Michael
Krasna
GVPT200
11/30/14
Blog
Post #4
Soccer and the Growing Tide of European
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is a cancerous
movement that is once again sweeping across Europe, and at an alarming pace. Anti-Semitism
originated as religious discrimination towards Jews for their perceived role in
the death of Jesus. As a result, Jews were persecuted and attacked, most
specifically in the Spanish Expulsion and Inquisition in the 1490’s. Since that
time, anti-Semitism has manifested itself in many forms, such as racial anti-Semitism,
made popular by the Nazis, economic anti-Semitism, based on the premise that
the Jews control banks and media, and political anti-Semitism, based on
anti-Zionism and the premise that the Jews do not deserve their own sovereign
state. Although many believed that European anti-Semitism had come to an end
with the Holocaust, history is repeating itself in much of Europe. Four Jews
were murdered outside of a Jewish school in
Toulouse, France in March 2012, and according to a rt.com news
article on anti-Semitism in the UK, “A total of 302 incidents were reported…
the highest monthly total since records began in 1984.” Accordingly, European
Jews have been leaving Europe in
droves in recent years due to this dangerous uptick in anti-Semitism.
One of the most prevalent arenas of
European anti-Semitism is in fact the football pitch. In Franklin Foer’s book, How Soccer Explains the World, Foer
explores the reasons for globalization’s failure to end the enmity among opposing
soccer fans in Europe. One example that Foer uses is the English soccer club,
Tottenham Hotspur FC, known as the “Yid
Army.” Yid is a Yiddish slang term for a Jew, which is often used in a
derogatory manner by Tottenham’s opposing fans. I believe that this
anti-Semitic rhetoric has been a prevailing force in the dangerous advancement
of anti-Semitism into the European mainstream. It is thus imperative for
Europe’s leaders to further join together in the fight against racial and
religious marginalization in order to avoid another catastrophic ethnic
genocide.
Two things to consider here, first, Europe is highly diverse and making generalisations across a continent is, I think, very difficult. Antisemitism is far more of a problem in certain countries, and in certain areas of those countries, than others. This is not to disagree that antisemitism is a problem, and one that may be growing, but to point out that the causal mechanisms and base level of antisemitism is not constant or consistent. Second, in relation to Tottenham Hotspur, it is very unclear to me that opposition fans today understand the derogatory meaning of 'Yid'. I would speculate that today this is less to do with antisemitism and, perhaps, more to do with denigrating Tottenham fans who as you say, call themselves Yids. Historically this of course was certainly antisemitic, today, I'm less sure. It would certainly be interesting to examine this - i.e. what do Tottenham and opposition fans think they are referring to, and also, does North London's Jewish population consider this offensive?
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