The Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to enter the present debate over the use of the word
‘Yid’ at football grounds is not only an example of contemporary politician’s
weather vane approach to complex social issues, but possibly further evidence
of the sinister strategy at the heart of his particular brand of liberalism.
On Monday 9th of September the Football
Association released a statement that use of words such as “Yids”, “Yid Army”
and “Yiddos” at football grounds would potentially be punished by bans or even
criminal prosecutions in the future[1]. Use of these words at football grounds is
primarily associated with Tottenham Hotspur FC fans, who responded to the FA’s
statement at their next game by chanting “we’ll sing we what we like” regularly
throughout the match[2].
For those familiar with this issue, these events followed the usual pattern of
warning and defiance that has played out every time a group or individual has
sought to address the use of these particular words at football grounds. As a
response Tottenham have taken the step of saying they will consult fans via a
questionnaire sent to season ticket holders on how they feel about this issue[3].
However even a rudimentary grasp of the complexity of racial and ethnic issues
should allow one to understand that this is a complex matter with implications
far beyond the inhabitants of White Hart Lane.
As noted above this debate has largely been played out in
London where for decades Tottenham Hotspur fans have been identified by themselves
and their rivals as “Yids”. The origin of this debate stems from the fact that
the area surrounding White Hart Lane historically has a Jewish association.
Fans of the local club, Spurs, would be taunted with anti-Semitic slurs by fans
of rival teams including West Ham, Chelsea, Arsenal and Millwall, among others[4].
As a response Spurs fans took to referring to themselves as “The Yid Army” thus
following an established tactic in the self-empowerment of minority groups by
taking ownership of an aggressor’s means of abuse. The long-term merits of such
strategies are arguable, indeed the evidence from the obvious African-American
example is by no means clear. What is clear that the existence of a multitude
of competing views who argue forcefully and with considerable, legitimate
grievance make this a complex issue for which there is no simple answer. This
complexity has several levels. Consider the following questions: are all
Tottenham fans Jewish? Do all Jewish Tottenham fans have the exact same
attitudes towards the word? And what of their rivals’ use of the word, which is
often accompanied by ‘hissing’ to signify the gas chambers of the Final
Solution?
It is the above complexity that Prime Minister David Cameron
appears to ignore when he lends support for the use of the word at football
grounds. Speaking in the Jewish Chronicle, Mr Cameron states:
You
have to think of the mens
rea. There's a difference between Spurs
fans self-describing themselves as Yids and someone calling someone a Yid as an
insult…You have to be motivated by hate. Hate speech should be prosecuted – but
only when it's motivated by hate (Jewish Chronicle).
Here Cameron limits the matter to a simple
distinction between self-identification and external aggression and nothing
else, which is at best incorrect and at worst negligent. He makes the error of
assuming it is OK for all Spurs’ fans
to use the term, Jewish or not which is clearly problematic when one considers that only approximately 5% of people in attendance at White Hart Lane
are actually Jewish[5]. As alluded-to by David
Baddiel’s response in the Guardian[6],
following the Prime Minister’s logic must one assume it is acceptable for all Jay-Z fans to refer to their black
friends by the word ‘nigger’, as long as the intention is innocent enough? Such awkward scenarios are made possible if we
side with Cameron and agree that only specific hate appears to be the issue-
ignorance, error and poor judgement don’t seem to apply, despite these being
well-established and ample wellsprings for racial and ethnic slurs. But
ultimately Cameron’s error is in thinking that one can allow the existence of
an environment where certain racial and ethnic slurs are deemed acceptable
without any knock-on effect to the rest of society. This is a potentially naïve
approach to take and likely to be borne out of a specific view of culture,
society and the role of individuals therein.
It is probably uncontroversial to state that historical
developments have ensured that a huge majority of Jewish people dislike the
word “Yid” intensely. As mentioned above it has the darkest of associations and
although there is a minority who see it as serving a liberating and empowering
purpose, those same people would universally reject it in the context of “Yids
out”, “Yids scum” and “die Yid”. Does one really expect this distinction to
remain forever neatly partitioned? Was it ever thus? Those who support the FA’s
stance argue that in giving free reign to its deployment in the former context,
one enables its use in the latter to continue, unchecked. In truth what the FA
is doing may in fact be attempting the impossible, (as a Spurs-supporting
friend told me, “You try telling 36,000 people what to do”) and is almost
certainly counter-productive in the short term. However in siding with the
minority who want to keep the word in use, Cameron is closing the door on a
more nuanced debate, which is essential to achieving a constructive
outcome.
This being the case one might wonder how much political
capital could be accumulated by Cameron’s decision to lend his support to the
continuing use of the term at football grounds. The answer to this lies in
partly in his continuing desire to exploit the prevailing social winds (in
which he is by no means unique) but also, more essentially, in his promotion of
a brand of “muscular liberalism” that is expressed by a hostility towards
“passive tolerance” and “state-multiculturalism”. Troublingly there exists a
meta-narrative in all of this which speaks of the next potential stage of liberalism
and relates to the rarely acknowledged, dark heart of British political
discourse.
In painting attempts to restrict the use of certain terms within
the above schema, Cameron is using a misrepresentation of Britain’s cultural
history to promote his own ‘enough is enough’ brand of liberalism[7]. The Prime Minister’s stance on race relations
can be located in a well-publicised speech he gave in Munich in 2011, in which
he placed the blame for racial disharmony and the loss of British identity squarely at the door of multiculturalism and
announced the need for a robust, “muscular liberalism” to take Britain forward:
… it comes down to a question of identity
… we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity. Under the doctrine
of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live
separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We've
failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong …
when a white person holds objectionable views, racist views for instance, we
rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices come
from someone who isn't white, we've been too cautious frankly–frankly, even
fearful–to stand up to them … . Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive
tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism. A
passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we
will just leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values. But I
believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain
values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship,
democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality.
It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to
belong here is to believe in these things. [my emphasis][8]
I have taken this quote from an essay by Paul Gilroy
entitled ‘My Britain’s Fuck-All’ Zombie
Multiculturalism and the Race Politics of Citizenship[9].
The paper uses the 2011 viral video “My Tram Experience” as a prism through
which Gilroy considers the politics of race, immigration and misoxeny in
Britain. The video in question depicts Emma West’s racist tirade on a Croydon
tram which drew widespread condemnation and resulted in a charge of a racially
aggravated public order offence under Section 4 of the public order act, and a
prison sentence. Gilroy’s paper allows us to understand West’s tirade as an
echo of and facilitated by, the words of Cameron in Munich, and it is his
analysis of that speech that I shall draw on in tying it to the recent comments
in the Jewish Chronicle. It is impossible to do justice to the paper here but
we can draw a handful of observations from Gilroy’s thorough analysis of Cameron’s
speech:
1)
Cameron’s division of the world into “whites”
and “non-whites”
2)
The loss of British identity
3)
White fear of criticising non-white’s
unacceptable behaviour, as a fear of being unfairly accused of racism
4)
Multiculturalism as the cause of 2) and 3).
Firstly we have the eyebrow-raising use by a Prime Minister
in the 21st century of the racist
staple of a polarisation[10]
of society into whites and non-whites. For Cameron it appears the multitudes of
ethnicities, cultures and identities that might fall outside the category
“white” might just as easily be termed “the rest”. It is a striking admission
to dismiss a nuanced approach to racial issues that is repeated when he permits
all Spurs fans to use the word “Yid”. As we shall see this binary approach
allows Cameron to ’dog whistle’ far-right, racist beliefs that ‘real’ Britain
is a white country, albeit one that doesn’t like racism[11],
this is what it is to be British, sentiments later echoed by Ms West as part of
her tram rant.
Related to this we have the loss of British identity (the
“my Britain’s fuck-all” riff as it would later be echoed by West) to unwanted
immigration and unbridgeable racial divides, a seductive trope of far right
figures from Nick Griffin to Anders Brevik. Gilroy slots Cameron’s lament into a history
of post-colonial melancholia that links our Prime Minister to Enoch Powell,
Margaret Thatcher and David Starkey. The loss of British identity becomes a
fear by whites of being accused of racism that Cameron’s speech centres on.
This is itself an echo of Powell’s 1968 Rivers of Blood speech which was itself
motivated by a fear of whites being unjustly prosecuted by the new
anti-discrimination legislation[12].
The above links us with Cameron’s opposition to the FA’s
endeavours and his desire to keep the word “Yid” in football grounds, and
ultimately ties with the anti-PC, liberal/libertarian belief in a right to be
offensive[13].
Cameron’s multiple use of the word “frankly” in the above passage is picked up
by Gilroy as illustrative (he’s saying what we’re all thinking, right?), as is
the invocation of “values” which for Gilroy creates a hierarchy of cultures
(guess whose are at the top?) which “displace all the horizontal presumptions
of a simpler, social plurality”[14].
What we are dealing with here of course is an exhibition of white victimhood,
the politics of fear and the conservative hatred for that great evil:
multiculturalism.
For Cameron it is “the doctrine of state multiculturalism”
alone that prevented the desired outcome of assimilation
of non-whites into white Britain, in a disingenuous version of this country’s
racial history which Gilroy takes care to expose. For Gilroy, Cameron is
seeking to provide an obituary for multiculturalism whilst keep it alive as the
scapegoat for all racial problems, hence the term “zombie multiculturalism”. In
the post 9/11 world, Cameron’s narrative is one of providing security for his flock, to encourage
them to speak out against the “unacceptable views or practices” of non-white
people, without the fear of being labelled racist, which is itself the
consequence of multiculturalism. For Cameron it is this state multiculturalism, not a conservative belief in an eternal
separation of cultures, races and ethnicities, which has segregated British society
with its “passive tolerance” of difference. Cameron’s attack ridicules the
notion that different cultures can occupy the same space in a way that is
mutually beneficial; it is to see such encounters only as a zero-sum game. This
is the doctrine of assimilation. By talking in terms of “values” and those who
“belong here” Cameron is of course carving up the world in a fashion that would
music to the ears of the EDL, BNP and their ilk. However in the clear light of
day perhaps the most distressing problem with Cameron’s claims are not only
this ‘civilisationism’ nor the ample evidence to it’s contrary, but the sense
that rather than hold these views himself, Cameron is using them for political
capital.
There is much more to be said about Cameron’s diatribe
against multiculturalism in Munich[15]
and I would direct people to Gilroy’s essay to gain that fuller view. For our
purposes the key issue is this insight: Cameron’s attitude belongs to “a tradition of
English political speech in which racism is loudly disavowed whilst the speaker
simultaneously seeks to instrumentalise it”[16].
Cameron’s exploitation of such sentiments, his “dog-whistling” of the worst of
British attitudes and his ‘frankly speaking’ persona are what lead him to take
such a stance such on the word “Yid” and there are wider implications.
If we put aside the satirical potential of the term muscular
liberalism, we may be able to expand the concept to include the global
trajectory of the liberal world. Perhaps it is this more “active” liberalism
that allows for the US government to spy on its citizenry, that allows people
to be detained without charge for longer periods and that facilitates the
extra-judicial killing outside a state of war by drone technology. If
neo-liberalism jettisoned classical liberalism’s concerns for social equality,
perhaps muscular liberalism will put paid to any notion of freedom from abuse
by state, market or fellow citizen: a liberalism without liberty.
[1]
Guardian Online http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/17/david-cameron-yids-chants-spurs
[2]
Ibid.
[3] http://www.football365.com/tottenham-hotspur/8924042/Premier-League-Tottenham-ask-season-ticket-holders-about-a-ban-on-some-chants
[4]
Abhorrent behaviour of this kind is by no means unique to these clubs, with a
minority of Liverpool, Leeds United and Manchester City fans referring to their
Manchester United counterparts as “Munichs” in reference to the 1958 Munich Air
Disaster which killed several United first team members. One need only take a
cursory glance at the fan rivalries in Scotland, Italy and parts of Central and
Eastern Europe to find this is not an exclusively English phenomenon.
[5] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/17/david-cameron-yid-really-is-race-hate-word
[6]
Ibid
[7] An
example of this was captured in the Conservative 2010 election billboard slogan
“We can’t go on like this”.
[8]
Gilroy 2012, p.385
[9]
Paul Gilroy (2012) ‘My Britain is fuck all’ zombie multiculturalism
and the race politics of citizenship, Identities:
Global Studies in Culture and Power,
19:4, 380-397
[10] Ibid.
[11]
Gilroy notes that the outcome of the last 30 years of anti-racism struggle is
that nobody, from the Stephan Lawrence killers to Nick Griffin, wants to be
seen as a “racist”.
[12] Ibid, p.386. The notion of the
unequal application of anti-discrimination laws pre-9/11 is given short shrift,
even if the application of such legislation against “non-whites” as part of the
War on Terror is now common knowledge.
[13]
Phillips 2006, Younge 2012, in Ibid
[14]
Ibid, p.385
[15]
Not least the ample evidence that he happily enjoyed its fruits when
frequenting certain cafés and music venues as a younger man at Oxford, Ibid
[16]
Ibid p.394
