Comments on: Nationalism, regionalism and Spanish football

By: Antoni Jaume

Antoni Jaume — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 23:27:37 +0000

Football fans in Spain have been a fascist recruiting ground for years. The more fascist a youngster, usually, the more he will ressort to racist slogans and attitude. And there are few thing that set them up than football with the Spanish selection. As for ther slurs, they are tipical of right wingers “discourse”, like “islamo-fascist”, “anti-American”, “EUrines” and so many others I can’t list. The finality is to “shock and awe”, to get and emotional response that they reckon will disturb their adversary abilities. What was saying that marine that killed an injured and unarmed Iraqi? I’ve heard that in US tv the words were censored, however they let the shot to be heard, it is so nice to hear the sound that brings death!

DSW

By: Ken

Ken — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 17:25:01 +0000

Craig, I agree with you. The anti-Americanism of Europe has very little grounding in reality and is nothing short of crude and offensive in many cases. It was a disgrace to hear the racist chanting last night and it brings shame on the whole of Spain. They’d be up in arms if the English players were to call the Spanish players spicks derisively.

By: craig neudorf

craig neudorf — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 11:34:08 +0000

More to the point, a nice segment of the Spanish football crowd chose to root against the black race… so European …

Sorry, this is my repartee to two European golfers, Luke Donald and Paul Casey, who think americans are stupid and uneducated; somehow these two think that americans who have travelled 31 states, 3 Canadian provinces and Mexico is less than travelling through 12 European States and Morrocco…or that knowing where the Ozark mountain range, the Colorado River, or Great Slave Lake is located.. is less important than knowing the location of geographic salients in Europe.

I am a transplanted Canadian (Toronto, Ottawa) living in blue collar and hardly enlightened Jacksonville, Florida…but blacks and whites mingle very freely inside and outside the stadium …and trust me, this is not an economically or socially advanced crowd..but I guess I would take it over the populace in a typical European city.

By: Ken

Ken — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 06:42:13 +0000

I’m pretty sure you’d be right on that. This does invite an interesting question - if Spain was broken up into Basques, Catalans, etc, would the Castilians be more successful than they are now?

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 06:02:30 +0000

That is true, but it was England, as opposed to Great Britain or the United Kingdom (neither of which exist in terms of international football, of course), who were playing tonight so the comparison isn’t strictly accurate. I would doubt - though no doubt someone will now come along to prove me wrong - that there were any significant number of English (as opposed to British) people wanting Spain to win tonight.

By: Ken

Ken — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 01:40:38 +0000

I think it is a pretty sad state of affairs that there is a large proportion of Great Britain who would root for Spain ahead of England. Draws interesting points about modern nationalism though…

By: Anders Widebrant

Anders Widebrant — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 23:43:25 +0000

I rather wonder how large a part of Great Britain will be rooting for Spain rather than England.

“…natural enemies, like Englishmen and Scots, or Welshmen and Scots, or Japanese and Scots, or Scots and other Scots. Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!”
– Groundskeeper Willie