Some uncomfortable truths for the woke crowd

European Super League, Armenian Genocide recognition, and why self-hating education won't make your society more harmonious...

I might as well deliver a few truth bombs, big ones at that, in my first piece here. But if you know me you won’t be surprised. Because it will make many people feel uncomfortable and that’s just a good thing.

The proposed European Super League, which thankfully looks like it won’t go ahead, is a horrid idea and an insult to football and all sport, and its rich and beautiful tapestry of traditions which football supporters like me were drawn to in the first place. What’s been going on is not the game we were drawn to in the first place, and you can’t blame fans for being angry about this.

Along with Brexit, Black Lives Matter and Meghan Markle, this may yet be another frontier in Britain’s ongoing Culture War. Here’s why.

Throwing out of over a century of football tradition and the breaking down of national borders and identities in favour of a listless transnational competition, rightly horrifies everyone concerned about the game. If not from a political point of view (whatever your persuasion), then from a purely sporting point of view. It stinks. It ain’t sport. It should be worth noting that Boris Johnson and Prince William publicly voiced their opposition to the plan, and one wonders what role their voice may have played in its downfall.

Football has embraced of the Black Lives Matter movement, but how many are aware of what BLM really represents? It might well be because many of these people see “nationalism” and “populism” as bad things, and are passionately pro-EU/pro-Remain. BLM and Remain were embraced by much the same people who adhere to a “progressive” and “internationalist” view with the dream of a utopian borderless world. This lies at the heart of the Left’s recent cultural offensives. It is telling that there hasn’t been much talk about murdered South African international goalkeeper Senzo Meyiwa.

Many of the football figures who have been vocally pro-BLM or pro-Remain have been horrified by the European Super League proposal. And, from a sporting and ethnical point of view, rightly so. Since it epitomises corporate greed at its very worst which has consumed professional sport. Yet many of the same people haven’t been able to square this with the social and political worldview they embrace, of which the BLM cause is a manifestation.

Namely, how can their scorning of anything that reeks of “nationalism” (which they see as “racist”) be squared with voicing opposition something that breaks down national borders and abolishes tradition for the sake of “change”? Isn’t this what the entire Woke cult is about? A borderless world where tradition is cast out for the sake of change, where localism, tribalism, rivalries et al won’t matter? The opposition to this plan can be seen as a form of “populism” that the progressive commentariat pour scorn on. They railed against people who can effectively fight the forces of globalisation and homogenisation.

We can also talk about the sense of disenfranchisement ordinary football supporters feel, and the corporate greed epitomised by those like JP Morgan who initially backed the proposal (also note that JP Morgan is also a donor to the SPLC which profits from smearing conservatives). But my whole point is: can anyone see the contradiction between rightful indignation at threats to erode football tradition and national borders in the game, and support of progressive causes (Remain, BLM) which threaten to do just that anyway? I doubt many can see the contradictions.

And on to our next topic. The long overdue recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the United States is to be commended. Indeed, it really should be supported across the political spectrum. And if you want to criticise one former president for not recognising it, you have to criticise all others too for it.

But that’s not my point. Nor the fact that the long-overdue recognition of the Armenian Genocide is the right thing to do (as it should for the simultaneous genocides of Assyrians and Greeks in the same period).

For in the West’s current hysteria about race relations, history and identity, the recognition of genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire sits rather uncomfortably. After all, the West’s history is to be cast as an Original Sin, not least in the United States, Britain and Australia. These countries, as the narrative goes, are “irredeemably racist” and have allegedly “awful” histories. Meanwhile, the atrocities of Communist regimes are overlooked, as are those of the Ottomans, with the ongoing denials of Russia and Turkey today to go with it.

And in our fragmented societies, discussions about these things inevitably give a platform to people seeking to use these discussions to further their own agendas and endless whataboutery abounding. Either all the wrong lessons will be drawn, or they will be lost and nothing will be learned at all. Moreover, in the context of anti-racism, the very tolerance of such genocide denial for decades exposes the rank hypocrisy of the multicultural and anti-racism industry.

The attacks on the national identity, traditions, values and honour of Western nations continue unabated, and schoolchildren will be taught to despise what their own countries stand for. The people doing this will tell you they are for greater harmony and social cohesion, when the reality is they along with the whole race relations industry are solely looking for power and profit.

Far from building harmony and social cohesion, the trashing of Western nations’ history, culture and identity will only create more alienation, resentment and fragmentation. Above all else, it will create fertile ground for radicalisation. Many of the jihadists who joined ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups were born and raised in the West, and radicalised in the West as opposed to the historic centres of Islamic learning such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Shamima Begum was British born and bred, and was radicalised on British soil. John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban”, grew up in Marin County, California - one of the most affluent and politically progressive areas in the United States. If you teach children not to be proud of their countries but be ashamed of and despise it, if you teach children that they are perpetual victims of “structural and institutional racism”, you will not engender love and respect for their country, or for one another. If they don’t believe in your country and won’t defend it, they become candidates for radicalisation.

If supposedly progressive-minded people feel uncomfortable about all this, it’s because they’ll be forced to think for themselves. And that’s not something they’re terribly good at.