and Israel in funding them, because they had not realised how closely they were tied to the Nusra front and other extremist terrorist groups.
I have served my time as a middle of the road liberal Tory, laughing at other people’s ‘wild conspiracy theories’. But if you are seriously interested in politics, money and power in the end you learn that the world is corrupt and powerful institutions are manipulated by even more powerful ones, part of a chain that ends with the likes of us, powerless, voiceless, unable to resist, unable to defend ourselves, at worst excluded from participating in the world where giant corporations control every aspect of our lives.
But enjoy your idealistic naive period while you can, it is certainly more pleasant than comprehending vile reality.
Occasionally, when you see one of them ranting you know you are watching an out of work actor, trained by a professional. Our brains can spot a phoney a mile off in the dark, even if our consciences resist at first and pretend they are dealing with someone genuine, who happens to hold a very fashionable, extremist point of view.
Of course real people jump on the bandwagon and like to pretend they are being ‘rebels’ of some sort, too naive to realise their rebellion is a charade, designed to push the establishment’s own agenda.
Yes fans will not stop watching football, consumers will not stop buying from Amazon or banking online, our lives have been made convenient for us, and we can’t give up our pleasures, just because authoritarians are going to remove every last vestige of our liberty. We won’t stop consuming the goods produced by corporations that ‘take the knee’ or spew out lies about their eco friendly agendas. That is how successful this revolution is. We are cooperating when we rebel and cooperating when we comply. I don’t know that it will be Karl Marx who ‘strides colossus like over the wreckage of our country’ though it might be one of his Chinese admirers, all I know is that vile, self centred opportunists always exploit division. And that is why they need to create it artificially, where it doesn’t exist.
A gesture of defiance from the Millwall fans (not a minority judging by the amount of noise they managed to make) but doesn’t everyone cave in to BLM eventually? If you intend to resist the cult of black suffering you must be prepared to live with the stigma of being labelled a racist (only one step up from a child molester on the contemporary scale of evil). The force of the backlash will steer all but the most determined onto the comfortable path of conformity.
Let’s see what happens at their next match. They will be playing QPR whose management have ordered all their players to take the knee. Will any of the QPR players show defiance now that the free choice they previously had has been taken away? Will the Millwall fans try to make amends and satisfy the pundits that they are actually a decent bunch of anti-racist chaps who know how to keep their toxic masculinity under control?
“Resist the cult of black suffering”… are you a poet in the planet you come from? And for the record, certainly in my books, being a racist is actually a step down from molesting children. I mean, being a racist entails ones discrimination and antagonism towards an entire race or races of humans, while molesting children only castigates a small subset of any race… but I digress.
From what you write I believe I’d be right to think that you think resistance to being called a racist is far the preferable state to actually not being a racist? I mean, who would prefer resistance, when conforming means that one accepts that racism is evil, Never been to Millwall, not visiting soon, but I know plenty of people like them… good, well-meaning chaps who in fact can’t keep their toxic masculinity under control, and are pleased to demonstrate the fact at any moment.
What on earth are you on about?! Are you struggling to put together something resembling a cogent argument by any chance? I think this is the first time I have seen spluttering incoherant bluster expressed through keystrokes.
Helpful tip: Try clarifying your thoughts before reaching for the keyboard. All that is coming through in your posting is the need to put on an ostentatious display how very, very enraged you are by racism (vague though that concept might be).
Perhaps, like a self-consciously virtuous puritan who sees Satan and sin lurking everywhere you see racism in every person who hasn’t confessed and sought atonement for this transgressive sin (call it the “White Fragility heresy” if you will).
I must say that I find it very worrying that you have so completely failed to understand why people (and not just Millwall fans) object to this deliberately humiliating ritual of “taking the knee”. Perhaps this somewhat limited outlook is typical of BLM and their cheerleaders.
Sure, really hard to get your poor little head around. Try Patrick White’s comment above to see if you can understand what ‘racism’ might conceivably look like.
My goodness! Have you certainly have embibed the trope: “racism in every white person and must, must, must, be eradicated at all costs if there is to be any justice or peace in this world”.
Dissenting voices must be silenced ““ SJWs, the good men and true, don’t want to hear a peep out of them!
The SJWs (yes, those good men and true) aren’t ruthless, dictatorial and manipulative moral bullies. Not a bit of it! With wisdom and paternal kindness they are merely trying to raise the consciousness of a nation so steeped in prejudice and bigotry that the benighted citizens just can’t get their poor little heads around just how awful they are. No problem! The SJWs and their cheerleaders will soon let them know!
Cast your net wider! Have you ever taken a hard critical look at current popular claims of racism ““ or are you afraid such wanton curiosity might taint your moral purity? Obviously, it’s safer by far to cheer along the SJWs rather than defy them.
Yet, even one afflicted with limited and often pseudo-intellectual outlook of the contemporary leftwing activist should be able to see how definitions of race are regularly adapted and modified in very opportunistic ways.
By the way, Millwall have decided their players will not be taking the knee from now on. Players and management have listened to their fans ““ even though BLM enthusiasts in the MSM claim it was “just a minority” who booed.
That’s about 3 paragraphs of waffle about SJWs that you’ve put in my mouth. What I still don’t get after that diatribe is whether Patrick White’s comment about ‘Black men being useless’ counts as racism in your opinion ? Or maybe there’s room for doubt. Just them manipulative moral bullies finding offence everywhere, eh?
An amusing (if rather juvenile) attempt at provocation Mr Ryan.
Rather reminiscent of those activists who stormed a US restaurant a couple months ago and tried to force the customers to disown their “violent silence” by raising a fist in support of BLM. Well Kevin, as our American cousins would say: Nothin’ doin’!
According to a TV news report QPR management want all their players to take the knee at their next game with Millwall. Presumably they hope to shame all those fans who dared to boo.
Daniel Patrick
3 years ago
great article. great to see the people express themselves. My belief is that nobody has to bend a knee, that’s what equality is all about. All the best
Micheal Lucken
3 years ago
I know all lives matter especially black lives but I can’t help feeling that a society getting on one knee at every opportunity in honour of a character apparently notable for little beyond a penchant for fentanyl and a criminal record for armed robbery has a less than optimal grasp of values.
The idea that the most homophobic organisation in the country is now the standard bearer for social justice is a sick joke.
Richard Martin
3 years ago
And even organisations like the RSA that were once based on gloriously empirical, practical work to improve things for people pump out this BLM clap-trap. The truly bizarre thing is that even though most of us despise it, it keeps happening. Why is this?
Somewhat fascinating for a U.S. citizen to read this in a UK online periodical. Somewhat, I say. First, a minority of linguists here, laugh at those who write “systematic” racism instead of “systemic”. I would have thought the Brits would have caught that error by now. Second, there is this national difference. Americans don’t just take the knee at the beginning of an athletic event. They do it as the National Anthem is played! That seems not to be a practice in the UK, so one wonders about the meaning in the UK. In the U.S. the meaning is that full freedoms symbolically guaranteed to all under the flag are not in eviidence everywhere. Third, psychologically “taking the knee” is a form of manipulative behavior. If competitor teams are doing it, we’d better do it as well. If we run out of black team members who do it, then all ethnic mates could try it as well. But why on a football field? Why not on a street corner? Because, of course, before Covid there were thousands who had paid to watch your protest (or was it to watch a sporting match)? And now with virtual games, the whole world can watch (or skip the knee ceremony to go grab a beer). As the author correctly says, “maybe this ritual has gone on too long already.” Time for a new systemic ritual, a new way of connecting action and meaning. Only let it be done where people aren’t forced to pay to observe it. Less “systematic” controversy it seems to me.
Like another recent American import ‘Black Friday’ we do it but we don’t really understand why we are doing it and too many people are too stupid to stop doing it.
I did find his use of “systematic” rather than “systemic” odd.
Lydia R
3 years ago
The whole point of identity politics is to set groups all with various grievances against each other. Hence the current on going war between “terfs” and trans.
Michael Reardon
3 years ago
Maybe I’m the first millwall fan to enter the discussion. Been so since the sixties. Its the family religion. From a strong Labour family. I have am depressed because my club has been the target of organised far right activists since the seventies. Too many of the responses and chants heard at the den are identical to those at far right rallies. It’s more insidious than unwoke idiots. And it’s not just racism.. Sexism, homophobia… You name it. Before anybody adds to this post let them go to a home match and ten tell me it’s just ordinary everyday folk putting two fingers up to the woke elite. It’s much nastier and repellant than that.
It’s the attraction of like minds into perfect subsets of a population. The same as you get with a Trump or Farage. Not every Millwall fan is a racist, sexist homophobic scumbag. But every racist sexist homophobic scumbag in London knows he’ll find all his friends at the Den.
Read this comment by black ex player and now TV etc pundit. The really frightening aspect is that most of the MSM and presumably the soccer authorities seem to agree with him. Disagree with taking the knee at your peril!!!! “Former England striker Dion Dublin said: ‘To me, they are racist. They don’t agree with taking the knee, which means they’re racist.’
I listen to Dion on 5Live, where he is a perfectly entertaining pundit. But obviously he is totally incorrect here and has no understanding of the situation.
perhaps someone could get Dion a dictionary for Christmas so that he might look up the word ‘racist’ and find that it does not mean what he thinks it means.
Chris Casey
3 years ago
Enough is enough – give us unadulterated football back please. The appetite of certain movements is simply rapcious – once you start to feed it, where does it stop??
Alex Tickell
3 years ago
Mr Murray’s point about the surprise shown by players and pundits when confronted by the great unwashed was very well made, but will it make them understand the reality facing them, I think not. The poison has entered the bloodstream and it will take events larger than a mere football match to change direction of travel…….the Millwall fans are already being demonised as outsiders , serial racists, knuckle dragging thugs. next it will be anyone of a conservative persuasion.
Dorothy Slater
3 years ago
Not to worry. The one knee ritual will die when the current participants age out. At 83 if I went down on one knee I would never get up and if I tried, I would fall over.
David Jory
3 years ago
Millwall score a hat trick! Piercing the woke bubble, Roy Larner (People’s GC for fighting 3 terrorists unarmed in Borough Market, but denied an honour because he doesn’t fit the woke agenda) and Brexit voters. Chapeau!
Charles Rense
3 years ago
I was all for this protest, right up until they started naming and shaming the athletes that chose not to participate. Prior to that point it was an inspiring, quietly dignified and respectful act of passive resistance. But cross that line into social coersion and it becomes something ugly and disturbing.
stephen f.
3 years ago
I will only kneel when the Queen touches my shoulder with a sword…
Jonathan Oldbuck
3 years ago
The chairman of Colchester Utd has released a statement condemning fans of his club.
Fans of Colchester Utd, Milwall and any other paying customers who wish to voice their displeasure at and disagreement with players making overt political gestures could perhaps release their own statement before a game making clear that they deplore the politicisation of sport and are in no way waaaaycist but will continue to boo vigorously.
Charles Byford
3 years ago
I have always felt it strange that the given reason for Floyd’s death was that the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck, restricting his oxygen supply for about nine minutes in full public view with several people videoing the police/Floyd interaction. It just does not make sense unless Chauvin deliberately wanted to destroy his career and get prosecuted. Then I read the article by George Parry, a former federal and state prosecutor and Chief of the Police Brutality/Misconduct Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, in The Spectator USA, which can be found here: https://spectator.org/georg…
Do read the full article. The salient point is that the evidence recorded on the police body cameras shows that Floyd repeatedly complained that he couldn’t breathe before the police restrained him on the ground, see https://www.youtube.com/wat… The police showed great tolerance towards a suspect who was clearly out of his mind and who was incapable of following their instructions to get in the squad car. It is also telling that many times Floyd begged the officers not to leave him alone.
As documented by Floyd’s autopsy and toxicology reports, his breathing difficulty was caused not by a knee on his neck or pressure on his back, but by the fact that he had in his bloodstream over three times the potentially lethal limit of fentanyl, a powerful and dangerous pain medication known to shut down the respiratory system and cause coma and death. He also had in his system a lesser dose of methamphetamine, which can cause paranoia, respiratory distress, coma, and death. Beyond those findings, his autopsy disclosed no physical injuries that could in any way account for his demise.
This article from 2016 explains why Fentanyl, “heroin’s synthetic cousin” is so dangerous and how “drug users generally don’t know when their heroin is laced with Fentanyl, so when they inject their usual quantity of heroin, they can inadvertently take a deadly dose of the substance.” – https://www.statnews.com/20…
In regard to Chauvin’s possible criminal intent or purported desire to harm Floyd, Minnesota police are trained to use a “neck restraint” technique, which is defined in the official training literature as “compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck). The video of Chauvin kneeling on the side of Floyd’s neck is a textbook application of this officially approved technique. Put another way, by the training that they had received, the police defendants would have no reason to believe that Chauvin’s kneeling on Floyd’s neck was either causing serious harm or anything other than the approved standard operating procedure.
So, the answer to the question “Who killed George Floyd” is “He did.” And for that several police officers’ careers have been destroyed, dozens of mostly black people have been killed in the riots and again mostly black businesses have been burnt to the ground. Utter madness.
I have previously read the description of the real cause of Floyd’s death. Unfortunately it does not fit the narrative of BLM.
Wulvis Perveravsson
3 years ago
Facism is a system that, regardless under which name, makes the individual subordinate to extraneous purposes and weakens the development of genuine individuality.
Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom.
By Fromm’s definition, wokeness can clearly be seen as a form of facism.
Sure thing Wulvis. So I guess when you obey speed limits, don’t kill the people you’re angry with, put on a seat belt, pay your taxes, honor your wedding vows… you’re just suffering under a fascistic system. Sure.
Most of the things you mention make sense from a safety perspective, or have a moral grounding. It is sensible to wear a seatbelt in case we crash, because we know that otherwise we may be killed in the event of a crash. We know it is wrong to kill someone or cheat, because we can imagine the pain if it happened to someone we love or to ourselves. None of these things have any similarity to the rituals of wokeness. The analogy you have chosen is appallingly badly thought out.
robert scheetz
3 years ago
Identity politics generally is a racket, b****r all to do with social justice. The paradigm was/is antisemitism. Feminism, racism, LGBTQ, …, all take their business model from Eli Wiesel & co., and have done very well thank you.
Mark Corby
3 years ago
Let’s hope that when things return normal, the ” roar of the crowd” at say Villa Park (capacity circa 45,000) will get everybody on their feet again, and this humiliating interlude will be confined to the dustbin of history.
voodoopolitics
3 years ago
In Ukraine, during the Maidan Revolution of 2013-2014, the “ultras” footballers led the opposition to Yanukovich and Putin in eastern Ukraine. Please see the “Putin Khuilo” videos on Youtube.’
Teo
3 years ago
The political corruption of universal cultural relativsm the left pitch a universal social outcome – multiculturism while the right pitch a universal economic outcome – globalisation.
you haven’t finished the sentence, the end of the sentence is “a universal economic outcome of gloom, poverty, regression, for all but the dictatorship.”
John Nutkins
3 years ago
Thank you, Douglas Murray, for yet another outstanding commentary on many of the social and cultural afflictions pervading our country. I have posted on many occasions in this and other media outlets that BLM is a discriminatory, divisive, racist and profoundly insulting movement to the people of our land. The grovelling, sycophantic and hypocritical ‘taking the knee’ by all the footballers in the Premier League before kick-off still, as you say, continuing to this day, is, I suppose, a ‘view’ all these grossly overpaid multi-miliionaire have a right to express. Then the spectators who fork out to pay these capitalists screwing them have a perfect right also to express their opinions, and anyone like thicky Rooney and crisp-crunching Lineker, by moaning about the fans expressing their views, expose their own inanity, ignorance and hypocrisy. Well done the Millwall fans! And those others who express surprise and dismay at those fans’ reactions demonstrates how utterly and profoundly out of touch they are with reality. Two other aspects: many black PL players, besides ‘taking the knee’, add further gross insult by raising clenched fists! And some cretinous Sky TV football commentator, very recently, while oleaginously pratting on about racism during the ‘taking of the knee’, also mentioned another ‘in word’ – equality. I am not quite sure what the moron meant, but if he thinks there is inequality in the representation of white and non-white versus black players in the PL, then my estimate that the league has perhaps 30-40% black players when the black population as a whole is just over 3% would expose him either as an ignoramus or a cretin (in my view both).
Roger Inkpen
3 years ago
I’m sure no one was genuinely surprised that the fans booed when given the first opportunity. With hindsight I guess it was inevitable it would be Millwall fans that broke the mould – although I understand it happened at Chelmsford as well.
The reaction from the media has been just as predictable. But I wonder – if there had been booing or shouting during a minute’s silence at a football match – would it have got so much attention?
As we’ve seen with the outrageous behaviour of Celtic fans to the manager (from outside the ground), the only way to control the mob is to keep it locked up at home. Forever!
sharon johnson
3 years ago
Beyond doubt the Queen of the Knee Thing was Nancy Pelosi* in her Kente cloth toga kneeling fairly non stop. Nancy kneels here. Nancy kneels there. Nancy kneels everywhere. It was grand! But now, as winter awaits just off-stage, Nancy has stopped kneeling. Perhaps the grass is wet. Or too cold. Or her 80 year old knees can’t take the drill any longer. Whatever. All I know is that for one brief glorious moment the sun shone on her African togs and we were happy. *(Speaker of the US House of Representatives. She lives in a San Francisco mansion. Very swank is our Nancy. )
Lydia R
3 years ago
BLM have obviously read their Engels as they pledge to destroy the patriarchal family and bring up children collectively, whatever that means.
Arminia
3 years ago
I am still shocked that people take a knee when George Floyd died after a police officer put his knee on his neck. This continues to shock me as ghoulish.
Joseph Berger
3 years ago
AS USUAL Douglas Murray enlightened the conversation with his accurate insights. From the first time I saw it on TV at the start of PL games I was disgusted, nauseated. Perhaps Brits don’t know that in other countries in Europe they don’t practice this odious pre-game ritual. They just get on with the game.
I suspect most people don’t know that the gesture started off not with the unfortunate tragedy of a policeman killing a drugged out long-time criminal (the charge of murder is purely political, the act is what is usually called manslaughter), but with the deliberate insulting of the symbols of American nationalism, the national anthem at the beginning of a football game. A multimillionaire black player chose to make his anti-American political statement in this manner, and justifiably lost his career for his gesture that was imitated immediately by a few, but didn’t last long. It then became picked up by the vile anti-American anti-Jewish anti-Israel anti-capitalism blm movement as a part of the rioting, looting, thuggery, destruction, carried out for weeks and months – far worse than the rioting in Washington last week – in cities across the US.
When I was growing up in England, I don’t remember any major teams having a black player, now there is hardly a team that doesn’t have many. Neither in the US nor in Britain is there the overt racism of the 19th and early 20th century. It doesn’t exist on a public level anymore. That individual people may be privately racist, hate whom and what they see as outsiders, be they black, moslem, Jewish, Asian, etc, is a difficult and challenging part of our human nature, the revolting kneeling won’t change that.
Peter Ian Staker
3 years ago
I remember a time when politics was not allowed in football, what happened to that? It was probably for the best considering that footballers have huge amounts of influence and generally don’t have a clue what they are talking about.
Mark Lilly
3 years ago
I’m a fan of Mr Murray and have read three of his books. However, having an English degree from Cambridge, he shouldn’t be giving us: “Saturday was one of the first times this year ….” which is a version of “he is one of the only people”. Also, in his last book, about half the necessary possessive apostrophes were omitted, following, I believe, not his own putative eccentricity but some illiterate publisher’s stylesheet.
There’s a snide little cartoon in the Guardian about this matter today.
Vinnie J
3 years ago
I’m still in a state of disbelief that people are taking the knee to a drug fuelled career criminal who threatened to shoot an unborn baby in a failed robbery, I don’t think he deserved to die that way but on the positive side he hasn’t been in trouble since.
Kevin Ryan
3 years ago
It does feel like intimidation. Nobody should be compelled to kneel, whatever the cause. Players and managers are routinely fined for making political gestures, but that’s a tricky step for the FA to take given the constant emphasis on ‘Kick Racism Out’. Murray however is his usual disingenuous self with the line about ‘no-one says black lives don’t matter’. He’s not that stupid.
“No one can be that stupid” Clearly, they can be, judging by your comment (usual disingenuous self with the line about ‘no-one says black lives don’t matter’.) Of course “black lives matter”, as long as it’s one of the 0.1% of unarmed black deaths in a country across the Atlantic that happen at the hands of police, even if they have a toxic criminal record, were resisting arrest and have massive amounts of drugs in their bodies.
That’s why we kneel for those black criminals, and allow blacks and their upper class college uneducated white trash to loot, sorry “protest”..and those blacks who are killed by rioters or whose neighbourhoods and businesses suffer, well”¦. You and your type aren’t really too concerned about those black lives are you?
And If you are one of the much larger number of unarmed whites killed by police, or the vast majority of black deaths that occur at the hands of other blacks, or any number of victims of terrorism in our own countries”¦.well, out of luck, sorry. Because your lives only matter if you are drug addict and criminal from a minority community that commits 10-15 times crime rates vs average, has 80% off dads go awol and who consider studying hard and doping well academically is for “racists”
Was there a question in there? My point about Murray’s disingenuity is that nobody claims there’s an explicitly racist culture. It’s another straw man. The BLM argument(agree with it or not) is about structural and tacit racism. Nobody’s arguing about racial segregation law.
(Your assumptions about whose lives are important to me, and why, are a gibberish rant)
please explain “structural racism” ??? do you mean I should look at the pillars and columns and bricks of my building and the bricks around me and examine to see if they are ‘racist’?? do you mean I should look at other people’s bones and kidneys and livers and try to find something ‘racist’ in those??
or are you suggesting that if we could biopsy live people’s brains we would find some structure in their cells that is ‘racist’?
oh, no, no, no, you mean a more thorough examination of people’s DNA would surely find something ‘racist’ in the basic cell structure???
reminds me of the effort put in by dozens of alleged scientists trying to find the chromosomes or cells in the brain responsible for homosexuality. Came to nothing.
and – I understand – are now not being deported because some deeply misguided lawyers and “celebrities” are pressuring for them to stay!!!
Patrick White
3 years ago
Black men generally are useless, but George Floyd was the most useless of all. His death was accidental, but someone somewhere should have deliberately planted one between the eyes for him when he abandoned the first of his five abandoned children.
I don’t take the knee for people who have only just managed to stand up on theirs.
Unbelievable Douglas Murray writes yet another article about “taking the knee” in this publication, when his first one was so idiotic. One can forgive him for running his mouth (so to say) the first time, but to do it again?
Sidney Eschenbach
3 years ago
Sad to see so many here are clearly threatened by the simple proposition that an entire racial subculture is hurting, feels under attack, and is calling out for those doing so to stop. That’s all this is. George Floyd is just one more vessel for that threat, anger, pain and hurt. Read Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, MLK, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehishi Coates and so many more. You’re offended and outraged by footballers taking a stand? Try, just try and see the issue from the other side, because it exists. That you reject it speaks not to their false claims, but to your paranoia.
Please don’t insult the intelligence of the readers here. “Entire racial subculture is hurting”? You mean the large fraction of melanin-rich footballers (US & UK) making millions more than us poor blokes who pay their salaries? It’s beyond naive to just imply the kneeling is just an acknowledge of a simple proposition – the kneeling at first was explicitly a bow to BLM and to claim otherwise is simply a lie
You can look the other way if you like, Michael, but here’s the thoughts of one who can’t: “Just watching the Republican convention, and they’re spewing this fear,” Los Angeles Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said Tuesday night after an NBA playoff game. “All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear. We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot. We’re the ones who were denied to live in certain communities. We’ve been hung. We’ve been shot. All you keep doing is hearing about fear. It’s amazing why we keep loving this country and this country does not love us back.”
As to kneeling, as you know it was started by Colin Kaepernik, who said at the time: “”I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”‘
Notice there’s no reference to BLM, no ‘bow to BLM’, as you state. But I’m sure you know better than those affected. Meanwhile, so proud of PSG and Istambul Basaksehir. This must end and will, whether you are on board or not.
I’m a Brit living in the US. Contrary to European expectations, I’ve encountered far more cases of racism among Liberals than I have among Trump supporters.
Doc Rivers is your proof? He has no idea what he is talking about, he is almost as clueless as Kaepernik. They are nor being killed at any different proportion by the police, it is just a lie you have all swallowed. Affected? Yes, you are all affected by media lies, I understand. Yes, this is about bowing. You want us to bow to your saints right here.
Really Sydney. I don’t see the whole of the African Continent trembling and feeling hurt. BLM is a Cultural Marxist organisation that stated beliefs are according to one of its founders Patrisse Cullors:
As a revolutionary ideology, Cultural Marxism sets out to destroy things which it calls oppressive. It believes the following:-
Gender assigned at birth (your sex) This is supposedly a mere ‘construct’ of oppressive ‘heteronormativity’.
Marriage They say it is a patriarchal institution, oppressing women. Further, it is a heteronormative institution, oppressing sexual minorities.
Children and the nuclear family An increasingly popular term is ‘motherhood penalty’, the idea that a mother raising children suffers a penalty more than she enjoys a blessing. This is not only anti-child and anti-family, but pro-abortion. Black Lives Matter’s statement of “What we believe” explicitly rejects the nuclear family.
Capitalism True to its classical Marxist roots, the key focus here is on the oppression of work ““ that to be a worker is to be oppressed in that condition, exploited by capitalists.
Justice This has become particularly clear through the Movement for Black Lives, who openly advocate the abolition of police, the rolling back of criminal law, the annulment of convictions, and the unravelling of the courts system. ‘Justice’ is apparently oppressive to those who cannot obey the law.
We see from its rioting, violent, and anarchistic behaviour that movements like this exist to agitate, tear down, create chaos, divide, and destroy. That is the Cultural Marxist objective ““ wreck the joint; destroy the system; do it violently. It is the revolutionary objective; the destructive impulse.. To incite this, they substitute facts with emotion, stoking the flames of anger ““ for example, by wildly exaggerating the extent of racist policing. (Disproved by black Havard Professor, Roland Fryer) Forgiveness Most horrifyingly of all, however, Marxists don’t substitute forgiveness with anything. There simply is none. Sins of the past cannot ever be made right. Every last drop of reckoning, penance, and reparation must be extracted. So tear down the statues and every person in History on the back of one prejudicial remark!!
Interesting to note how the grievance industry has had to invent covert racism as there simply weren’t enough examples of overt racism, and even then covert racism had to be expanded to all white folk for simply being … white. Generally race relations in the UK were pretty good until recently and the new racial schism created by BLM and its useful idiots is setting race relations back decades. You talk abstractedly of pain, anger and hurt, but offer no solutions. What will make it all better – money? And if so how much and for how long? Endless prostrations of “oppressors” at your feet perhaps? Take a concrete pill and toughen up precious and get on with your life.
Steve Weeks
3 years ago
I read this through, and found it stuffed with one undefended assertion after another. It’s an “opinion piece”, yeah?
He kind of has it both ways though. “Everyone has to comply”? So why are we reading this stuff? We didn’t comply! How does he know that that everyone who supported BLM was bullied into it, and everyone who didn’t knew better? How does he know that the BLM supporters didn’t genuinely think it a great way to protest, or even – how does he know that BLM resisters actually don’t think black lives matter? The best bit was the opening implication of the “injustice” of Floyd’s killer awaiting trial in prison. In terms of “justice” (quality and quantity) I’d like to see a follow up article where the author explains the “good reasons” why the same number of Americans die daily in custody as do in Britain annually; and why it’s ok for US state employees to execute criminals on arrest,.. to save time and money in courts and prisons? Finally, let’s say I agreed with this unsubstantiated opinion: it raises excellent questions that the author could address next, such as What precisely would he suggest Americans do instead about police murders that would be better idea than peaceful protest?
Rather telling, isn’t it, that every single thing you’ve put in “quotation marks” in your reply aren’t in fact to be found anywhere in the article itself.
Can I have “good answer” about the 44 Police that have been murdered this year by these “peaceful protestors” including last week a female cop shot in the face during a traffic stop???
You cannot conflate American society which is awash with firearms with our own. To be a policeman in the US must be one of the worst jobs on earth and the killer of Mr Floyd was using a recognised procedure to detain a career criminal who was apparently under the influence of drugs and resisting arrest. Mr Floyd died not from asphyxiation but from a heart attack and the real disgrace is that under these circumstances the policeman was charged with murder. 90% of all unlawful killings of black men in the US are perpetrated by other black men.
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Taking the knee, as it’s been explained by the people doing it, is an acknowledgement that racism exists and people should work together to reduce it and publicly show that intention. That is what most people understand by BLM. The BLM movement is not the same as the specific manifestos of organisations calling themselves Black Lives Matter.
The survey Murray references stated that the majority of those surveyed believed BLM movement has increased racial tension. That is not the same as stating that BLM has been divisive, which Murray claims. Less than 50% of people from a minority background believed it and less than 50% of Labour voters. 75% of Conservative voters believed it. 55% of all voters. You might as well say that voting Conservative increased racial tensions as a result of BLM.
There is an argument that BLM and Covid, which has revealed how ethnicity impacts directly on what type of work people do and how exposed you are to infection, has exposed and highlighted existing tensions not created them.
Taking the knee, as it’s been explained by the people doing it, is an acknowledgement that racism exists and people should work together to reduce it and publicly show that intention. Racism has always existed and always will. Or bigotry, prejudice, and any other synonym you prefer. That said, there is no “intention” being demonstrated by kneeling; it’s a self-congratulatory move that accomplishes nothing. And suggesting that all whites are racist, as the left does in the US, is not going to cause people to “work together.” It’s going to do the exact opposite and it is perhaps a fair question to ask if that’s not the point.
Next month, we’ll have the annual renewal of MLK Day and his DC speech will play repeatedly. Very few of the wokerati will notice how the ‘character over color” part of the speech – in fact, the main point of it – has been rendered irrelevant.
The point about ‘white privilege’, which I avoided and I think you’re referring to, is a different one. It’s fair enough to debate whether or not structural racism exists – I’d like to see more of that rather than the knee jerk name calling we often see. If it does exist, then certain people suffer as a result of it and certain people, by default, benefit. That’s the theory behind structural racism. It doesn’t mean all white people are racist. It means people live in an environment that is racist. That varies, and the nature of the racism varies, from environment to environment, country to country. It’s not the only kind of racism – bigotry and prejudice also exist. You can benefit from structural racism without being a bigot or being prejudiced.
As a free born Englishman you will have to Physically force me on to my knees and for that you will have to kill me.
Due to this rubbish this country is more divided than any time in my life, congratulations you BLM racists
Ditto. Over my dead body.
Me too. Have an uptick.
Well said.
I’m with you as I’m sure are the majority in this country, and anti woke lovers of the freedoms so many of our forefathers died for!
Exactly…reverse effect to the one intended.
I wouldn’t be so sure that wasn’t intended
Us indentured people, from lesser nations, look upon you with awe.
You are in the presence of your betters – accept it and feel better.
The Irish Al Sharpton.
Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up Andrew. The mongrels who pretend to be British (insert desired colour, religion, creed) can be all they want to be with a British prefix. I am however, an Englishman. I was asked on a beach by an Aussie selling pineapple slices, on hearing my voice, declared ah, British. Wrong my friend was the sharp reply. I am not a paddy, a taffy or a jock, I am English. He stared at me blankly but a little offended. Mind if I call you Antipodean I asked. A wide smile appeared on his face as he remarked fair dinkum mate. He left a pineapple lighter and a lesson learned.
Are you for real, or is this an Alf Garnett wind-up routine ? ‘Mongrels’ that’s your word ? Brilliant
You know who the English are, don’t you? Basically a hodgepodge of Romans, Danes, Celts, Germans and French. Most of Europe ran the place at one stage or another. Apparently there’s also an amount of Greek DNA in the mix.
And you think you can call other people ‘mongrels’ ?
Woof Paul. Stop humping my leg
Yeah, but that mix was pretty stable in the ethnic makeup of the population for a long time.
Left out Africans and Middle Eastern types, who sailed up and down the western coasts of Europe going back many centuries, and some of whom settled in Ireland, France, and Spain.
Who, Barbary pirates? Yes. Africans and middle eastern types? Sorry, thats complete BS
BS – there is no genetic evidence of this – genetic makeup of the English has been the same for centuries
For once I agree with you. What vile racism!
Come on Kevin, the English, as the name implies, are mainly of German/Teutonic stock.
The problem with the word Mongrel is that it is a bit too close to Mongol for comfort.
However none of this really matters, for all of us have lived in “this precious stone set in the silver sea” etc, and what a blessing that has been don’t you think?
It was assumed for centuries that the English were of German/Teutonic stock but DNA testing has shown that actually Celts predominate.
Yes, I have read much about it in that excellent publication Current Archaeology.
Off course it rather blows the old theory that the ‘migrant’ Saxons exterminated the existing Romano-Celtic population, which is comforting.
‘Hodgepodge’ that’s your word ? Brilliant.
Ask a Scotsman if he is British or Scottish, Same Welsh or Irish. It only ever seems to be a problem when an Englishman declares more precision about his heritage.
I believe the Romans had little, if any, effect on the genome.
You’re dead wrong – most of the groups left virtually no DNA traces – English people are in the main Anglo Saxon and have been for over a thousand years – this has been widely proven – to call us mongrels is politically motivated and used by those who want more migration – ” you English have no identity and are mongrels anyway – so what does a few more million matter “
English people are, in the main, Celts – this has been widely proven.
Very well said.
Oh how I agree with you Andrew. I am appalled at how my country is being destroyed by not only BLM, the activists, celebrities, in fact any of the agenda driven lot. The one question I would like to ask all these PC people is why they were not taking the knee before the George Floyd incident. There have been many situations where black and indeed white people have been killed under the most horrendous conditions. And don’t tell me it is because the police were involved………does dying at the hands of someone else only matter when the police are involved. No this is hypocrisy of the first order! I too believe there are a huge number of people who feel like we do but as every day goes by with no one dealing with these issues, the pathetic, immature and woke groups in our society will become more powerful.
Meanwhile the black on black carnage continues in Chicago . . .last night 2 killed, 15 injured at a party. (14Mar21) Almost 400 black on black shootings in Chicago alone resulting in injuries this year alone. Blacks don’t care. Zero protests. While they are 13% of the US population, they commit 54% of the crimes. (My next door neighbors are black and they hate what’s going on.) (from California)
Absolutely 100% right.
The utter shock from the commentators on the beautiful, rude piercing of their comfy echo chamber was a joy to behold.
Newsflash guys….Twitter isn’t the real world.
I notice that BBC Match of the Day presenters don’t have a knee-taking ceremony at the start of each programme.
Cowardly hypocrites …..
What is the real world in the UK? Here in the US, where I”m writing from, racism is a fairly serious problem of which BLM and the police violence that inspired it are only a few of many aspects. Given the political and cultural structure of the country, it seems that only public violence or threats of violence make any impression on the situation; pious appeals to man’s better nature don’t do the trick. Thus those who are concerned about the effects of their pigmentation on their welfare and prospects are encouraged by experience to support vigorous, even excessive forms of activism. I guess it is difficult for you all in the UK — where there is no racism, right? — to understand what’s going on over here.
Your comment indicates you are not familiar with BLM’s clearly stated goals on their website. A little education will serve you well.
Public violence and threats makes people LESS likely to support BLM.
Society, especially in respect of race, is very different in UK than in US.
If “police violence” was what “inspired” BLM, why didn’t they organize nationwide protests for victims of police violence like Justine Damond, or Tony Timpa?
“News flash guys…. Twitter isn’t the real world.”
Tell that to all the mainstream journalists, the administrations of universities, the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, your workplace’s HR dept, your child’s school, and last but not least, Twitter.
Millwall (and most other) fans lack the cowardice now endemic across so many groups and institutions.
Football does not belong to the “woke” virtue-signallers, who need to be “put back in their boxes” whenever they interfere like this.
I thought that they were being pretty decent down at The Den.
The normal greeting is ‘alf a brick.
The Millwall fans have dared to point out that the Emperor’s not wearing any clothes. I’ll bet lots of people will like them now!
That ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ story keeps coming to my mind at the moment too. Mass delusion sealed with a fear/conformity emotional bullying.
Perhaps it is really the opposite. The politicians claim to be wearing a scientific cloak that is allowing them to protect us from climate change and a not very serious virus, but the cloak is the means to spreading propaganda. It is time we took it off them and saw them naked with nothing to offer.
Never a truer word spoken.
The only thing that is wrong about the emperors new clothes (written by a person with a a very astute understanding of human nature) was the ending. They would have just killed the child, or shut him up for sure.
Naw – they won’t like being liked.
Everybody hates them: they don’t care. In this context “everybody” means those who worship in the Church of Woke.
No, these mindless, unknowing fools should not be on their knees to an avowedly Marxist organisation that aims to destroy the nuclear family and the West. I was very pleased to hear that the Millwall and West Hams fans booed this nonsense. And equally pleased that Millwall lost 0-1 at home to my not-so-mighty Rams.
Calling middle class wokeness Marxism shows your lack of political understanding. It isn’t Marxism or ‘cultural Marxism’ (whatever that is). It’s not even Left Wing. It’s quasi-religious intolerant authoritianism masquerading as progressivism, practiced by the economically privileged precisely to avoid those Marxist keystones of redistribution of wealth and working class solidarity, changing nothing while virtue signalling their moral superiority.
And no, I’m not a Marxist.
I’m afraid it is, old chap. Haidt makes the connection in The Coddling of the American Mind. ‘Identity politics’ is straight out of the Marxist Frankfurt School playbook.
Evidence please.
Loathe as I am to do the work for you, I do find Wikipedia very useful:
“Marcuse argues that “the realization of the objective of tolerance” requires “intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed.” He makes the case for “liberating tolerance”, which would consist of intolerance to right-wing movements and toleration of left-wing movements.”
And I find Wikipedia a poor substitute for reasoned debate.
What Marcuse argues is opinion, nothing more.
Yeah, but some people’s opinion is more valuable than others.
Only the left need to spend all their time trying to define what words mean.
Which of course, is a nonsense. The right has its fair share of navel gazers.
Sometimes a typo takes on a life of its own!
I thought I’d managed to edit that before anyone saw it. Well spotted. 😉
“Lewis Carroll, “”When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more or less.” This is the Liberal way.
I more an Orwell person myself.
Although wafty word-soup type French intellectuals do have their place, I just haven’t been able to work out exactly where that is….
Marcuse was an evil man but that Essay was rejected by most leftists at the time. He was probably a Marxist though. The roots of wokeness are far more varied than that.
Re ‘the roots of wokeness’ – see my first post with reference to Haidt. The argument that Marcuse, of the Frankfurt School, might be at the root of identity politics is his (though I agree with him). The Marcuse Wikipedia quote in my second post re ‘liberating tolerance’ is meant to illustrate this. I agree that there are other roots – Crenshaw and Foucault for two. Though Marcuse strikes me as the main one given his popularity in the 60s and 70s and the influence that will have had on US college teachers then and now.
White privilege itself was a term defined by a woman called Peggy Macintosh. She isn’t a Marxist. More a feminist. It did then get latched onto by followers of Foucault. Standard Marxists were left in the dust though as the whole thing moved to race not class. It does seem like Marxism though, replacing class with race. But the roots are varied.
Marcuse was intolerant but he wasn’t the originator of whiteness studies.
And my point has been a school of anything a Marxist doth not make. A case in point; Jacobin magazine is an American socialist magazine that came out of the black civil rights movement. The academics at Jacobin magazine are at loggerheads with BLM over their divisive identity politics leading the middle class racists in BLM to call those Jacobin academics ‘Uncle Toms’. I would argue that the staff at Jacobin magazine have a better understanding of Marxism than the intolerant haters at BLM who are happy to take their 30 pieces of silver from any corporation willing to offer it.
Also, the Spiked editorial view which is ‘old’ left and very anti-BLM, precisely on the basis that middle class identity politics deflects from class injustices.
Which is precisely the old socialist argument against the ‘New Left’ of the BLM which is based on the 30’s Frankfurt School of critical thinking, popularised in the 60s by Marcuse. And which might explain, re your original post, why from the Jacobin POV BLM are Marxist, while they themselves do not want to be known as such.
Eh. That makes no sense.
Which bit? Makes sense to me.
The BLM outfit has openly declared that they are Marxist Pete. Agreed, middle class wokeness is mostly mindless, cowardly, quasi religious virtue signaling.
Marx deserves a fair dollop of blame though, he developed the moral and philosophical justification for resentment.
That is what we are seeing being played out, as if the terrible, final consequences of that most evil emotion weren’t obvious enough in the twentieth century.
BLM calling itself Marxist doesn’t make it Marxist. Surely the proof is in the pudding? Why do you think wokeness sits so well with Harry and Meghan’s aristocracy? With every major corporations exploitative practices? Let’s not kid ourselves.
It’s a new twist on Marxist principles. This time, it’s easy for the rich to join in as it’s not attacking them.
Well then surely it’s no longer Marxist principles?
Hi Pete, I’m not sure it really matters what it’s called (unless you are concerned about giving Marxism a bad name) as we generally seem to be in agreement that it’s all a load of Boll*ocks.
Interesting discussion though.
It’s bourgeois LIBERALISM and about division serving the ruling class elites. Wasting your time arguing with people who can’t separate that from CLASS analysis. This tactic has been used throughout the ages, known as divide and conquer. No “solidarity” or economic analysis, state analysis, LAW analysis or unification about the fact that police are STATE violence and in the US they kill many unarmed people of all races, particularly mentally ill people. Furthermore, the IDEALISM of BLM which centers “transwomen of color” is thoroughly anti-Marxist as it is the most individual lunacy possible. Marxism is about material reality, not about pretending you can magically become the opposite sex because…..magic……it’s IDPOL which is the epitome of LIBERALISM. It is its logical terminus.
And of further fun, BLM never states that it is black males who kill black “transwomen” (males) while expecting the rest of atomized society to accept responsibility for things caused by……. while pretending this “oppression” is the result of “systemic racism”. Have any of the rest of you gone to their “statement of purpose” page? Try it before spewing about shifting the blame of LIBERAL ideology (fact) onto Marxism. Corporations taking up the “cause” as advertising and calling for book burnings, using the state to criminalize people for using the wrong “think” or “pronouns” and who exhibit “microaggressions” is FASCISM which liberalism creates. Using the “anti-state” rhetoric of “defund the police” is PROPAGANDA as these groups all NEED the police to CRIMINALIZE the rest of us using the STATE and corporate machinery to do it. Nice try at deflection from the actual make-up and root cause of this, though. Because these groups call themselves Marxists (being completely ignorant of Marxism) doesn’t make them remotely Marxist. Apparently most of you are clearly shown to be completely ignorant of Marxism or you’d recognize liberal IDPOL immediately. Try reading a few books.
Groucho Marx had the best comment on that one…
Well said. I was watching in America when the first knee was bent. It was an intentional insult to the American Flag then misused by others.
Yet
Surely BLM is a re-distributive mindset. It is Frankfurt 11 point in many ways, but fundamentally based on picking and choosing its way through Marx.
No, not at all. It’s very neoliberal in its outlook. Hence the corporate, political, financial and judicial Establishment being able to co-opt its very principles.
That’s simply not true, it’s an error of reasoning.
Businesses hop on board the woke bandwagon because they think it will make the money. That’s all.
Politicians hop on board because they are adept at giving lip service. It doesn’t cost them anything (they believe) and it makes them look good.
I’m not sure how the judicial Establishment can be described as being supportive of wokeness, though. The police, perhaps, because they too are always looking to improve their image and think this is a good way of going about it.
None of that justifies calling BLM neo-liberal, though.
The fact BLM takes money from corporations at every available opportunity justifies calling them neoliberal, though. It’s certainly not something a Marxist organisation would be comfortable with doing.
I’m happy to admit the shorthand “Marxists” is something of a grab bag, in the absence of anything more accurate, to cover Progressivism, Social Justice, Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics, Political Correctness,, Wokeness etc,
Yoram Hazonay, in his excellent essay on Quillette “The Challenge of Marxism” elaborates:
“The story of how “neo-Marxism” emerged after the First World War in the writings of the Frankfurt School and Antonio Gramsci has been frequently told, and academics will have their hands full for many years to come arguing over how much influence was exerted on various successor movements by Michel Foucault, post-modernism, and more. But for present purposes, this level of detail is not necessary, and I will use the term “Marxist” in a broad sense to refer to any political or intellectual movement that is built upon Marx’s general framework as I’ve just described it. This includes the “Progressive” or “Anti-Racism” movement now advancing toward the conquest of liberalism in America and Britain. This movement uses racialist categories such as whites and people of color to describe the oppressors and the oppressed in our day. But it relies entirely on Marx’s general framework for its critique of liberalism and for its plan of action against the liberal political order. It is simply an updated Marxism.”
So, what is Marx’s ‘plan of action’ in the most general terms? My impression of Marx (from reading some of his stuff) is that he was long on analysis and short on plans of action. People who came along later (for example, Lenin, or, to go really far afield, Marcuse) who claimed to be Marxists read whatever they wanted into the analysis.
The founders are anti-capitalists: I can’t think of any school of thought that is anti-capitalist other than radical environmentalism, theocracy or Marxism. (I don’t think there are many people advocating feudalism at the moment.)
Because they’re confused, bandwagon-jumping hypocrites desperate to play a relevant role. Harry doesn’t want to admit that his privilege does not come from his white skin but from the fact he’s from the royal family and utterly loaded. So it’s convenient for him to talk about “white privilege” because that makes it sound that he’s no “worse” than other white people.
For Meghan, the focus on racial identity is a good way for her to justify marrying into the most privileged white family on the planet.
Companies do whatever they think will increase their profits. That’s all.
For a long time, the BLM website clearly stated its Marxist, anti-Western, anti-nuclear family belief system. The organisation has now changed its name to the Black Liberation Front or similar and has, I believe, hidden its real beliefs.
On the plus side, if they were take power, Lineker would be stripped of his wealth and his various properties handed out to BLM officials.
That’s the point; Lineker wouldn’t be stripped of his wealth by these people. BLM habitually take donations from rich corporations. They and their middle class white allies (who, incidentally all seem to live in middle class white enclaves) have a main aim of dividing people on the grounds of race, sex and gender. They do not promote equality of opportunity.
Sorry Fraser, but if you look at totalitarian states, those in the right circles get and keep everything they want. Under BLM, Lineker wouldn’t need to hide property deals via Panama as he’d be free to do what the hell he liked with his millions.
But Lineker would probably be a BLM official by then.
As would all the PL players. Apart from the very newest players, the majority of players are multi-millionaires who quite happily tolerate screwing the fans of their hard-earned entrance fees. The average weekly wage in the PL is 60,000 pounds a week, with some, like Rashford on 200,000 pounds a week, not to mention his 10 million pounds a year sponsorship deals, and Pogba on 350,000 pounds a week! Perhaps I should start supporting the disgusting and vile BLM or BLF, pinching my nose hard just long enough to see its aim achieved of screwing the playing parasites. What a perverse pleasure that would be!
If woke is Marxist then a hell of a lot of capitalists and corporations are Marxist. It isn’t. It’s no threat to the ruling classes, surely you realise that if it were a danger to that class then the narrative of the BBC, the mainstream media in general, the CEOS around the world would be hostile to it.
I don’t think the penny is going to drop anytime soon.
Culturally Marxist.Economically Capitailist.
I don’t know…Krupp et al did ok under National Socialism…
Nothing to do with what I said.
IMO, you may very well be correct that BLM-inspired Wokeism may not entirely match original Marxist philosophy but that is a distraction because what is happening is clearly what has always happened when anyone has tried to put Marxism into practice.
Of course it always goes badly, and not because “they just didn’t do it right” but because in order to be implemented it requires the destruction of the very things and people that any functioning society needs to prosper.
So the philosophy may not be pure unadulterated Marxism, but the tactics certainly are.
Having recently, and finally, read Gulag Archipelago nothing that is happening right now surprises me in the least.
cancel culture. public shaming. social exile. indoctrination of children. erasing history. abrogation of personal rights and freedoms.
You name it.
It’s there.
So yes in that sense it’s Marxism.
It’s also Bolshevism, Stalinism, Trotskyism – a whole bagful of isms
and a healthy dollop of anarchy.
The bottom line is that it will end badly – like it always does.
Really? So an IDEOLOGY that is IDPOL and liberalism is Marxist because you finished reading the Gulag Archipelago? Did you read about the imperialism of Europe and the murder they inflicted across the globe before or after that book? Just curious. How about the murders of indigenous peoples for European IMPERIALISM in the US alone? And WHAT does the gulag system have to do with Marxism. I’ve read Marx and never saw a single reference to a gulag system. I live in a classical liberal political economic system (constitutional republic) that has 65-100 million with criminal records (interfering with their employment rights) and 7 million constantly under the thumb of the state through jail/prison/parole/probation and ankle monitoring every year. Clueless much?
Oh dear!
You seem very unhappy – are you OK?
I’m sorry that you seem unable to reconcile the advertised pre-release joys of Marxism with the well-documented abject human misery that has resulted any time anyone has ever tried to implement it.
Perhaps when you were hyperventilating you missed my point that the tactics required to make Marxism work are the problem – no matter how appealing the philosophy may be to some.
Marxism – and it’s assorted variations and interpretations has never worked because it is so impractical and unrealistic it can never attract enough willing volunteers to make it work.
“Attendance is Mandatory”.
So to claim that Marx never said anything about gulags may be truthful yet disingenuous because they and other tools such as re-education camps were required to deal with refuseniks and other enemies both real and imagined.
It’s like “Anyone who refuses to join my non-violence Protest for Peace will get a punch in the face”
Yes I’ve read GA but I’ve also read King Leopold’s Ghost regarding atrocities in Africa but I’m guessing that for every story of imperial misery there are a dozen tales of socialist disaster.
Socialism or communism – call it what you like – and go ahead and debate the fine points of what Marx actually wrote – it matters not.
The numbers don’t lie.
The sufferings under imperialist colonialism pale in comparison.
Do injustice, inequality and racism exist in liberal democracies?
Only an idiot would say No.
Then work at fixing it because the ideas proposed as a replacement are proven duds.
And under Imperial Colonialism education, infrastructure, democracy, rule of law, industry, international trade, were introduced. Communism did not do anything like this.
Pretty sure that Europeans didn’t engage in imperialism in the “US alone”.
Those who are in prison or otherwise “under the thumb of the state” surely only have themselves to blame for their predicament if they have transgressed laws?
All are totalitarian and all are committed to supression of freedom of expression?
It has nothing to do with Marx’s philosophy. In fact it is – it’s not even an adulterated version. It is counter to the analysis of capitalism and material conditions for revolution. It’s ultra liberalism – the kind that is rapidly eating itself and becoming it’s own opposite – when liberals go fascistic.
Exactly.
In what sense is wokeness ultra-liberalism, given that it moves the emphasis away from the individual and seeks to restrict freedom of speech? What’s liberal about that?
Just as someone can say “BLM aren’t Marxists just because they say they are”, liberals are not liberals just because they say they are. If they are in favour of restrictions on freedom of speech, they are not liberal.
Current circumstances has also encouraged me to start reading Gulag Archipelago – you’re right, it’s all there, and I’ve only got as far as the late 1920s…..
excellent analysis
That sounds like a line from a Monty Python sketch.
It does.
That last sentence is pure John Cleese
As does calling everything Marxist when it’s obviously neoliberal. The funny thing about the right is its inability to take responsibility for the logical conclusion of its own political ideas.
Or succinct.
I will try to explain what cultural Marxism means.
Marxists believe that our western capitalist democracies are unjust, founded on exploitation and generally evil. Marxists believe that what is required is not tinkering to implement gradual improvements, but tearing the entire structure down and replacing it with something else, i.e.a system based on Marxism.
When it became perfectly obvious that all attempts to impose Marxist economic doctrines on society led to greater poverty and widespread misery, stagnation and grey conformity, and that the Marxist system could only be kept in place by authoritarianism and massive human rights abuses, those who still hated western capitalist democracies thought it would be a good idea to try another approach.
This is ‘cultural Marxism’: western capitalist democracies are still uniquely evil, but this time the emphasis on their asserted non-economic failings: racism, sexism, various -phobias and, more recently, fascism and white supremacy.
What links cultural Marxism with economic Marxism is a) the idea that western capitalist democracies are irredeemably evil; b) the startling disconnect between that assertion and reality, both in economic terms and in ‘cultural’ terms; c) the authoritarianism that is apparent in the opponents of western democracies, including a desire to restrict freedom of speech and even of thought; d) the fact that the opponents’ utopia is a muddle of contradictions and impossibilities and, most importantly, exists only in their heads – no such ‘fair’ society as they seem to be imagining has ever existed.
That’s how I see it, anyway.
In defence of the players, it is the Premier League (and FA) who have encouraged this awful ritual, and they haven’t “got the gonads” to instruct clubs to stop it.
One thing you can be sure of, is that the employees at those two organisations will not be “taking the knee” at the start of their working days.
This is an uusually mild column from Douglas Murray.
Just as these idiots “ordered” to behave in this nauseating manner by the FA mindlessly continue this perverse behaviour, so I find myself instantly turning away and muttering words of disgust reach time I see it, it has become a reflex reaction.
I have been writing short stories,and being a fiootball fan one of my stories is about football, and ironically I used Millwall as an example – I won’t explain exactly what yet, wait for the story to be published – but it correlates very well with their suppporter’s behaviour.
As Douglas Murray writes – in this context long overdue.
This silly inane empty gesture copying an American footballer who lost his career because he was insulting his country by refusing to acknowledge a very long established American tradition that is an expression of loyalty and love of one’s country – has no business on an English football field.
The stupidity of the FA in continuing to fail to recognize that, and instead support a virulently anti-American, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic, anti-capitalist, thug organization that openly advertises its destruction of civilized society intentions deserves all the ridicule people can throw at it.
Well said
Safe to road test jokes and opinions at home? Maybe not for long. Even the ability to have one’s jokes or opinions tested (and improved) at home could be eradicated by the Hate Crime & Public Order (Scotland) Bill or, if the Law Commission gets its way, by removing the “dwelling” privacy exception from hate speech legislation. Cue the disgruntled family member turned informant.
Sounds familiar
Yes, it’s quite frightening when one thinks of the consequences should such legislation occur. In addition to the scams around covid and the climate, I’ve been enormously disappointed that Boris didn’t come out more strongly when BLM was causing mayhem in London. He could immediately dispatch the Law Commission’s recommendations into the long grass, which they deserve, but has said nothing, leading to the suspicion that he’s bought into the metropolitan progressivism nonsense. Isn’t it amazing, too, that it takes Millwall supporters to remind us of common sense?
On Fulham Supporters Facebook page (around 12000 members), someone did a poll, “No right or wrong/ judgement, do you think players should ‘take the knee’ before the game? Just reply Yes or No without explanation”… It was 80% No, 20% Yes.
There had been multiple debates on the issue in the group previously and people in favour of players taking the knee seemed to outweigh people against judging by comments and how ‘forceful’ they were.
However, when this poll asked people to merely express a ‘yes/no’ view without a debate and so removed the threat of being accused of racism; the results were exactly the opposite to what you would have thought from the previous discussions where that accusation was regualrly deployed.
I’m not surprised. When asked by pollsters, people will say what they feel comfortable admitting to. In a private vote the truth comes out.
“Britons never, never, never shall be slaves”.
(Conditions may be amended and freedoms withdrawn at any time without notice. Please ensure you read the terms and conditions in full.)
We are all Millwall now.
It’s been a strange, strange year, has 2020.
That was because the slavers from the Barbary were taking British people as slaves in very large numbers. North Africa and Arabia really were the big players in African slavery, and white slavery with millions of East European children sold into slavery to the Muslim nations over the years. An interesting group of Christian slaves were the Mamlukes, Christian slave soldiers, the last great battle, which destroyed the Egyptian Mamluke army occurred under Neapolitan. Also KSA only outlawed slavery in 1962! But it was tolerated for decades after.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – gotcha.
Presumably by Neapolitan you mean Napoleon Bonaparte?
Are you sure you are not confusing the Mamlukes with Ottoman Janissaries?
Although some Britons were enslaved by Barbary Pirates they can hardly de described as “very large numbers”. Perhaps you are making an oblique reference to the spectacular raid on the Anglo Irish settlement of Baltimore, Co Cork, in the 1620’s?
Of course footballers or anyone for that matter shouldn’t take the knee. Their problem is that footballers currently have little option. If I were a professional footballer at that level (in the current climate) I ask myself, what would I do if I objected to the idea of giving homage to a political belief I intensely dislike? It would be a very brave footballer to take a principled position. So I have some sympathy for the footballers who are told to do this. The irony is that those footballers, many of whom are black are more privileged and live a much more coddled life that the spectators who pay good money to watch them. I also have borderline contempt for the organizations that promote this nonsense. The FA and the BBC are the prime culprits. Fortunately I watch non league football where the knee taking has not so far permeated. Talking to supporters at my local club, the consensus is we would turn our backs on the players if the knee taking occurred.
very good comment,
especially as in the American example the player did lose his career,
When that player started taking a knee, he had already lost his starting place in the lineup, so let’s at least be accurate. The NFL has a long history of giving jobs to wife abusers and assorted others with checkered pasts, so Kaepernick’s issue was not taking a knee, it was the perception that his best days were behind him. Plenty of other guys who took knees or raised fists kept on playing.
you are not correct,
Kaepernick’s behaviour was seen as an unnecessary direct offense to American patriotism and inappropriate on the playing field of sports, and that’s why he became unemployable in football,
his gesture belonged to be debated in the political arena,
for those who know a little about American sports, equally divisive and seen as inappropriate has been the insulting behaviour of the captain of the American Women’s soccer team who won the world cup.
As the privileged representative/ambassador of the country she has been viewed with distaste by most people. Her personal political views did not belong in the sports arena, when you are representing your country.
Add Sky to the FA and BBC.
That is quite funny, the observation that the minted black players are doing this in front of white working class fans.
Aren’t a lot of the Premiership footballers enjoying “black privilege”?
No, of course our footballers should not be taking the knee – it is demeaning and abject behaviour which just annoys the majority.
Let’s be honest, the booing comes as a surprise to absolutely no-one in the real world.
Wait til they hear the cacophony that will be unleashed when the stadiums are full.
I do hope they keep it up so we can enjoy that glorious spectacle.
The woke London elite have stolen our state institutions, they’ve stolen the Labour Party from the provincial working class, they’ve stolen the Conservative Party from free-enterprisers and they’ve stolen our free speech. Stealing the knee from defenceless black Americans really is very small fry.
Add the BBC and the Guardian.
Being afraid to be the first to get up off their knees, lest they be denounced as a not anti-racist reminds me of the footage of those terrified to be the first to stop clapping when Saddam or Stalin had finished a speech.
Blimey. It’s almost as though you read the article.
Ha Ha
Very good
The public simply recognises what the elite pretends does not exist, namely that BLM is a political movement determined to take resources, respect and rights away from ordinary people and hand them over to self appointed activists who have no authority or right to these resources.
Boo indeed.
Black Lives [do] Matter. Unfortunately, too many Blacks, in the country that gave us the slogan, seem not to have heard. Gun violence, single mothers, teenage pregnancy, derelict fathers, etc… too little has changed.
Not that you’re allowed to say that much of black culture is very unappealing to the average Brit.
🤣 commentator and crisp – seller 😂
I didn’t think that comment reflected well on Murray
Murray is good at the drive by shooting.
Adds a bit of fun for me and a bit of annoyance you.
Gary Lineker is one of the most annoying and most overpaid of the white privileged people on television. He should stick to commenting on 22 men chasing a ball around a field.
Actually I think the BBC would easily be able to find a prominent ex footballer to take his place introducing MOTD. The £1.75m salary is not for that. It’s because of the woke political stuff. That’s what they like. Even the footie on Saturday becomes politically palatable to them with his help. If said Crisp Seller had just kept it to introducing MOTD and perhaps SPOTY then Auntie could have kept the other £1.5m.
Alas for all us BBC licence payers his salary has been reduced to only 1.35 million pounds a year. Still, I’m sure his supply of crisps will continue to be free of charge.
I’m fairly sure ratings would not change radically if they ran MOTD as an analysis free collection of highlight reels. Save a few bob.
Indeed. A presumptuous prat, overpaid, mediocre, and backed by Shearer and Wright, none of whom contributes anything original in their ‘analyses’ of games which isn’t already blindingly obvious to the viewer of MOTD.
Don’t watch it! Change will not happen unless the BBC lose viewers. If you can’t live without it then don’t complain. I no longer have a TV because I couldn’t bear the thought of contributing to the salaries of such as Lineker.
Why do you all hate poor Gary so much? I think it’s because he’s actually homed asylum seekers, so there’s all this frustration that the virtue-signalling diabtribe has to be choked back down.
Crisps are thought to be one of the least healthy popular food products in existence. If you subscribe to the Guardian’s thinking – which I would wager Lineker does – individuals bear almost no blame for their obesity or other health problems caused by unhealthy food. It is almost entirely the food producers that are to blame.
Why should someone who enjoys flaunting his morality not be mocked as hypocrite?
Because he allowed a rather well educated Balochi “asylum seeker” to stay in his home for a few days.
I am a Cardiff City fan and they are the same type of working class supporters as Millwall ( back in the day the punch ups were epic) It is crystal clear from threads on the clubs message board that they will not be putting up with any taking the knee nonsense. Some of the club officials and players read the boards and I suspect that they will drop the taking the knee nonsense as soon as fans are allowed back in.
Good to know.
I hope yo are right.
This whole business illustrates just how divisive Critical Race Theory and BLM is. At the heart of this gesturing, is a lie. It is that BLM is just another expression of concern for racial equality. It isn’t. it is, in the words of Malcom X, about bringing about change by any means necessary. Even through dishonesty.
Who knows what the motives of Millwall supporters were? There may have been an element of thorough going racists among them. There may have been a few principled Unherd readers. If so, each would have had very different motives for boo-ing. And yet, we are asked to believe, that those lining up to criticise them- the Linekers, the Dublins and the Rooneys, each would have had unique access to the workings of those boo-ers’ minds. For those dismayed by such mindlessness, “the knee” represents one thing and one thing only- solidarity with the FA’s Kick It out campaign. Except. of course it doesn’t. Misunderstanding, division, accusation and counter-accusation. And at The Knee’s heart- an organisation with defunding the Police and “disrupting the nuclear family” integral to its manifesto, Look at their web site if you don’t believe me.
Jolly good for the Millwall supporters, even if they weren’t the first; I gather that accolade belongs to either Colchester or West Ham.
Incidentally wasn’t it a Millwall supporter who waded into Sinbad &Co during the London Bridge Terror Attack? He should have been given a Knighthood.
Perhaps someone from this erudite audience can explain why it is Football that has to carry this burden?
We don’t see National Hunt jockeys grovelling in the mud before the 2.20 at Ascot, nor do Professional Golfers routinely abase themselves on the 18th Green, nor has our Cricket team, perhaps surprisingly, been genuflecting in South Africa. So why on earth Football?
Class. It’s an assumption that the more working class supporters of football need education on racial tolerance.
It’s assumed that the erudite audiences of rugby, cricket and golf are more civilized and tolerant.
Obviously based on what you find on forums like this one, it’s a deeply flawed assumption
Yes. In the recent internationals, some rugby players did, others didn’t – from the same team. Some cited religion, others that they didn’t agree with BLM politically, but made the sensible statement that obviously it had no bearing on their views about racism.
Cricket teams have made the gesture as well, so I don’t think the Football as oiks line is right……. let’s face it you can’t move for the entire population of celebdom banging on about their football team these days….
The Working Class have had far more life experience with black lives mattering to them via friendships, marriages etc. The Working Class game of rugby league has led academics, rugby union and the upper classes in accepting people based on their talent and character by 40 years.
Precisely Kevin, it was this sort of preposterous nonsense that so annoyed George Orwell as I recall.
The British people have no need of such a facile gesture. Their history is second to none.
As Jeremy Smith (an American) on this forum, so appositely said a few days ago “the endless contribution to humanity by the British or the gentleness of its population”, tells one we have nothing to be ashamed of.
The Uk society is probably the least racist in the world and its police are probably the best trained and least racist in the world.
Among those of immigrant origins, Indians and Chinese are streets ahead academically , economically and assinmilatively. Closely followed by Africans -All three do better than White folk and they set an example to us all.
So who is kneeling in the Uk for what ? I suspect most of those footballers would struggle to explain in any detail.
You have a conditioned response to British Policing being best in the world, it is not very good at all, but the British People are mostly law abiding so it sort of works out. If British Police were to try to Police America the nation would descend into utter chaos.
I don’t believe Brits are more or less law-abiding than anyone else. The difference is guns. America will never leave the top of the global murder charts until it figures out how to get rid of them.
The French Police get stuck in mind… and black, white, young, old it doesn’t matter much to them… But I agree it’s Guns that make the difference…Death by Police here are low single figures, and most of them have been high profile knife wielders like the London Bridge/Parliament etc ones.
In the USA deaths by police are in the very high hundreds. And guns play a part in their whole spectrum of fear, apprehension and precipitate action by Police and criminals…so more *not showing of hands* over there ends up with shooting.
But given the manaical levels of doommongery going on in the media just now we seem to have remarkabley little kicking off really.
Have a look at FBI statistics which break down rates of violent crime and murder by demographics and regions in the US, the places where gun murder rates are highest (they are NOT the places with the highest rates of legal gun ownership) as well as stats on things like the type of weapon used in murders, and whether the weapon was legally owned or not. You may find them interesting. Also, Switzerland I believe has a higher rate of gun ownership than the US (almost every household has at least one firearm) but a very low violent crime rate. It isn’t all about guns.
Taking a knee.
Tearing down statues.
Re-writing history.
Token BIPOC hiring.
Riots and vandalism.
Coerced apologies and self-flagellation.
Suppression of free speech.
Indoctrination and re-programming.
Just a few of the tactics used and/or promoted by the Woke-mongers.
My response to purveyors and adherents of this nonsense is always the same.
Either you are stupid – or you think I am.
You are either supporting this garbage because you’re too naïve and stupid to see it for what it actually is and the damage it’s causing.
Or
You are a willing participant and true believer bent on destruction or an opportunistic chancer trying to further your own ends and you think I’m too stupid to figure it out.
Either way – be damned.
This political virus has infected Formula One now too, thanks mostly to the grievously oppressed Lewis Hamilton.
Can’t tell you how pleased we were with Russell doing so well in the GP yesterday but did wonder if his pit-stop was sabotaged by his own team
Russell was crazy good.
And we still have to endure the omnipresent rainbow though it’s not clear whether we are supporting LGBTQ or the NHS.
I am clapping for LGB&Q, the gay home improvement community.
Very good, very droll!
What does the kneeling accomplish? It is no more than a modern-day two minutes of hate wrapped in “look at me.” That’s it. These players have the pulpit, the name recognition, and the connections to do something, but that would mean, well, doing something instead of just posturing.
Since then, there has been a chorus of condemnation of Millwall supporters from every possible quarter.
Well, of course, there has. How dare the proles dare voice an opinion that deviates from that of their betters. Have they forgotten their place?
I don’t think the players give the politics or the cause a thought one way or the other. Just as England players in 1936 were quite happy to give a Hitlergruß to be polite so they could get on with the footie. They want to play football, pass go and collect their millions. If the PR person says the players should kneel lest Gary lay into the club on MOTD then you don’t want to be “that guy” sat on the bench just to keep Gary happy.
Millwall and West ham,Ipswich Fans all boed The marxist Knee dropping.
.I remember the hypocrisy of the Football league Fining Robbie Fowler ”For Supporting Liverpool dockers” Around 1997, and NOT allowing Poppies on Footballers shirts..the hypocrisy is nauseating..
I’m beginning to think that taking the knee just isn’t enough for footballers. How about lying prostrate on a wet pitch for about half an hour while punching themselves in the face? And then pledging 95% of their earnings to this worthy cause, not just for one week, but in perpetuity?
I’d watch that.
How about lying prostrate on a wet pitch for about half an hour while punching themselves in the face?
They do that anyway to get an opposing player sent off.
Black Lives Matter every bit as white lives. Of course that is a given. But BLM as a movement is highly political with aims contrary to those of the majority of the population of the U.K. or USA.
I absolutely hate watching the players all take the knee before games. Football should not be political.
I salute those Millwall fans brave enough to stand up to this nonsense. And utter rubbish spoken by Lineker saying they are all racist. No they are not, I bet they all have many black friends and colleagues whom they love and get along with just fine. It’s the organisation and what it stands for that they object to.
It’s always worth reminding ourselves that the vast majority of footballers are incredibly thick so looking for political insight will be a futile task.
I think they are mostly devoid of any insight, but they do know about offside.
Actually I always defend footballers on this subject. I don’t believe their intelligence distribution differs from the population as a whole. They can appear stupid, but this is because they are schooled not to say anything interesting, and are invariably asked very dumb questions. However, with regard to the population as a whole, never forget George Carlin’s words:
“Just think how stupid the average person is. Then remember that half of them are even more stupid than that.”
😂
No man who can earn £5 million a year for kicking a ball around can reasonably be called stupid. You may of course call me shallow.
oh please, totally different skill and co-ordination,
even in the England team there are some unbelievably inarticulate people who can barely verbalize a complete English sentence
Blimey Joe, lighten up.
I would suggest that all you are saying is that intelligence can express itself in different ways.
Sadly neither you nor I can convincingly display it in any format
speak for yourself, your comment is childishly unnecessarily offensive
How so?
Are you being ironic?
I think you badly misunderstood Terry’s post.
I understand Colin Kazim-Richards prefers to stand up & raise his fist instead. Has he ever explained why he does this instead?
Everybody has their thing.
Most people here couldn’t kick a ball – why we would think footballers could get their heads round a political issue?
They are just pawns albeit rich one’s.
“UEFA states that clubs must not allow any message that is not fit for a sports event, particularly messages that are of political, ideological, religious, offensive or provocative nature, to be displayed within the ground.”
Millwall should take the FA to court
I never thought I would applaude a football crowd let alone Millwall.But I have. BLM is a political extreme pressure group conning people.BLM yes but not only BL.ALM yes…All Lives Matter. Yes there is personal racism still in every society, however as a society the UK is among the least racist and most tolerant of almost anybody’s persona or behaviour as lomng as it is not detrimental to others. I therefore feel quite annoyed at being lumped with the USA which I know from personal experience has a lot of problems we ,the UK ,have grown out of.
I have also travelled the world and there are many “black” “non caucasian” countries where racial intolerance is a century behind.
As for “taking the knee” no way to anybody exceptwhen I proposed.
Well done, Milwall fans. This is the only way to show OUR displeasure at people going down on their knees to the Marxist BLM.
Millwall fans have a history (years of it) of unsavoury behaviour. They are not the only ones. Kick It Out has gone some way to eliminating racist behaviour in football, chanting and the use of bananas as a soft missile, for example is not tolerated. Maybe some feel this booing is an outlet for behaviour now banned…
Having been thwarted by the games hierarchy, the fans must feel some sort of frustration, as the same hierarchy finds it difficult to employ black managers/coaches in numbers comparable to player ratios. Only 6 black managers in the 92 top flight teams.
Interestingly, the next Millwall match is against QPR tomorrow. QPR’s Director of Football is Les Ferdinand, the only black man in this position in the top flight. Mr Ferdinand stopped his team taking the knee back in September, declaring the gesture “little more than good PR”.
I would like to suggest a solution, but not sure there is one. Booing what started out as an anti-racist gesture is wrong. Making an anti-racist gesture 6 months after a distant racist event, when the industry you work in displays racist tendencies makes me feel uncomfortable as well…
Good old Super Les
Sir Les is right, of course. He no doubt realizes the truth that if you keep taking the knee forever with no specific aim, then it becomes meaningless. Not only that but it creates a rift between those who do and those who don’t. Obviously that’s that some people want.
It is also a substitute for action.
Such as having more black directors of football.
when I was growing up I don’t think there was a single black player, certainly none in the England team, now every leading team not only here but also in Europe has plenty, it took time,
there will eventually be plenty of black managers, as the current group of good black players mature and find that they still want to use their skills and their greater understanding of the game to lead and manage the next generation, as the current (mostly white) managers who were mostly very good players themselves a few years ago,
just remember, not every good player can also become a good manager, totally different skills required
Unfortunately, when denied any other form of protest, when your objections are ignored, you take whatever steps you can. This is why many people with just cause for concern are forced to extremes means. By contrast, a bit of booing is a minor inconvenience; they could have wrecked the place.
I hate arguments about percentage representation. Aren’t we suppose to hire people based on their ability? And BTW, playing the game and managing a club require different interests and skill sets.
Quire right.
I do not know the percentage of black players in the PL but I would hazard some 30-40%, with the black population in this country being just over 3%. Not bad, eh? All that nasty racism in the game from all the fans! I suppose an average wage of 60,000 pounds a week (Rashford on 200,000 and Pogba on 350,000 a week) demonstrates the entrenched and wide-spread racism in the game – really?
As for black managers in the PL and Championship – you must know (I assume from your good knowledge of the game) that club owners will select those managers/coaches who they hope and believe will deliver success for their clubs absolutely irregardless of their skin colour. Sterling’s recent rant about there not being enough black managers in the PL is just another expression of the poor,
under-privileged and oppressed victim of racism – a supposed grievance which is manifest nonsense as well as being insulting.
I feel the BLM thing came from America where society is incredibly different to ours. The biggest problem are guns.
Police killings in the USA, and killings of police officers, are miles and miles above ours …and the heightened tensions that guns create feeds a situation of suspicion, fear and apprehension on both sides.
I don’t know what the point of BLM , and the extreme end that go on about Critical race Theory, which just seems reverese engineered nonsense at every level, actually is.
If it is to worsen race relations then they’re probably doing a good job…in the UK nobody thought everything was great, nobody thought there wasn’t much still to do…but things are improving and they are better.
The carictures of our society drawn by BLM and picked up by some of the major broadcasters in newsand even comedy, drama and light entertainment are doing far more harm than good. I can see exactly why Millwall fans did it…and more will as well.
The FA should try some thing other than just producing the PR platitudes if they don’t want to end up like the Labour party where virtually all major figures ended up looking as if, not only were they not really representing huge numbers of their core support, they simply didn’t like them any more..
Then were stunned to find these people didn’t want to vote for them last December.
Some good points but with one comment to add: the ‘hierarchy’ doesn’t employ managers – the owners of the clubs do.And owners of clubs are, quite rightly, interested in one thing only – success. Moreover, the owners, I suggest, are not remotely concerned about the colour of their managers, only their ability to achieve the owners’ aims. While black players are vastly over-represented in the Premier League and Championship division compared to their numbers in England with 33% in the Premier League and 3% in the country (where are those mouthing off about ‘equality’?), that’s fine by me because they have great skills and talents, but it’s also clear they do not, as yet, inspire owners to engage them for their managerial skills.
Kneeling, especially ritual kneeling of this kind has ALWAYS indicated subservience.
Can anyone provide me of an example where this is not the case. I have not seen one yet.
Marriage proposal?
It was started as an alternative ‘respectful’ gesture to standing for the American national anthem. But I agree, part of the problem is the uncomfortable optics. I’d prefer the raised fist 🙂
How delightfully, excitingly, middle class Kevin!
Identify with the boys from the ‘hood.
If only I could.
If only you could.
If you are suggesting that a man getting down on one knee to propose marriage is NOT an indication of subserviance, then you are sadly misguided.
And I have my wife’s permission to say this.
Fair point
I agree with most here and believe this clever attempt by the Marxist to gain influence with such a name must be unmasked and stopped by means of the supporters withdrawing specially monetary support.
The snowflakes who kneel to the black Marxist god haven’t a clue what they are doing nor whom they are supporting. These Marxists who attack our flag on the Cenotaph are people who wish to overthrow our state which was in its Imperial days the only and first world supper power which spent money to free slaves and not to make them in the entire history of man and in opposition mostly to black kings and Moslem kings who made a living out of slavery.
The black lives Marxists should not be supported and fans should stop backing their clubs if out of ignorance their players support the Marxists enemies of England.
You think maybe it has something to do with the Marxists? You were a proud slave trading nation, you built cities on the money made from slaves. So you eventually stopped, big whoop.
Whilst many other nations and people did not stop.
Yes, England, like some other European countries, did cash in on a well-established and thriving trade in Africa where blacks enslaved vast numbers of their own tribes and others to sell to the Arabs. But England saw the evils of the trade after a while and spent a fortune and at the cost of many English lives to abolish it. So yes to your sneering ‘whoop’. Make that ‘WHOOP!’
We have footballers, racing drivers, rugby players and others performing this ludicrous ritual for reasons of 1 virtue-signalling, 2 fear of the ‘cancellation culture’ or 3 damage to career/income.
Where does this madness end – snooker and darts? ‘Strictly’, perhaps, with Claudia Winkleman genuflecting sombrely before the cha cha cha? The Red Bull soap box derby? Maybe the school sports-day sack race to ready our youngsters for a lifetime of obeisance n demand?
I unashamedly absolutely love the Red Bull soapbox derby.
Interestingly at yesterday’s international rugby match some knelt some didnt. Which were the braver ?
The whole French team remained standing. Good for them.
No fan of the French – but they got my respect , it seems predominantly a USA/UK phenomenon
An excellent question and one that you won’t hear asked on any mainstream channel or news platform.
Indeed. BLM has no relevance to this country – it is a hard left Marxist organisation forged by and exploiting the racial issues of the USA.
The USA indeed has problems going back centuries and its use of slave labour for agriculture, followed by emancipation leading to impoverished ghettoes of blacks in many US cities. Combine with often racist and brutal police tactics and you have a combustible situation which has been self evident for generations.
This is relevant in the UK? How?
Let’s face it – do we really care. Dion Dublin is entitled to his opinion – as am I. I don’t take the knee and there is no likelihood of me starting. His opinion is, as he states, that I am therefore a racist. I’m not. His view, in my opinion, is two dimensional and bigoted. I have actively opposed racism all my life. The players may be genuinely passionate about this and if they are they will be spending lots of time and effort actively fighting racism whenever they find it. If all they do is take the knee that’s just virtue signalling and will do nothing of value.
maybe they read the BLM manifesto, which if Dublin did, he failed at comprehending it. There is not one positive affirmation of men, and not one mention of fathers. Lots of the usual leftist claptrap re: trans people, gays, and the usual victimology.
Most people are not half as clever as they think they are, Except on this forum of course! :0)
That’s because dear Dion doesn’t know the difference between cheap meaningless gestures and thinking.
It’s not often I feel solidarity with Millwall supporters but now I feel a growing respectfor them… As Douglas says, Britain is not an inherrently racist place and, knowing that, we should all start showing some common sense and backbone. Like Harry the Dog.
It wasn’t only the Millwall game where this occurred .
West Ham and Colchester United matches too.It will be interesting to see how Sky react if this becomes a regular reaction from the paying public.
Felipe Anderson refused to take the knee at the start of a West Ham game earlier this season.
Deafening silence from the PL.
If, as G Lineker asserts, these deplorables are a ”minority” then surely they must be in need of our understanding and sympathy?
The lockdowns have at least something to do with keeping the public neutered and obedient, away from the pubs and spectator sports, for fear people will come together and make their own minds up about the risk and restrictions, and that once decided there will be too many to control and arrest.
The lockdowns have probably given people a respite from the obedience conditioning of mass spectator sports and group think social conditioning.
Having been a LFC fan and attended matches for many decades I can honestly state that I have not heard a racist comment or chant since the 80s and even then it was rare. If it were to happen now the culprit would be ridiculed, shouted down and probably reported to the stewards. This is the reality. We are predominantly not a racist society and we should be proud of this.
I am a heretic in this new religion because I am my own man.
I think anti-black racism in the stands has mainly gone in the UK. I heard an Asian player being loudly abused a couple of seasons back at Fulham. It seemed like he was fair game in a way black players weren’t.
If Pro footballers wish to show how anti racism they are, they should give at least 50-75% of their obscenely over-inflated salaries to causes like education for underpriviliged kids ( exclusively black, if they must).
Linekar seems to have offered accomidation in his pamatial home to refugees. Wonderful. More crisps to him!
One refugee stayed in one of Lineker’s homes for a few days, or a couple of weeks at the most.
You don’t really like that, do you? The fact that Lineker actually lives by his values. You don’t know what to do with that bile.
Lol
all those people who have stopped clapping the NHS on thursday nights obviously hate the NHS
But what about those of us who never started ? The inefficiency of the NHS is startling.
One prejudice that never goes away and, if anything, is getting worse, is against the white working class. How dare they express an opinion.
To simplify things, BLM and the rest of the woke nonsense is all about dividing the working class (particularly blue collar) against one another on gender, race and on and on. After all these people have far too much in common and may pose a problem if they join forces once again. Meanwhile those who have historically exploited and looked down on these people get a big √ beside their name whilst they continue their bigotry and the useful idiots see nothing but what the bigots tell them.
It is remarkable that some white people have become spellbound by a movement which is, by definition, ‘racist’. BLM is a movement dedicated exclusively to the advancement of black people. A similar movement for white people would be, likewise, racist yet though it might have the same objectives for white people would be roundly condemned by those same people as being racist! How odd!
Millwall’s song: “No-one likes us, and we don’t care” – the very antithesis of life on social media.
I think you’d find a pretty appropriate audience for it here
I noticed that not all rugby Union players took the knee in the recent internationals.
Am I right in thinking no comment was made about this.
Oh! I’d be happy to take the knee and hear her Her Majesty ” Arise Sir what’s your name again?” 🙂 More seriously as a Yorkshireman anyone suggesting I go down on one knee or showing any form of intimidation to do so I can show them another use for the knee and it ain’t anywhere near the ground.
Morris dancing?
🙂 In Yorkshire?
Who will be the first football manager to not rush to “disgust” and instead say, “I will talk to the fans”?
It would need to be a brave one.
Just get on with the match, I think was the main sentiment expressed.
The events which led to the start of this odd ritual occurred in USA as a protest about the unfair treatment of people of colour in USA. It has minimal relevance in U.K.
your are half correct about the reason part, but you ignore how deeply insulting it was to the people, to the country, to the tradition,
that is why the player lost his career, and imitating it in England is so inappropriate,
The events which led to the start of this odd ritual occurred in USA as a protest about the unfair treatment of people of colour in USA.
Those events were based on a lie About 75% of civilians killed in confrontations with law enforcement are non-black. If one goes the “disproportionate” route to say that blacks are 13% of the population, they also carry about a bit more than half the homicides, and their victims are overwhelmingly black. Yet, those lives apparently do NOT matter, for they have no political utility.
Pretty much spot-on, Douglas. I went into Waterstones today and I was really disturbed by how many woke tomes were on display concerned with the matter of race.
“Most people in Britain are clearly shown ” in poll after poll as well as their everyday actions ” to have little or no tolerance for racism. They want nothing to do with it.”
The problem is that there are wide-ranging definitions of racism. Most of us won’t abuse someone of a different race or endorse ethnic minorities being treated badly by police. We wouldn’t condone a black man, criminal or not, being the victim of excessive force by a police officer. But in a predominantly white country, do we want to be obsessing about the needs of black people all the time? Did we even want so many of them here in the first place? That’s a tough statement to make, but the answer is probably no. Many people have voted with their feet and moved to whiter areas. So no, white Brits don’t hate people from other races, but they don’t necessarily want to be surrounded by them. It’s taboo to say so, but the nature of where people choose to live suggests it’s true. However, those preferences would be deemed as “racist” by the woke activists.
This wasn’t a problem which Britain was so consumed with until the 1950s. Doesn’t mean that there was no racism, but as there were fewer people from other races, it was comparatively rare. The influx of ethnic minorities from abroad was a decision taken by the elites, and not the people of this country. This is not America, which has a very different history when it comes to race.
I personally am glad that the football crowd booed – it doesn’t mean they’re all knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who support black people being unfairly treated. It means that they’ve come to watch a football match, and don’t want this near-religious act of political symbolism brought into the game.
I think the comment sections on sites like this are where people can often express their “real” views away from the bear pit of Twitter. This whole movement is like trying to re-program our brains and police our thoughts. People do have unpalatable thoughts – they can’t be changed en masse.
Well said.
Thank you.
I head a BBC commentator stating the players were kneeling to signify their stance against racism and “any and all kinds of injustice” suitable wide ranging and noble to be ultimately meaningless, unless they are generally concerned about the famine in Southern Madagascar, or the plight of the Rohingya people in Myanmar.
It’s just virtue signalling and the media are fawning over it. Shame on them
“Most people in Britain are clearly shown ” in poll after poll as well as their everyday actions ” to have little or no tolerance for racism. They want nothing to do with it.”
This is why BLM was invented, probably in a joint venture between the Intelligence Agencies in the States and Britain, just as with other change agents in the Balkans and during the ArabSpring and with the White Helmets during the Syrian interference. There isn’t sufficient division between ordinary people, minding their own business and getting on with their lives, so in order to wield power agents of the State, or at least the real establishment, where that differs from a group of elected representatives, must create it.
Hence BLM, XR and Antifa organisations all championed by a certain kind of corporation and followed by the posh kids and trendy headmasters of Public Schools. They are the establishment, they have the power and will use it to keep creating division in order to gain more and more power. In fact in booing Millwall fans were doing just what was expected of them. If they really want to rebel they should stop buying tickets.
If I may say so I think that is a conspiracy too far again Alison, although obviously it is true to say that all the corporations and trendy kids have jumped on board it all. I agree that the football fans should stop buying tickets but these people are addicts, they will always hand over their money to the football God.
I’m with Alison. BLM, XR Antifa…far too organised. Who bank rolls them?
The lizards obviously
Bit feeble minded eh Kev?
C’mon Kev, up your game.
They all laughed when Vanessa Beeley tried to tell the world about who funded the White Helmets. It became harder to laugh when politicians in the Netherlands stated openly they were no longer going to join with Britain, France the US and Israel in funding them, because they had not realised how closely they were tied to the Nusra front and other extremist terrorist groups.
I have served my time as a middle of the road liberal Tory, laughing at other people’s ‘wild conspiracy theories’. But if you are seriously interested in politics, money and power in the end you learn that the world is corrupt and powerful institutions are manipulated by even more powerful ones, part of a chain that ends with the likes of us, powerless, voiceless, unable to resist, unable to defend ourselves, at worst excluded from participating in the world where giant corporations control every aspect of our lives.
But enjoy your idealistic naive period while you can, it is certainly more pleasant than comprehending vile reality.
Occasionally, when you see one of them ranting you know you are watching an out of work actor, trained by a professional. Our brains can spot a phoney a mile off in the dark, even if our consciences resist at first and pretend they are dealing with someone genuine, who happens to hold a very fashionable, extremist point of view.
Of course real people jump on the bandwagon and like to pretend they are being ‘rebels’ of some sort, too naive to realise their rebellion is a charade, designed to push the establishment’s own agenda.
Yes fans will not stop watching football, consumers will not stop buying from Amazon or banking online, our lives have been made convenient for us, and we can’t give up our pleasures, just because authoritarians are going to remove every last vestige of our liberty. We won’t stop consuming the goods produced by corporations that ‘take the knee’ or spew out lies about their eco friendly agendas. That is how successful this revolution is. We are cooperating when we rebel and cooperating when we comply. I don’t know that it will be Karl Marx who ‘strides colossus like over the wreckage of our country’ though it might be one of his Chinese admirers, all I know is that vile, self centred opportunists always exploit division. And that is why they need to create it artificially, where it doesn’t exist.
The first paragraph is the tin opener that opens the can of worms.
Go on then. You ask first.
A gesture of defiance from the Millwall fans (not a minority judging by the amount of noise they managed to make) but doesn’t everyone cave in to BLM eventually? If you intend to resist the cult of black suffering you must be prepared to live with the stigma of being labelled a racist (only one step up from a child molester on the contemporary scale of evil). The force of the backlash will steer all but the most determined onto the comfortable path of conformity.
Let’s see what happens at their next match. They will be playing QPR whose management have ordered all their players to take the knee. Will any of the QPR players show defiance now that the free choice they previously had has been taken away? Will the Millwall fans try to make amends and satisfy the pundits that they are actually a decent bunch of anti-racist chaps who know how to keep their toxic masculinity under control?
“Resist the cult of black suffering”… are you a poet in the planet you come from? And for the record, certainly in my books, being a racist is actually a step down from molesting children. I mean, being a racist entails ones discrimination and antagonism towards an entire race or races of humans, while molesting children only castigates a small subset of any race… but I digress.
From what you write I believe I’d be right to think that you think resistance to being called a racist is far the preferable state to actually not being a racist? I mean, who would prefer resistance, when conforming means that one accepts that racism is evil, Never been to Millwall, not visiting soon, but I know plenty of people like them… good, well-meaning chaps who in fact can’t keep their toxic masculinity under control, and are pleased to demonstrate the fact at any moment.
What on earth are you on about?!
Are you struggling to put together something resembling a cogent argument by any chance? I think this is the first time I have seen spluttering incoherant bluster expressed through keystrokes.
Helpful tip:
Try clarifying your thoughts before reaching for the keyboard. All that is coming through in your posting is the need to put on an ostentatious display how very, very enraged you are by racism (vague though that concept might be).
Perhaps, like a self-consciously virtuous puritan who sees Satan and sin lurking everywhere you see racism in every person who hasn’t confessed and sought atonement for this transgressive sin (call it the “White Fragility heresy” if you will).
I must say that I find it very worrying that you have so completely failed to understand why people (and not just Millwall fans) object to this deliberately humiliating ritual of “taking the knee”. Perhaps this somewhat limited outlook is typical of BLM and their cheerleaders.
(vague though that concept might be)
Sure, really hard to get your poor little head around. Try Patrick White’s comment above to see if you can understand what ‘racism’ might conceivably look like.
My goodness! Have you certainly have embibed the trope:
“racism in every white person and must, must, must, be eradicated at all costs if there is to be any justice or peace in this world”.
Dissenting voices must be silenced ““ SJWs, the good men and true, don’t want to hear a peep out of them!
The SJWs (yes, those good men and true) aren’t ruthless, dictatorial and manipulative moral bullies. Not a bit of it! With wisdom and paternal kindness they are merely trying to raise the consciousness of a nation so steeped in prejudice and bigotry that the benighted citizens just can’t get their poor little heads around just how awful they are. No problem! The SJWs and their cheerleaders will soon let them know!
Cast your net wider! Have you ever taken a hard critical look at current popular claims of racism ““ or are you afraid such wanton curiosity might taint your moral purity? Obviously, it’s safer by far to cheer along the SJWs rather than defy them.
Yet, even one afflicted with limited and often pseudo-intellectual outlook of the contemporary leftwing activist should be able to see how definitions of race are regularly adapted and modified in very opportunistic ways.
By the way, Millwall have decided their players will not be taking the knee from now on. Players and management have listened to their fans ““ even though BLM enthusiasts in the MSM claim it was “just a minority” who booed.
That’s about 3 paragraphs of waffle about SJWs that you’ve put in my mouth.
What I still don’t get after that diatribe is whether Patrick White’s comment about ‘Black men being useless’ counts as racism in your opinion ? Or maybe there’s room for doubt. Just them manipulative moral bullies finding offence everywhere, eh?
An amusing (if rather juvenile) attempt at provocation Mr Ryan.
Rather reminiscent of those activists who stormed a US restaurant a couple months ago and tried to force the customers to disown their “violent silence” by raising a fist in support of BLM. Well Kevin, as our American cousins would say: Nothin’ doin’!
I thought QPR unilaterally stopped “taking the knee” some time ago. I’m sure Les Ferdinand made a statement to that effect.
According to a TV news report QPR management want all their players to take the knee at their next game with Millwall. Presumably they hope to shame all those fans who dared to boo.
great article. great to see the people express themselves. My belief is that nobody has to bend a knee, that’s what equality is all about. All the best
I know all lives matter especially black lives but I can’t help feeling that a society getting on one knee at every opportunity in honour of a character apparently notable for little beyond a penchant for fentanyl and a criminal record for armed robbery has a less than optimal grasp of values.
All lives matter. Not especially black ones.
The idea that the most homophobic organisation in the country is now the standard bearer for social justice is a sick joke.
And even organisations like the RSA that were once based on gloriously empirical, practical work to improve things for people pump out this BLM clap-trap. The truly bizarre thing is that even though most of us despise it, it keeps happening. Why is this?
Fear.
Somewhat fascinating for a U.S. citizen to read this in a UK online periodical. Somewhat, I say. First, a minority of linguists here, laugh at those who write “systematic” racism instead of “systemic”. I would have thought the Brits would have caught that error by now. Second, there is this national difference. Americans don’t just take the knee at the beginning of an athletic event. They do it as the National Anthem is played! That seems not to be a practice in the UK, so one wonders about the meaning in the UK. In the U.S. the meaning is that full freedoms symbolically guaranteed to all under the flag are not in eviidence everywhere. Third, psychologically “taking the knee” is a form of manipulative behavior. If competitor teams are doing it, we’d better do it as well. If we run out of black team members who do it, then all ethnic mates could try it as well. But why on a football field? Why not on a street corner? Because, of course, before Covid there were thousands who had paid to watch your protest (or was it to watch a sporting match)? And now with virtual games, the whole world can watch (or skip the knee ceremony to go grab a beer). As the author correctly says, “maybe this ritual has gone on too long already.” Time for a new systemic ritual, a new way of connecting action and meaning. Only let it be done where people aren’t forced to pay to observe it. Less “systematic” controversy it seems to me.
Like another recent American import ‘Black Friday’ we do it but we don’t really understand why we are doing it and too many people are too stupid to stop doing it.
I did find his use of “systematic” rather than “systemic” odd.
The whole point of identity politics is to set groups all with various grievances against each other. Hence the current on going war between “terfs” and trans.
Maybe I’m the first millwall fan to enter the discussion. Been so since the sixties. Its the family religion. From a strong Labour family. I have am depressed because my club has been the target of organised far right activists since the seventies. Too many of the responses and chants heard at the den are identical to those at far right rallies. It’s more insidious than unwoke idiots. And it’s not just racism.. Sexism, homophobia… You name it. Before anybody adds to this post let them go to a home match and ten tell me it’s just ordinary everyday folk putting two fingers up to the woke elite. It’s much nastier and repellant than that.
Rod Liddle is a supporter.
nuff said.
PS: “Its the family religion.” There’s your problem.
What nonsense.
It’s the attraction of like minds into perfect subsets of a population. The same as you get with a Trump or Farage. Not every Millwall fan is a racist, sexist homophobic scumbag. But every racist sexist homophobic scumbag in London knows he’ll find all his friends at the Den.
I don’t believe a word you have posted here and I absolutely don’t believe you are a Millwall supporter.
Disgraceful and mindless – that would be Rooney describing himself?
Yes.
Read this comment by black ex player and now TV etc pundit. The really frightening aspect is that most of the MSM and presumably the soccer authorities seem to agree with him.
Disagree with taking the knee at your peril!!!!
“Former England striker Dion Dublin said: ‘To me, they are racist. They don’t agree with taking the knee, which means they’re racist.’
I listen to Dion on 5Live, where he is a perfectly entertaining pundit. But obviously he is totally incorrect here and has no understanding of the situation.
perhaps someone could get Dion a dictionary for Christmas so that he might look up the word ‘racist’ and find that it does not mean what he thinks it means.
Enough is enough – give us unadulterated football back please. The appetite of certain movements is simply rapcious – once you start to feed it, where does it stop??
Mr Murray’s point about the surprise shown by players and pundits when confronted by the great unwashed was very well made, but will it make them understand the reality facing them, I think not.
The poison has entered the bloodstream and it will take events larger than a mere football match to change direction of travel…….the Millwall fans are already being demonised as outsiders , serial racists, knuckle dragging thugs. next it will be anyone of a conservative persuasion.
Not to worry. The one knee ritual will die when the current participants age out. At 83 if I went down on one knee I would never get up and if I tried, I would fall over.
Millwall score a hat trick!
Piercing the woke bubble, Roy Larner (People’s GC for fighting 3 terrorists unarmed in Borough Market, but denied an honour because he doesn’t fit the woke agenda) and Brexit voters.
Chapeau!
I was all for this protest, right up until they started naming and shaming the athletes that chose not to participate. Prior to that point it was an inspiring, quietly dignified and respectful act of passive resistance. But cross that line into social coersion and it becomes something ugly and disturbing.
I will only kneel when the Queen touches my shoulder with a sword…
The chairman of Colchester Utd has released a statement condemning fans of his club.
Fans of Colchester Utd, Milwall and any other paying customers who wish to voice their displeasure at and disagreement with players making overt political gestures could perhaps release their own statement before a game making clear that they deplore the politicisation of sport and are in no way waaaaycist but will continue to boo vigorously.
I have always felt it strange that the given reason for Floyd’s death was that the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck, restricting his oxygen supply for about nine minutes in full public view with several people videoing the police/Floyd interaction. It just does not make sense unless Chauvin deliberately wanted to destroy his career and get prosecuted. Then I read the article by George Parry, a former federal and state prosecutor and Chief of the Police Brutality/Misconduct Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, in The Spectator USA, which can be found here: https://spectator.org/georg…
Do read the full article. The salient point is that the evidence recorded on the police body cameras shows that Floyd repeatedly complained that he couldn’t breathe before the police restrained him on the ground, see https://www.youtube.com/wat… The police showed great tolerance towards a suspect who was clearly out of his mind and who was incapable of following their instructions to get in the squad car. It is also telling that many times Floyd begged the officers not to leave him alone.
As documented by Floyd’s autopsy and toxicology reports, his breathing difficulty was caused not by a knee on his neck or pressure on his back, but by the fact that he had in his bloodstream over three times the potentially lethal limit of fentanyl, a powerful and dangerous pain medication known to shut down the respiratory system and cause coma and death. He also had in his system a lesser dose of methamphetamine, which can cause paranoia, respiratory distress, coma, and death. Beyond those findings, his autopsy disclosed no physical injuries that could in any way account for his demise.
This article from 2016 explains why Fentanyl, “heroin’s synthetic cousin” is so dangerous and how “drug users generally don’t know when their heroin is laced with Fentanyl, so when they inject their usual quantity of heroin, they can inadvertently take a deadly dose of the substance.” – https://www.statnews.com/20…
In regard to Chauvin’s possible criminal intent or purported desire to harm Floyd, Minnesota police are trained to use a “neck restraint” technique, which is defined in the official training literature as “compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck). The video of Chauvin kneeling on the side of Floyd’s neck is a textbook application of this officially approved technique. Put another way, by the training that they had received, the police defendants would have no reason to believe that Chauvin’s kneeling on Floyd’s neck was either causing serious harm or anything other than the approved standard operating procedure.
So, the answer to the question “Who killed George Floyd” is “He did.” And for that several police officers’ careers have been destroyed, dozens of mostly black people have been killed in the riots and again mostly black businesses have been burnt to the ground. Utter madness.
I have previously read the description of the real cause of Floyd’s death. Unfortunately it does not fit the narrative of BLM.
Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom.
By Fromm’s definition, wokeness can clearly be seen as a form of facism.
Sure thing Wulvis. So I guess when you obey speed limits, don’t kill the people you’re angry with, put on a seat belt, pay your taxes, honor your wedding vows… you’re just suffering under a fascistic system. Sure.
Most of the things you mention make sense from a safety perspective, or have a moral grounding. It is sensible to wear a seatbelt in case we crash, because we know that otherwise we may be killed in the event of a crash. We know it is wrong to kill someone or cheat, because we can imagine the pain if it happened to someone we love or to ourselves. None of these things have any similarity to the rituals of wokeness. The analogy you have chosen is appallingly badly thought out.
Identity politics generally is a racket, b****r all to do with social justice. The paradigm was/is antisemitism. Feminism, racism, LGBTQ, …, all take their business model from Eli Wiesel & co., and have done very well thank you.
Let’s hope that when things return normal, the ” roar of the crowd” at say Villa Park (capacity circa 45,000) will get everybody on their feet again, and this humiliating interlude will be confined to the dustbin of history.
In Ukraine, during the Maidan Revolution of 2013-2014, the “ultras” footballers led the opposition to Yanukovich and Putin in eastern Ukraine. Please see the “Putin Khuilo” videos on Youtube.’
The political corruption of universal cultural relativsm the left pitch a universal social outcome – multiculturism while the right pitch a universal economic outcome – globalisation.
you haven’t finished the sentence,
the end of the sentence is “a universal economic outcome of gloom, poverty, regression, for all but the dictatorship.”
Thank you, Douglas Murray, for yet another outstanding commentary on many of the social and cultural afflictions pervading our country. I have posted on many occasions in this and other media outlets that BLM is a discriminatory, divisive, racist and profoundly insulting movement to the people of our land.
The grovelling, sycophantic and hypocritical ‘taking the knee’ by all the footballers in the Premier League before kick-off still, as you say, continuing to this day, is, I suppose, a ‘view’ all these grossly overpaid multi-miliionaire have a right to express. Then the spectators who fork out to pay these capitalists screwing them have a perfect right also to express their opinions, and anyone like thicky Rooney and crisp-crunching Lineker, by moaning about the fans expressing their views, expose their own inanity, ignorance and hypocrisy. Well done the Millwall fans! And those others who express surprise and dismay at those fans’ reactions demonstrates how utterly and profoundly out of touch they are with reality.
Two other aspects: many black PL players, besides ‘taking the knee’, add further gross insult by raising clenched fists! And some cretinous Sky TV football commentator, very recently, while oleaginously pratting on about racism during the ‘taking of the knee’, also mentioned another ‘in word’ – equality. I am not quite sure what the moron meant, but if he thinks there is inequality in the representation of white and non-white versus black players in the PL, then my estimate that the league has perhaps 30-40% black players when the black population as a whole is just over 3% would expose him either as an ignoramus or a cretin (in my view both).
I’m sure no one was genuinely surprised that the fans booed when given the first opportunity. With hindsight I guess it was inevitable it would be Millwall fans that broke the mould – although I understand it happened at Chelmsford as well.
The reaction from the media has been just as predictable. But I wonder – if there had been booing or shouting during a minute’s silence at a football match – would it have got so much attention?
As we’ve seen with the outrageous behaviour of Celtic fans to the manager (from outside the ground), the only way to control the mob is to keep it locked up at home. Forever!
Beyond doubt the Queen of the Knee Thing was Nancy Pelosi* in her Kente cloth toga kneeling fairly non stop. Nancy kneels here. Nancy kneels there. Nancy kneels everywhere. It was grand! But now, as winter awaits just off-stage, Nancy has stopped kneeling. Perhaps the grass is wet. Or too cold. Or her 80 year old knees can’t take the drill any longer. Whatever. All I know is that for one brief glorious moment the sun shone on her African togs and we were happy. *(Speaker of the US House of Representatives. She lives in a San Francisco mansion. Very swank is our Nancy. )
BLM have obviously read their Engels as they pledge to destroy the patriarchal family and bring up children collectively, whatever that means.
I am still shocked that people take a knee when George Floyd died after a police officer put his knee on his neck. This continues to shock me as ghoulish.
AS USUAL Douglas Murray enlightened the conversation with his accurate insights.
From the first time I saw it on TV at the start of PL games I was disgusted, nauseated.
Perhaps Brits don’t know that in other countries in Europe they don’t practice this odious pre-game ritual. They just get on with the game.
I suspect most people don’t know that the gesture started off not with the unfortunate tragedy of a policeman killing a drugged out long-time criminal (the charge of murder is purely political, the act is what is usually called manslaughter), but with the deliberate insulting of the symbols of American nationalism, the national anthem at the beginning of a football game.
A multimillionaire black player chose to make his anti-American political statement in this manner, and justifiably lost his career for his gesture that was imitated immediately by a few, but didn’t last long.
It then became picked up by the vile anti-American anti-Jewish anti-Israel anti-capitalism blm movement as a part of the rioting, looting, thuggery, destruction, carried out for weeks and months – far worse than the rioting in Washington last week – in cities across the US.
When I was growing up in England, I don’t remember any major teams having a black player, now there is hardly a team that doesn’t have many.
Neither in the US nor in Britain is there the overt racism of the 19th and early 20th century. It doesn’t exist on a public level anymore.
That individual people may be privately racist, hate whom and what they see as outsiders, be they black, moslem, Jewish, Asian, etc, is a difficult and challenging part of our human nature, the revolting kneeling won’t change that.
I remember a time when politics was not allowed in football, what happened to that? It was probably for the best considering that footballers have huge amounts of influence and generally don’t have a clue what they are talking about.
I’m a fan of Mr Murray and have read three of his books. However, having an English degree from Cambridge, he shouldn’t be giving us: “Saturday was one of the first times this year ….” which is a version of “he is one of the only people”. Also, in his last book, about half the necessary possessive apostrophes were omitted, following, I believe, not his own putative eccentricity but some illiterate publisher’s stylesheet.
Oxford not Cambridge
There’s a snide little cartoon in the Guardian about this matter today.
I’m still in a state of disbelief that people are taking the knee to a drug fuelled career criminal who threatened to shoot an unborn baby in a failed robbery, I don’t think he deserved to die that way but on the positive side he hasn’t been in trouble since.
It does feel like intimidation. Nobody should be compelled to kneel, whatever the cause. Players and managers are routinely fined for making political gestures, but that’s a tricky step for the FA to take given the constant emphasis on ‘Kick Racism Out’. Murray however is his usual disingenuous self with the line about ‘no-one says black lives don’t matter’. He’s not that stupid.
“No one can be that stupid”
Clearly, they can be, judging by your comment (usual disingenuous self with the line about ‘no-one says black lives don’t matter’.)
Of course “black lives matter”, as long as it’s one of the 0.1% of unarmed black deaths in a country across the Atlantic that happen at the hands of police, even if they have a toxic criminal record, were resisting arrest and have massive amounts of drugs in their bodies.
That’s why we kneel for those black criminals, and allow blacks and their upper class college uneducated white trash to loot, sorry “protest”..and those blacks who are killed by rioters or whose neighbourhoods and businesses suffer, well”¦.
You and your type aren’t really too concerned about those black lives are you?
And If you are one of the much larger number of unarmed whites killed by police, or the vast majority of black deaths that occur at the hands of other blacks, or any number of victims of terrorism in our own countries”¦.well, out of luck, sorry. Because your lives only matter if you are drug addict and criminal from a minority community that commits 10-15 times crime rates vs average, has 80% off dads go awol and who consider studying hard and doping well academically is for “racists”
This can’t be repeated often enough.
Thank you for reminding us all of the real issues behind this lunacy.
Was there a question in there? My point about Murray’s disingenuity is that nobody claims there’s an explicitly racist culture. It’s another straw man. The BLM argument(agree with it or not) is about structural and tacit racism. Nobody’s arguing about racial segregation law.
(Your assumptions about whose lives are important to me, and why, are a gibberish rant)
please explain “structural racism” ???
do you mean I should look at the pillars and columns and bricks of my building and the bricks around me and examine to see if they are ‘racist’??
do you mean I should look at other people’s bones and kidneys and livers and try to find something ‘racist’ in those??
or are you suggesting that if we could biopsy live people’s brains we would find some structure in their cells that is ‘racist’?
oh, no, no, no, you mean a more thorough examination of people’s DNA would surely find something ‘racist’ in the basic cell structure???
reminds me of the effort put in by dozens of alleged scientists trying to find the chromosomes or cells in the brain responsible for homosexuality. Came to nothing.
and – I understand – are now not being deported because some deeply misguided lawyers and “celebrities” are pressuring for them to stay!!!
Black men generally are useless, but George Floyd was the most useless of all. His death was accidental, but someone somewhere should have deliberately planted one between the eyes for him when he abandoned the first of his five abandoned children.
I don’t take the knee for people who have only just managed to stand up on theirs.
Nice bit of hate speech there. Thanks for proving all the comments suggesting racism is imagined are wrong.
Hear hear. How does this comment stand? “Black men generally are useless’ is fine with the Mods here?
Meanwhile half the commentators here are so wilfully blind they’d walk into walls rather than admit the racist comments here
Shame on this dump
Facts are never racist.
Ever.
Unbelievable Douglas Murray writes yet another article about “taking the knee” in this publication, when his first one was so idiotic. One can forgive him for running his mouth (so to say) the first time, but to do it again?
Sad to see so many here are clearly threatened by the simple proposition that an entire racial subculture is hurting, feels under attack, and is calling out for those doing so to stop. That’s all this is. George Floyd is just one more vessel for that threat, anger, pain and hurt. Read Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, MLK, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehishi Coates and so many more. You’re offended and outraged by footballers taking a stand? Try, just try and see the issue from the other side, because it exists. That you reject it speaks not to their false claims, but to your paranoia.
Please don’t insult the intelligence of the readers here. “Entire racial subculture is hurting”? You mean the large fraction of melanin-rich footballers (US & UK) making millions more than us poor blokes who pay their salaries? It’s beyond naive to just imply the kneeling is just an acknowledge of a simple proposition – the kneeling at first was explicitly a bow to BLM and to claim otherwise is simply a lie
You can look the other way if you like, Michael, but here’s the thoughts of one who can’t: “Just watching the Republican convention, and they’re spewing this fear,” Los Angeles Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said Tuesday night after an NBA playoff game. “All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear. We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot. We’re the ones who were denied to live in certain communities. We’ve been hung. We’ve been shot. All you keep doing is hearing about fear. It’s amazing why we keep loving this country and this country does not love us back.”
As to kneeling, as you know it was started by Colin Kaepernik, who said at the time: “”I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”‘
Notice there’s no reference to BLM, no ‘bow to BLM’, as you state. But I’m sure you know better than those affected. Meanwhile, so proud of PSG and Istambul Basaksehir. This must end and will, whether you are on board or not.
I’m a Brit living in the US. Contrary to European expectations, I’ve encountered far more cases of racism among Liberals than I have among Trump supporters.
Doc Rivers is your proof? He has no idea what he is talking about, he is almost as clueless as Kaepernik. They are nor being killed at any different proportion by the police, it is just a lie you have all swallowed. Affected? Yes, you are all affected by media lies, I understand. Yes, this is about bowing. You want us to bow to your saints right here.
Really Sydney. I don’t see the whole of the African Continent trembling and feeling hurt. BLM is a Cultural Marxist organisation that stated beliefs are according to one of its founders Patrisse Cullors:
As a revolutionary ideology, Cultural Marxism sets out to destroy things which it calls oppressive. It believes the following:-
Gender assigned at birth (your sex)
This is supposedly a mere ‘construct’ of oppressive ‘heteronormativity’.
Marriage
They say it is a patriarchal institution, oppressing women. Further, it is a heteronormative institution, oppressing sexual minorities.
Children and the nuclear family
An increasingly popular term is ‘motherhood penalty’, the idea that a mother raising children suffers a penalty more than she enjoys a blessing.
This is not only anti-child and anti-family, but pro-abortion. Black Lives Matter’s statement of “What we believe” explicitly rejects the nuclear family.
Capitalism
True to its classical Marxist roots, the key focus here is on the oppression of work ““ that to be a worker is to be oppressed in that condition, exploited by capitalists.
Justice
This has become particularly clear through the Movement for Black Lives, who openly advocate the abolition of police, the rolling back of criminal law, the annulment of convictions, and the unravelling of the courts system. ‘Justice’ is apparently oppressive to those who cannot obey the law.
We see from its rioting, violent, and anarchistic behaviour that movements like this exist to agitate, tear down, create chaos, divide, and destroy. That is the Cultural Marxist objective ““ wreck the joint; destroy the system; do it violently. It is the revolutionary objective; the destructive impulse..
To incite this, they substitute facts with emotion, stoking the flames of anger ““ for example, by wildly exaggerating the extent of racist policing. (Disproved by black Havard Professor, Roland Fryer)
Forgiveness
Most horrifyingly of all, however, Marxists don’t substitute forgiveness with anything. There simply is none. Sins of the past cannot ever be made right. Every last drop of reckoning, penance, and reparation must be extracted. So tear down the statues and every person in History on the back of one prejudicial remark!!
Comprehensive description of BLM
Interesting to note how the grievance industry has had to invent
covert racism as there simply weren’t enough examples of overt
racism, and even then covert racism had to be expanded to all white
folk for simply being … white. Generally race relations in the UK
were pretty good until recently and the new racial schism created by
BLM and its useful idiots is setting race relations back decades. You
talk abstractedly of pain, anger and hurt, but offer no solutions.
What will make it all better – money? And if so how much and for how
long? Endless prostrations of “oppressors” at your feet
perhaps? Take a concrete pill and toughen up precious and get on with
your life.
I read this through, and found it stuffed with one undefended assertion after another. It’s an “opinion piece”, yeah?
He kind of has it both ways though. “Everyone has to comply”? So why are we reading this stuff? We didn’t comply! How does he know that that everyone who supported BLM was bullied into it, and everyone who didn’t knew better? How does he know that the BLM supporters didn’t genuinely think it a great way to protest, or even – how does he know that BLM resisters actually don’t think black lives matter?
The best bit was the opening implication of the “injustice” of Floyd’s killer awaiting trial in prison. In terms of “justice” (quality and quantity) I’d like to see a follow up article where the author explains the “good reasons” why the same number of Americans die daily in custody as do in Britain annually; and why it’s ok for US state employees to execute criminals on arrest,.. to save time and money in courts and prisons?
Finally, let’s say I agreed with this unsubstantiated opinion: it raises excellent questions that the author could address next, such as What precisely would he suggest Americans do instead about police murders that would be better idea than peaceful protest?
This is Britain dude.
The Yanks can do as they please (and they usually do) and it is none of my business.
Rather telling, isn’t it, that every single thing you’ve put in “quotation marks” in your reply aren’t in fact to be found anywhere in the article itself.
Almost as if you’re arguing against a strawman.
“What precisely would he suggest Americans do instead about police murders that would be better idea than peaceful protest?”
That’s the question. You won’t get a good answer here though. You’ll just get a load of spurious stuff about rioters and antifa.
Can I have “good answer” about the 44 Police that have been murdered this year by these “peaceful protestors” including last week a female cop shot in the face during a traffic stop???
At least he’ll get an answer, why don’t you answer the question asked of you above re structural racism?
Not again. Either go read up on it. It’s not a complicated concept, or find my previous explanation on disqus
You cannot conflate American society which is awash with firearms with our own. To be a policeman in the US must be one of the worst jobs on earth and the killer of Mr Floyd was using a recognised procedure to detain a career criminal who was apparently under the influence of drugs and resisting arrest.
Mr Floyd died not from asphyxiation but from a heart attack and the real disgrace is that under these circumstances the policeman was charged with murder. 90% of all unlawful killings of black men in the US are perpetrated by other black men.
Taking the knee, as it’s been explained by the people doing it, is an acknowledgement that racism exists and people should work together to reduce it and publicly show that intention. That is what most people understand by BLM. The BLM movement is not the same as the specific manifestos of organisations calling themselves Black Lives Matter.
The survey Murray references stated that the majority of those surveyed believed BLM movement has increased racial tension. That is not the same as stating that BLM has been divisive, which Murray claims. Less than 50% of people from a minority background believed it and less than 50% of Labour voters. 75% of Conservative voters believed it. 55% of all voters. You might as well say that voting Conservative increased racial tensions as a result of BLM.
There is an argument that BLM and Covid, which has revealed how ethnicity impacts directly on what type of work people do and how exposed you are to infection, has exposed and highlighted existing tensions not created them.
Bovine excrement.
If this country was so racist, why are so many ethnic minority people in top jobs?
Taking the knee, as it’s been explained by the people doing it, is an acknowledgement that racism exists and people should work together to reduce it and publicly show that intention.
Racism has always existed and always will. Or bigotry, prejudice, and any other synonym you prefer. That said, there is no “intention” being demonstrated by kneeling; it’s a self-congratulatory move that accomplishes nothing. And suggesting that all whites are racist, as the left does in the US, is not going to cause people to “work together.” It’s going to do the exact opposite and it is perhaps a fair question to ask if that’s not the point.
Next month, we’ll have the annual renewal of MLK Day and his DC speech will play repeatedly. Very few of the wokerati will notice how the ‘character over color” part of the speech – in fact, the main point of it – has been rendered irrelevant.
The point about ‘white privilege’, which I avoided and I think you’re referring to, is a different one. It’s fair enough to debate whether or not structural racism exists – I’d like to see more of that rather than the knee jerk name calling we often see. If it does exist, then certain people suffer as a result of it and certain people, by default, benefit. That’s the theory behind structural racism. It doesn’t mean all white people are racist. It means people live in an environment that is racist. That varies, and the nature of the racism varies, from environment to environment, country to country. It’s not the only kind of racism – bigotry and prejudice also exist. You can benefit from structural racism without being a bigot or being prejudiced.