Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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Sectarian abuse
« on: 2007-03-19 03:48:18 » |
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Web clip shows 'sectarian abuse'
18 March 2007, 12:21:00 PM
A Sunday newspaper claims internet video footage shows Rangers football fans chanting sectarian abuse in Spain.
BBC link:
[Blunderov] 'Sectarian abuse'? The BBC had the good taste to provide shriek marks for this odious political correctitude and I share their supercilious regard of the fact that the speaker is one who organises 'sectarian' confrontations on a professional basis.
<snip>A spokesman said: "The club remains committed to combating and eradicating sectarianism and has a wide range of measures in place to help achieve these objectives."</snip>
[Bl.] Short, of course, of dissolving the sectarian institution at the heart of the matter, namely and to whit Rangers FC itself.
Apparently even sectarian singing is frowned upon.
<snip>Last season Rangers was fined £13,000 by Uefa for sectarian singing during a Champions League match in Spain and warned about its future conduct. </snip>
[Bl.] This bodes no good at all for all the many and various church services which take place in England every Sunday which are in the habit of inciting synchronised sectarian singing in their congregations. Bad, bad.
And what about the party political system? How sectarian is that? And the EEU Parliament? Sectarianism is rife it seems.
Society usually does not hestitate to ban things that are perceived as harmful to it for instance drugs that (it claims) "cause" social evils. Or political organisations that systematically incite violence and confrontation like al Qaeda or The Basque Party Nationalists.
Why not ban football? Why not ban sport altogether?
I can understand that professional football has a problem with football violence which it needs to do something about. Perpetrating absurdities is, in my view, one of the very worst possible responses to the problem. We complain of violence that it is "senseless". How then can it be even be fleetingly imagined that a "senseless" response will clarify matters?
The nasty truth of the matter is that that football is going to have to spend a great deal of the profit
that it racks up from the fans on educating and influencing the fans in such a way as to stop them from expressing their UTism in unacceptable ways.
This implies, TMM, a social responsibility which goes inconveniently far beyond Adam Smith. It is morally indefensible to rile the fans up, take their money at the gate, and them send them on their merry ways once the game is over with a Pilate-like washing of the hands. Actions have consequences and the football authorities have signally failed to realise the full scale of their own moral culpability. They have to be involved in more than just the pocketbooks of their customers. They have to become involved in those lives too. In short, they must give back to sport the value that was confiscated from it by professionalism. They must carry the flame of positive community. If they prefer to keep the money for themselves then negative sectarianism will be the inevitable result.
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