Booing the knee? This is the moment to take back football from the racists
The Tories and the fash want a culture war. Let’s have a party.
With the booing of England players for taking the knee at the start of the Romania match, Britain’s summer of racist bullshit just got under way in earnest. It will escalate with every Euro2020 fixture, coinciding with the spectacle of no fewer than five (!) far right candidates standing in the Batley and Spen by election, which ends on 1 July.
Try as you might, you will not be able to ignore the central question: is taking the knee “Marxist”? It will polarise every pub, every living room and provide live ammunition for every grifting right-wing radio host. It is, in short, an episode in the culture war in which we will all be forced to take a side.
To understand where this has come from you need to understand (a) the structure of British racism (b) the new thought-architecture of fascism (c ) how the Conservative Party has adopted a form of right-wing English nationalism to create a new voting base (d) the massive business opportunity presented by the rise of fascism for tabloid populists and money-grabbing influencers.
The prime tenet of British racism is that Britain is not racist. Only individuals are racist, goes the argument, not…
