The thing is that Ive been to 100s of football matches and never once heard a monkey chant and now all of a sudden there are supposedly 2 at high profile matches in the space of a few weeks - a bizarre situation
I dont even know what happened to the bloke who was arrested after the Manc Derby - not seen any details about whether it was supposed to be one bloke or more today either
I think that the problem is a bit more complex and it's all sort of guess work. I think that in the case of the UK the problem is that for some time you guys have 'believed in your own hype', as in it was the Eastern Europe that was deemed a racist backwards shithole (probably rightfully so to an extent) whereas racism was thought to have been combatted and done with (the obvious and clear one, not at the institutional level) in the West. You've had programmes like Panorama prior to Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine absolutely shit smearing those two countries, you've had high profile people like Sol Campbell telling people not to go to the Euro because they'll come back in body bags, and so on, and so forth. It sort of lulls the people into believing that 'those things only happen in X', which quite frankly happens in every sphere of life and on every subject. So with the problem 'not existing here', we sort of ease off on the education part (which imo is the most important one), let smaller incidents be, don't dig into the problem, it's just that the topic is no longer generating clicks so the media don't give one feck about it (and I'm of the opinion that the media play probably the biggest part in the problem). I mean, even off the top of my head you've had some cnut at Stamford Bridge doing the monkey gestures at Welbeck back in what, Fergie times? Or Moyes season? You've had some FA fixture a couple of years ago where somebody died because he was confronted by some hooligans who abused him, you've had Chelsea fans kicking off some guy off the tube in Paris because he was black. Was there as much discussion, outrage and high figures speaking out at those moments? No. Because the subject wasn't as trendy as it is now.
And this is the biggest problem imo. Combatting racism, homophobia, fascism, etc., etc., is done in bursts when it's a hot topic, instead of steady and vigilant way in an extended period with the biggest focus on education. Now what happens is going into extremes, something that oftentimes reminds me of how Red Scare worked in the USA, where anything is going to be labelled '-ist' or '-phobic' which does more harm in diluting the actual term and problem by the groups who, apparently, care so much to combat aforementioned phenomena. The narrative is also very often biased and hypocritical, perpetuated by the media (of either side of the conflict) so we end up with having '-ists' and '-isms' that are okay and that are not okay. We have 'our guys' who might do some disgusting shit but we turn a blind eye to it, and we have 'their guys' who'll get labelled with '-isms' and '-ists' at the slightest occasion possible just to get the mob and narrative against them. And most people will lap up to this shit, because it reinforces their world outlook, because they have a fancy topic to talk about at work, meetings, whatever and because the feeling that they are a part of some community, a group, a movement.
There's simply no stopping it I guess. It's not in anybody's business.
People don’t realise this but the criminal justice system in this country is a disgrace. As in a complete and utter disgrace, the things that people get away with would blow your mind.
I was racially abused on camera direct to my face, the entire incident in clear light and day with perfect sound and it took over a year for the person to be prosecuted and even then they attempted to lower the charging decision, only because the victim had a change of heart and decided to confess and apologise was the initial charge allowed to stand.
There is no deterrent, people know they can get away with it. All that happens is they get abused on social media for about a week than everything is forgotten about and the charges will be dropped for the court case 15 months later due to ‘insufficient evidence’.
It is and has been an absolute shitstain in Poland for years too. I guess it's the case of the grass being greener here. I think that the 'taking it into your own hands' only adds to the problem (while I myself don't really mind it, given that most of the cnuts who get the abuse simply
deserve it, which is a very simplistic way of thinking focusing on primal urges more than anything but hey), because it sort of mandates vitrol and abuse, which then will have a counterweight (Newton's 3rd law of motion in social context basically) of more morons spewing their shit purely to annoy the other side, which eventually ends up with bizzare situations like the current on in Italian media. It's a vicious circle of sorts. It sort of creates this narrative of 'oh, so the guy got fired from his job and abused on the social media? Well then, he got what he deserved so there's the justice'. That's not justice though, that's anarchy. But as you've said, with the justice system being an absolute clusterfeck it's always going to end up with people taking care of the problem, which only creates new problems if anything else.
