Talking the knee

Millwall fans were back at The Den for the first time yesterday and booed as players took the knee, with some shouting "Get up!"

Many people understand why they booed:

Paul Embery: Millwall fans didn’t boo because they are racist. They have taken many black players to their hearts over the years. They booed because what began as a single act of solidarity has, as usual, turned into a protracted moral lecture. That is what irritates people. Understand it.  

Paul Embery: Hold on. Many people across society are uncomfortable about this act of submission which seems to have done more to divide than unite black and white. Football fans boo when players do things on the pitch which they don’t like. This is no different. Lay off Millwall fans.  

Ben Cobley: Never been a fan of Millwall fans. Undoubtedly a racist element there - always has been. However, ahem, they have a point. Booing racialist ideology and grifting is a fair thing to do.  

Liam O'Neil: Have to add my congratulations and full respect to Millwall FC Fans for their valiant anti-woke protest. Thank you for leading the way, I hope we see many more join in at every stadium in the country.  

Laura Perrins: Take the knee to support Marxist BLM if you want. But do not expect the fans, who buy their tickets to watch football, to go along with your cowardice and virtue signalling garbage.

Maajid Nawaz: I don’t care that Millwall fans booed taking the knee. What can often appear inexplicable usually has a simple explanation: We are sick & tired of virtue signalling corporate minstrel shows, as they cooperate with the likes of the genocidal regime in China.

Other people don't understand why they booed. 

Here's how the incident was reporting live on BBC One's Final Score by Ben Mundy:

Ben Mundy, BBC: We'll get to Wayne Rooney in a second and to matters on the pitch, but it is matters off the pitch dominating thing here at The Den this afternoon, the ugly side to having supporters back in stadium, booing as the players took the knee prior to kick off. It comes after Millwall released a statement yesterday on behalf of the players saying they will continue to do it because the gesture means they can showcase their support for the fight against discrimination. There are only 2,000 fans here. It wasn't all of them. But clearly something needs to be addressed.

And here's Final Score presenter Eilidh Barbour:

Eilidh Barbour, BBC: Well, Dion, it's so disappointing to hear and it is again an example that education needs to continue and this is something that still exists in the football game.

The media's response is also drawing comment: 

Julia Hartley-Brewer: "Quite shocking" is how a presenter on Sky News just described Millwall fans booing players taking the knee yesterday. It wasn't shocking at all. Not to anyone living in the real world. It was entirely predictable. Fans don't want divisive woke politics at football matches.  

Patrick O'Flynn:  Almost 80% of Tory voters (the party that won the general election) think BLM has raised racial tensions. So how can BBC/Sky/ITV outlets only cover the booing of footballers taking the knee in condemnatory fashion, as if it were proof of Far Right bigotry?  

James Bartholomew: The BBC 4 propaganda channel reported the boos of football fans at the kneeling to BLM only incidentally to reporting condemnation of the boos. It made no attempt to quote anyone explaining or justifying the boos. Now the same on Radio 5 Live but more so with one of the presenters saying he hopes the Football Association will "stamp it out". The BBC lives in a parallel universe where nobody acknowledges BLM as divisive. 

Can things get any crazier?

We're well past the stage where even the daftest surrender to 'woke' sentiment by the BBC is beyond belief, but tonight's news comes close. 

The Sun reports that BBC football pundit Steve 'Tommo' Thompson has been suspended for describing a scuffle between two players as "handbags" - as in "handbags at dawn", one of those phrases footballers and football pundits have been using, week in and week out, for years. 

There were complaints. (From handbags?)

The corporation said, “After listeners raised concerns, Steve acknowledged some of his comments on air didn’t meet the standards we expect. He is taking a break but will be back in the New Year.” 

Is there no end to the BBC's pandering to this malevolent lunacy?

(Hope that doesn't offend the malevolent community).

Forever Pure: part 2.

Due to an uncharacteristic lapse of concentration I forgot to pursue my own question: Who made the film and why. Well, now I have. Here’s what I neglected to ferret out yesterday. 

“Israeli film-maker Maya Zinshtein discusses the fallout from her football doc Forever Pure”

You should read it, but you probably won’t so I’ll just extract the best bits.

Maya Zinshtein worked for many years as an investigative reporter for the BBC’s favourite Israeli newspaper - Haaretz. (This is where Mandy Rice Davies’s most famous quotation might be borne in mind. )

The gist of it is that Maya Zinshtein has received harassment from the ‘racist football group’. Evidently this particular ‘racist football group’ (aka Beitar Jerusalem’s right-wing supporters’ group – referred to as La Familia) didn’t like the way they had been depicted in the film.

Ms Zinshtein has received death threats, even. (This death threat malarkey is highly contagious. It seems you haven’t arrived till you’ve had death threats. All self-respecting lefties have had them.) 

I must stop being flippant. But this kind of thing makes one come over all flippant and childish.

The biggest villain in the film was the club’s former owner, the oligarch Russian-born billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak. He is too remote and unconcerned about the film to issue any death threats to Ms Zinshtein for the way he was portrayed, largely because he’s in prison in France for money laundering and tax offences.

It was a good film by the way, and it is quite right to shine a spotlight on racism wherever it occurs. 

The film made a reasonable effort to show the other side of the coin, too. The generous welcome that was given to the two players from Chechnya by the rest of the team, for one thing. But there was a none too subtle subplot - one of the Muslim players was only 19 and looked like an overgrown schoolboy; half the time he looked as though he was about to burst into tears. He even had his mother with him. Obviously this hiked up the pathos.  But if there was pathos, why not film it, I suppose.

There is politics in this. Hugely. We’re back to our old familiar bugbear, context. 

“Predictably enough, though, this was no overdue exposé of the virulent antisemitism that a site like MEMRI regularly exposes in the Arab and Iranian media. The subject of the film was - of course - Israel.”

You can see why the BBC liked this film, and why they chose to show it.  You should also be able to detect Israel’s remarkably open attitude, when it comes to responding to and exposing itself to such potentially damaging propaganda. 

“In holding a mirror to Israeli society, Zinshtein and her editors do an outstanding job of cutting together variable quality television and home-video footage along with her interviews. “Forever Pure” world premiered in competition at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July and nabbed awards for best documentary and editing”.

Dogwoof Global is a London based theatrical distributor which seems to have had a hand in the BBC and other broadcasters acquiring the film. They look like a ‘right-on’ company. 

Mick Hartley again: 

“My point isn't to criticise the film or its director. It's not only part and parcel of a free society to turn over the stones and look at what's underneath - it's absolutely vital. And this is undoubtedly a powerful piece of film-making, even though it by no means represents the norm in Israeli football. The point is that this is one side of a two-sided debate over the relations between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, and only one side is playing by these rules. It's inconceivable that such a film would be made in an Arab Muslim country - not only because the necessary freedom and culture of self-criticism isn't there, but also because the idea of a Jew playing in any football team in these countries is generally laughable. Indeed we've seen many cases of sportsmen and women simply refusing to compete against Jews.  

It's the same old story: a free society exposes its underbelly; an unfree society keeps its dirty secrets hidden. For the easy moraliser - and this is nowhere more true than with the Israel-Palestine dispute - Israel is condemned as a sick racist society, and therefore the one to blame, precisely because all we hear is this one side. A truly responsible media would make efforts to show both sides - but this is what the BBC never does.”

Football and Racism on the BBC

Did anyone watch the Storyville episode titled “Forever Pure: Football and Racism in Jerusalem”.

I don’t know if it attracted a huge amount of viewers, but I watched it and so did Sam Wollaston of the Guardian. His review provides a reasonably succinct summary of the story, so I don’t have to. 

The question is, who made this film and why?  No, not only that. What we will also be wondering is, what will the Israel-bashers make of this film? Will they use it as ammunition? Will they take it as confirmation that Jewish ‘racism’ is as bad as ‘Arab’ racism, if not worse? Will it be cited as evidence that Jews and Muslims are effectuating a straightforward tit-for-tat scenario? 

Interestingly, there’s a warning at the end of the Guardian’s review which says ominously “This article will be opened for comments later this morning.”

Well, it’s 12:32 and I’m wondering if they chickened out altogether. (In case it encourages even more racism, heaven forfend)

Okay, so there were a bunch of footballers, some officials, an unpleasant Russian-Israeli oligarch owner and a mob of fanatical fans. I’m not a football fan by the way so I really didn't know that the fans played such a crucial role in a team’s success. 

So what did we learn?

That the fans of this particular club were virulently anti-Arab. They were so anti-Arab in fact, that they called Muslims from Chechnyna “Arabs”.  Indeed they were so racist that when two “Arab” players (Muslims from Chechnya) were parachuted in to play for the team, apparently for the amusement of the oligarch, the fans deserted the club in droves. Empty seats etc. Eventually the club, in its original form, imploded.

The last line of the review says: ”One nil to the mob, and their rule. “Here we are, the most racist team in the country,” they sing, proudly. Boooooo …”

The obvious response to this strange film could be classed as ‘whataboutery’.  It would be something like: Now let’s see a Storyville episode about racism (antisemitism) amongst the “Arabs”. 

Anyway, I’m sure an argument could be made that the Israelis’ hatred of “Arabs” is reactive, whereas the “Arabs’” hatred of Jews is actually at the root of the entire Israeli / Palestinian conflict.

At the root of it, I said.