Season 2011-12 Fan Articles
Mobocracy
By Kevin Hudson :: 09/10/2011
16 Comments (»Last)
Certain spectators at both recent, and antiquated sporting events have manifested
what Jung referred to as the "collective unconscious", in which not only
irrational behaviour, but also mild & mass hysteria have been witnessed amid the backdrop of athletic contest. This, of course, is nothing new.
At it?s most extreme level, from the Nika Riots in 532, to the legendary Dinamo Zagreb v Red Star Belgrade clash in 1990, the herd mentality has been seen to defy normal social constraints, resulting in violence, threats of violence & abnormal levels of vitriol normally reserved for Omaha Beach or Agincourt-like environments. Both Goodison Park & White Hart Lane came under the national microscope this week as the actions of sections of their partisan support came under fire from the world's media.
Whilst the back story, social context & precedents set by the uprising against Justinian I, the ballot box success of the HDZ party a week prior to THAT symbolic & catalytic derby in Croatia, bear little relevance to both Merseyside & North London Derbies, the tribal themes resonate as loud, and almost as vociferous, as ever.
A world away from the quarrel in the chariot race of Constantinople's citizens, or the avowed desire of self-determination for the Croats, the contrasting ire of "Gooner," attitudes towards the painful sight of Adebayor running to celebrate his goal in front of them, only to top that by taking up residence as the front man of their bitter rivals - to the wrath of "Toffees" to the cheating antics of Suarez, the complicity of Atkinson, and the polarising figure of Bellamy, it is sport, and more often than not football, that tends to inflame the human predisposition for conflict & inflated drama.
The usually well-behaved patrons sat to my left in the Gwladys Street infuriated me almost as much as the result last week, but what followed 24 hours later practically made my head pop off. "Missile," throwing antics at Goodison was one thing, but the sight of grown men singing about how they literally wished Adebayor dead, followed by their counterparts questioning Wenger's sexuality, made me wonder what the world was coming to.
A world where poison masquerades as passion. Paying members of the public toss vile insult, or a pig's head at complete strangers ? as though it were the most natural thing in the world. A few scoops seemingly expediting a carte blanche mentality where the baser instincts dominate.
This is no rant, supercilious complaint, or Ivory Tower judgement from upon high. Make no mistake, I'm almost as bad as they come. My nostrils flare up at Derby games, as though the mere presence of Them is a desecration of the Old Lady itself. I idiotically scream dog's abuse at LFC players, which in the cold light of day, confronted by rational analysis, makes no sense whatsoever, and is not something I would dream of doing outside of the ground.
As referenced when Jamie Carragher pulled up next to me at the lights on Queens Drive ? 3 weeks after the ?Andy Johnson,? Derby. Without malice, but not wishing to waste the opportunity, I beeped him & held up 3 fingers, accompanied by a shit-eating grin. Two obvious Blues in the Hackney in front cottoned on, and again without hostility, joined in the ribbing. Give him his due, he took it well. Carra?s face a study in wry disregard..
So this is a straight-forward question to ToffeeWebbers. For you to define what it is that elevates the minority to such levels of primal angst. Your instincts, rationale & experience can embroider this question for me. A question I KNOW already has a fairly obvious answer to it, or at least many theories.
Such as academic studies into crowd psychology, or the proven (I think) speculation that the colour red increases testosterone levels on the playing field. I presume this has always been the way, even despite Kenwright-esque, misty-eyed, romantic notions of sepia-toned, rattle-waving happy-clappers. I know for example, that violence surrounded the game not only in recent decades, but even in the nascency of Association Football, it?s medieval precursor, and the game of ?Cuju,? in Bronze-age China, was militaristic in nature.
The fraternity & civic pride demonstrated in the Milk Cup Final in 1984 seems a long time ago. Of course I know hooliganism & potassium-rich, fruit-based racism was an unfortunate part of life back then, so they weren?t so innocent. It?s assumed that things are so much better today, despite the well-established discussion of the toxic nature of the modern Merseyside rivalry. Yet the Kop?s wonderful touch to the Evertonian family of Rhys Jones demonstrated both that grace still exists, and Shankly?s hackneyed ?life and death,? maxim, although witty, was meaningless.
Whilst Sheedy?s innocuous V-sign to the Kop barely registered on the national radar, if that happened today, our friends at Sky Sports News would be all over it, whipping it up like they do every time Joey Barton farts. Despite both the cosmetic & genuine make-over of the modern game, and the spectre of proper ugliness behind us, I couldn?t imagine Tim Howard looking bemused, yet happily accepting a handbag from some wag, behind the Kop goal. I don?t think there?s as much fun as there used to be. So I?d like to know if the atmosphere of the modern game is skewed by some form of repression? Or anger at the way the game has gone?
Though, naturally, I would never condone a return to the dark days... Indeed, they haven?t quite diminished yet. In what other sports would you see people hanging an effigy of Sol Campbell, or the Castilian crowd at the Bernabeu racially abusing 5 foot 5 inch Shaun Wright-Phillips? What really provoked Hearts fan John Wilson to attack the Celtic manager? Why DOES Sectarianism HAVE to manifest itself during the Old Firm game? I KNOW why ? but why?
Why do slack-jawed mates of my younger brother think that ?Green Street,? & ?The Football Factory,? are ?sick,? films? Why am I just as bad? Why did I part with my own coin to purchase Andy Nicholl?s predictable & vainglorious paperback ?Scally??
What other environment would you see Howard Webb instructing the Greek & Croat players to stop the contest ? just two minutes into it, because violence on the terraces had already erupted?
Why does football attach itself to politics? Why do groups like the ?Irriducibili?, the ?Boixos Nois? or the "Naughty Forty? spring up? Why was it so easy for ?Arkan? to conscript the ?Delije? into his paramilitary force in order to kill their own neighbours?
Is it truly war by other means?
Football isn?t the Salem Witch Trials, or the Partition of India, it is the world?s most popular sport. So is enmity something hardwired into all of us? Are we acting out of instinct, temporarily overriding our moral compass? Warping our sense of belonging? Is economic envy the driving force? Is it paradoxically healthy to vent our spleen at opposition players & referees? To offset our frustration with the mortgage, career, or simply our own team's shortcomings?
This article has come about because of a lively discussion I had with an (admittedly not slack-jawed) boyfriend of my younger sister, who sought my opinion on a University dissertation he is working on. Some crap about morality & sport in society. He contended that, although he agreed with the premise that football?s combat of hooliganism & racism was a driving force to a better society, he believed that the game?s interest in being an instrument of social change, is conceited.
That the suspected corruption, drug-cheating & political match-fixing (his words) that is so obviously going on, is actually damaging to society. As well as telling him to stop skinning up in my car & stinking it out, having foolishly agreed to give him a lift up to Dewsbury, I told him I could sum it all up quite easily: ?That?s just the way it was. And is...?
At least it whiled away the journey as I took him up the motorway. But as I headed back to Stoneycroft, I reflected on the conversation I?d had with my Leeds-supporting, potential future brother-in-law; I figured that during a quiet week, and with a tenuous link to Everton, I could maybe throw it open to the good patrons of ToffeeWeb Towers, to see what my long-winded query would stir up.
Reader Comments (16)
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2 Posted 09/10/2011 at 09:59:26
Irrational, I know... tribalism ? who knows!
3 Posted 09/10/2011 at 09:50:29
On a weekend of no domestic football, it's good to start a Sunday morning with slightly off-topic musings with the museli...
It's too early, not enough coffee for a considered response, so some bullet points:
? I think it's easy to forget how bad hooliganism was at its "peak". Nicholls's book is somewhat revisionist but, whilst he maintains that, most of the time, they only went toe to toe with those "up for it", that's not my recollection. There was also strong racist undertones to it.
? I believe the Government of the day were wrong to simply label it a "football problem" ? that was the vehicle, but it was more deep-seated than that. There have of course been incidents at other sports including rugby and (surely not!) cricket, but these are always conveniently never picked up.
Football hooliganism of the time was, in my opinion, also about making money through shoplifting, bootlegging etc. My only comment on the Sectarian issue (as it's a separate debate) is that one of the barriers to an end to "The Troubles" in Ulster was the fact that there was such a racketeering ring established to fund operations, that some people simply got used to a certain standard of living (most of the knee-cappings were for dealing on their turf, for instance).
? Do not underestimate the role of the media in all of this. Not Sky coverage, but the general dumbing down of society values over the last couple of decades. Who could fail to laugh at the irony of thugs attacking the Sky News cameras outside Buck Pal in August 1997, "You the media killed her", and the oblivion to the concept of supply and demand...
? Increasing disconnect between players and supporters (numerous reasons: wealth, media profiles etc). This also extends to the fans' connection with clubs now. I think Everton still has something of a connection with fans, but it's probably as frayed as it's ever been!
I could go on, and this would be the sort of topic that would be great down the pub on a cold winter's evening, but I do think it's symptomatic of a much larger debate (like most things) that only a Social Science student would even begin to think about studying...
ps: ? did you send this to BlueKipper as well?
4 Posted 09/10/2011 at 10:51:23
As for Adebayor, maybe the fans were a little harsh, but he and to a certain extent our Davey should realise an old saying that far surpasses anything ever uttered by an academic:
"You reap what you sow."
5 Posted 09/10/2011 at 11:15:08
Good read and it certainly brought a whole load of memories flooding back. My memories were that GP was a bit of hell-hole for most games and going into the Park End would certainly end in confrontation, with either the old bill or the away support.
But, thinking back, most Saturday nights in or around town were nearly always tasty, people always seemed to be more "up for it". Poverty had a lot to do with it, but back then you had your own pubs totally free of away supporters, especially RS fans; now it's a total free zone ? drink where you want, wearing your clubs top to boot.
But back to your post, I think Maggie had it in big time for the poor and basically kicked the fuck out of us wherever she could. Footy was one of her favourites ? but the miners certainly took the payload of her aggression. Ah well, I guess the old bill have a lot to thank her for ? mortgages cleared etc...
Anyway, good post and maybe Cammeron can do for the Tories what Maggie tried so hard to do. Keep the poor fucking poor and let the rich waddle in the stuff.
6 Posted 09/10/2011 at 10:48:54
For one, people in the greater sense, do not change. We are what we are, we do have free will, we also have emotions.
Given all that, there are still plain bad poeple.
To my mind, the common thread in both these incidents and many in-between is anger and impotence at unfairness.
As to the deeper socio-cultural aspects, it is now seen as reactionary to blame it on the whole general 30, 40, 50, even 60 years of, for want of a better word, I will call... 'leftie shite' that has eroded the whole fabric of our previous way of life... But I firmly nail my colours to that mast.
With the proviso that yes, there were a different set of problems that came with the opposite of 'leftie shite' but, as a wise man once said... Two wrongs don't make a right.
And whatever the middle ground is, or was, the baby has been well and truely thrown out with the bath water ? as witnessed in some of the excuses / justification trotted out in the latest riots.
7 Posted 09/10/2011 at 11:50:33
8 Posted 09/10/2011 at 15:13:24
So, when a referee hands the game to them for the umpteenth time and they lap it up like some sort of divine right, with no hint of humility whatsoever, as though they deserve to win more than us, it's no surprise it all kicks off.
9 Posted 09/10/2011 at 15:13:20
Lads on the street of Liverpool are willing to kill people just because they come from a different area. For a long time in Liverpool there were problems with Irish Catholics from Scotty Road and Ulster Protestants from Ulster. Due to Liverpool having a very very very small black community that numbers no more than around 7,000, there's never been too much trouble between whites and blacks.
The problem is many people including me went to schools with no black people, there were Indians, Chinese, Pakistani, Polish, Greek, Kurds, Irish, and people from mixed European backgrounds. Until maybe the late 90s it was common for black people to be abused in the middle of the street in Liverpool without anybody sticking up for them. I believe as human beings we are all brought up to hate people that are different to us.
In Africa they kill each other over tribal disputes, in Yugoslavia where I have lived they fight over ethnicity and religion. Human beings love rivalry thats just part of life, even in the people from different lands killed each other. Members of hate groups and extremists groups are mostly young unemployed men who have issues over belonging.
If you watched that programme about that young NF member it was clear that his racist attitudes wer generally the result of his hatred of his own life. White men and Asian men do not like when white women go out with black men, black women don't like when black men choose white women.
As somebody who works as a social worker and studied Psychology in Uni I think most humans are simply a product of their environment. Everton fans are brought up to hate the red shite and we're told about all the injustices we've suffered against them.
10 Posted 09/10/2011 at 19:41:44
11 Posted 10/10/2011 at 00:25:14
Atkinson has sent off 8 opposing players when he refs rs games, yes 8, tells you why he was put in charge of the derby, with the emergence of Man.city came a problem for Sky and Premier League as it takes one of their favourite teams out the Big 4, what they dont want is anyone else challenging, hence we get stiffed.
12 Posted 10/10/2011 at 10:50:40
13 Posted 12/10/2011 at 12:20:51
Who else thinks you could find such a well written and intelligent article like this on any Kopite website? Me neither!
Groups and social identity play a huge part and just as in nations have done for thousands of yours, groups who feel threatened will react violently. It's a primal mechanism.
14 Posted 12/10/2011 at 12:24:27
15 Posted 12/10/2011 at 13:17:02
16 Posted 14/10/2011 at 07:24:32
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1 Posted 09/10/2011 at 09:27:44
Where we sit, last year a moron called Alex Song a "black twat" after he tackled Stevie P in the Arsenal game. A number of us (females included) sorted him out and involved a steward. He has lost his season ticket and got a 3-year ban.
Isn't this the answer ? look at ourselves first?