For the vast majority of mainstream British society, the football hooligan represents a bogeyman of sorts. Political figures, newspaper columnists and far-left cultist’s join together to paint the English hooligan as a) violent death-throes of a crushed lumpenproletariat, b) un-cultured smears on our over-intellectualised, safe, passive national pastime and c) fascist-in-waiting members of the petty bourgeoisie. These accusations are merely the scape-goating attempts of an out of touch commentariat. Below is a defence of the humble football hooligan.
To understand the motivation behind hooligan activities you must first be able to understand the real point of going to watch a football match. If your concept of attending a football match is limited to tens of thousands of people passively spectating whilst 22 men kick a spherical ball around with varying degrees of technical ability, then you unfortunately are really missing the point. A football match should “the very last bastion of a once male-dominated culture, where boys can grow up and act like men…scream, shout, abuse, swear, even cry (Dougie Brimson ‘A Geezers Guide to Football’)”. At the apex of this tribal sense of camaraderie is the defining act of hooliganism, i.e two bunches of consenting men meeting for a punch-up (now the consensual side of this is incredibly important. I do not agree with ‘ordinary’ fans being attacked and by and large the serious casuals involved in this culture are aware of the respect and constraints involved when hooliganism is done ‘properly’). There are so many reasons to defend this tribal act.
For a start, the act itself has value, if only as a spontaneous expression of emotion. As much as the Jonathon Wilson led broadsheet mafia would like you to believe otherwise, millions of people do not flock to football matches across the globe to stroke their collective chins and marvel at the deployment of tika-taka, false nines and raumdeuters. Emotion is the greatest defining currency with which football clubs can cash in on to continually seduce supporters back to the stadiums. Remove this and even the dull, pseudo-intellectuals will realise the futility of passively watching 22 overpaid individuals kick a piece of leather around. Without the emotion, football is just that, futile. As a pure expression of this raw, tribal emotion, we should not suppress the right of the football fan to have the occasional scrap. The advent of bland, characterless new Soccerdome stadiums with enforced all seating, over policing and Orwellian levels of CCTV (I visited Ajax’s admittedly impressive 52,000 capacity Amsterdam Arena earlier this week and during to stadium tour, and a visit to the Control Centre revealed camera’s that could zoom in on any seat in the stadium with enough zoom and clarity to read a text off your mobile phone) have numbed football supporters in an attempt to create a docile, robotic, consumer-style football fan. In these situations anything which represents the hedonistic surge of emotion must be celebrated and allowed to continue.
Secondly, in the classical liberal tradition, it is well within your rights to do anything which does not infringe upon the rights of others. So long as all the people involved are consensual and aware of the risks of a casual ruck, and no innocents are caught in the crossfire, then who has the right to deem this act barbaric, vicious or otherwise generally unworthy. I am aware people will reel off examples of either innocent bystanders getting caught in the scuffles, and example of hooliganism going too far and leading to serious injuries or death. Of course I do not advocate such happenings, and a return of hooliganism would require what I would like to call controlled hooliganism, where standard supporters are recognised and not affected and there is an honour in terms of fighting with fists, not weapons.
Furthermore, bringing another of my passions into the mix (left-wing politics), hooligan culture can be advocated for its utility in a revolutionary situation. The British left at the moment is a standing joke. Populated almost exclusively by weird, unapproachable academics and socially awkward, self-loathing middle-class kids, the British left lacks the exact class of people that would be useful, and have a genuine stake in a social revolution: the angry youth of the working class. Football firms tend to exclusive draw on these sort of people. Recruiting working class youths on the terraces could give the left a base in working class communities and provide a cadre of (to borrow from the lexicon of Egyptian revolution) shock troops. During the protests that toppled Mubarak, the Ultras of Cairo’s main football club Al Ahly essentially became a security force of the protestors, protecting Tahrir Square and “providing the fuel – the songs and banners, as well as the muscle – that hastened Mubarak’s exit”(
http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment...-football-fans). It doesn’t require a great leap of imagination to realise that, young, tough men who are organised and used to fighting and moving in a bloc, would be incredibly useful cadres in any hypothetical revolutionary situation.
Another justification if you will, of a little scuffle every now and then, requires an appreciation of standard establishment politicians views on hooligans. David Cameron called an event in Newcastle where 29 people were arrested as deplorable. Frankly, a society that is sensitive to the point of hysteria to a bit of honest violence, yet allows insidious and much more harmful violence in the form of cuts to welfare. Google ATOS…cuts…welfare and you will be swamped with stories of deaths of disabled and/or vulnerable members of society who were cut off from benefits and were unable to survive on the pittance that was left to them. An establishment that issues death sentence to the most vulnerable of society yet gets all self-righteous over a few punches can **** of and stew in its own hypocrisy. To quote the late, great Brian Clough “there are more hooligans in the House of Commons than at a football match”.
And finally, hooliganism can be justified via its ability to (again hypothetically) reverse the increasing trend of higher ticket prices. Unfortunately, football has become much more fashionable. People who have no business anywhere near football stadiums have increasingly flocked to them. Top end politicians fall over themselves to pretend to like football, appearing on Football Focus, etc in an attempt to latch on to its increasing popularity. This is just plain wrong. Tory politicians, as shown by the Thatcher governments persistent campaign against the victims of the Hillsborough disaster, are not the friends of football fans. They are our enemy. A return of a controlled hooliganism should help drive away not only these lecherous vote-seekers, but also assorted ‘trendy’ spectators, the foreign students, the business executive, Roy Keane’s infamous prawn sandwich brigade. The removal of such individuals patronage would then leave gaping seats in top flight stadia. The next natural step would be the lowering of ticket prices, which would then woo back the ordinary football fans, who, quite rightly, are disgusted at paying over the top ticket prices (the most expensive season ticket in the Premier League last season was £1,955, at The Emirates Stadium). So there you go, the humble hooligan as manipulator of market forces.
That is my tribute to the long demonised, eternally unappreciated and sometimes completely forgotten figure of English football. My defence of the football hooligan.
DR
Originally Posted by NeverFeltBetter
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