“And you know what I think then? I hate them. Not for their race, not for their brutality—I hate them because they’ve left us no way out. I hate whoever put a gun in young Vinny Byrne’s hand… I know it’s me and I hate myself for it. I hate them for making hate necessary. And I’ll do what I have to to end it.” – Liam Neeson, from the film Michael Collins.
Earlier in the year, I got to know the people at Show Racism The Red Card a little; we had got talking over the failure of Civic Scotland, and our game’s governing bodies, to stand up for our player Scott Sinclair when he was racially abused at Ibrox.
Civic Scotland never seems to run out of things to say when it can label football fans in this country bigots for stating their political views, and I found their silence over the return of monkey signs and chants, and their noxious mix with sectarian sing-a-thon’s to be worrisome. The silence of the SFA and the SPFL, who at the time were nominating Scott for awards, was far worse. I thought it was despicable … and SRTRC agreed wholeheartedly.
Earlier this week, I read their press release on Keith Jackson’s swamp trawling article about Morelos.
I thought their statement was first rate, and it was great to see a civic organisation actually call out one of the hacks for writing something that didn’t just dip a toe into dark waters but leaped into them with abandon. That piece, which was full of allegory and allusions to Colombia as a land of drug smugglers and murderers, which equated a simple football transfer with a cocaine deal, was dire, filled with stereotyping, and was plainly disgraceful.
I’ll come back to Jackson momentarily, because he hasn’t learned yet that when you are in a hole you stop digging.
He just keeps on heading for groundwater.
Yesterday, I read with dismay, SRTRC’s latest press release; it is a statement on Phil McGiollabhain, author of Downfall, who needs no introduction to anyone on this site or in Celtic cyberspace. Phil had attended some SRTRC events and was helping to educate them on anti-Irish racism in Scotland.
He appeared with one of their execs, in a photoshoot.
And that was enough for the Peepul to do what it is that they do best; they turned their perma-rage on Scotland’s anti-racism charity and accused it of promoting a bigot.
To my deep disgust, SRTRC bowed to that pressure and under the guise of “reviewing” Phil’s previous work have disassociated themselves from him and essentially called him a racist. I asked them for clarity on that last night and I was told that Phil himself is not considered a racist but that some of his writing is.
I was astounded to read that.
This is Civic Scotland’s typically weak fall-back position whenever they are pressed by the Peepul; what shocks me is how often that pressure gets them what they want, which is to tar anyone who calls them out on their sub-human behaviour as just as bad as they are.
It’s a pitiful retreat from standing up to these folk. It vindicates their warped views.
SRTRC invited Phil to work alongside them in the first place because they have traditionally been woefully slow in responding to anti-Irish racism in Scotland, and whether you like Phil or not there’s simply no doubt that he is one of the country’s leading experts on the issue.
His book, Minority Reporter, dealt with the matter from a journalistic perspective and deserves to stand up there with the works of people like Tom Devine and other academics who have spent their careers examining the issue in detail.
SRTRC knows – or they should have known – exactly what Phil’s background is; I would have thought it was why he was invited in the first place.
And like many in Scotland, Phil is not just an observer of these events; he has been at the sharp end. Phil has been the target of the bigots and the death threats and more abuse from The Peepul than most folk could live with.
SRTRC’s executive were, themselves, subjected to death threats in the past few days.
The difference is, Phil has never bowed down to the people who make them, whereas SRTRC has.
I can understand that.
I can sympathise.
But I cannot endorse their cowardly climb-down here or the way in which they’ve sought to justify it by labeling Phil’s writings racist.
It is patently absurd. It is also potentially libelous.
When a major anti-racism organisation has accused you of being one that’s damaging and whereas they hide behind the qualifier that it’s only his writing they find to be racist a court wouldn’t differentiate and when that charge is manifestly untrue it also places them in the cross-hairs of the law.
They are lucky Phil has seen it all before and probably has no sincere wish to see the organisation further damaged.
I agree with him on that.
They’ve made one almighty mess of this and they are about as wrong as they could be, but they don’t deserve that.
Keith Jackson ought not to be so lucky.
As this crisis was blowing up, he thought he would take two shots for the price of one; he thought he might get a little payback against the organisation that called him out on his diabolical Morelos piece whilst also settling an old score or two with Phil at the same time, so he tweeted the picture of Phil with the SRTRC exec member with the words “Show Racism The Red Card?”
That is the act of a truly contemptible individual, a squalid little moment of viciousness, a typically spiteful move from a discredited joke, a pitiful hack who this morning is writing an article on divisions in the Ibrox dressing room which is only months behind those which have appeared here and on other blogs like this.
If he escapes this controversy without a lawyer’s letter to hang on the wall he ought to consider it a blessing he doesn’t deserve.
But he’s a side-show here, of course.
The bigger issue is the way Civic Scotland has, again, taken the side of the racists against their victims and sought to tar those who take a stand against them as being just as bad.
Last night, when I emailed them for clarity over their statement, included in the reply I got was the following; “You can’t drive hate out with hate.”
I think that it’s a soft-soap sentiment that ignores objective reality, and it’s why I used the Michael Collins quote that opens this article. Because I do hate Scotland’s sectarian lowlife, and I do hate racism and those who practice it, and I make no apology for it and nor should Phil or anyone else.
When I found out last night that the SRTRC exec had received death threats over this I wasn’t even remotely surprised; these people think that qualifies as a legitimate tactic when they encounter something they don’t like.
SRTRC wants the rest of the world to treat these people with kid gloves, as though their behaviour wasn’t criminal and morally repugnant.
The article she and others in Civic Scotland found most objectionable was the famous “Incubator” piece; last night I re-read it, and even with the passage of time it stands up as a perfect example of using analogy, even dark humour, to make a serious point.
That article was not about Rangers or Sevco fans; it is not “tarring them all with the same brush.”
It was very clear in that it targeted an element of that support, not the support as a whole.
It was about a sub-sect of that support which simply refuses to join the civilised world.
They inhabit the half-light of the worst corners of the internet, they poison every environment they come into contact with.
They are the rioters of Manchester and Pamplona.
The sectarian songsters up to their knees in Catholic blood.
They are the monkey chanters and those who make the “Red Hand” salutes.
They are recognisable anywhere because hate is their default position.
And they like to spread it around. Anyone who’s not “them” is an enemy.
There is a generic term some of us have for them; what I refer to as the H word, and I really have no qualms about using it in this context and only refrain because it never gets through the Newsnow language filter … an absurdity in itself, and a minor victory for the Peepul who have spent years trying to have it banned, probably because it’s the most adequate description of who and what they are which is available to us.
The word itself is associated most with Attila and his horde who burned, looted, raped and murdered their way across Europe as the Roman Empire finally collapsed like a house of cards in the west and the east both.
The phrase describes a mind-set and a pattern of behaviour; reckless, vicious, thuggish, destructive, unthinking … barbarian.
And that’s part of the point Phil was trying to make in that piece, along with another, more salient one; that Ibrox grows these people, and it has done for years. Its environs shield them, nurture them, allow them free expression and free reign.
Phil wrote a book about the downfall of a football club; let’s be clear here, that’s all he did.
And for that he and his editor Angela Haggerty were subjected to torrents of abuse and threats the likes of which Scotland hasn’t seen in years.
Death threats are almost compulsory whenever you attempt to explore events at that club.
Ask Alex Thomson. Ask Graham Spiers. He, along with Angela, were forced out of jobs with a national newspaper by the same type of campaign of intimidation SRTRC just caved in to … Civic Scotland always bends the knee to these people.
Let’s not forget that the SFA CEO Stewart Regan suggested that there would be “civil unrest” if the rules were followed properly in the case of Sevco … no wonder these Peepul think they can do whatever the Hell they like, and force the hands of others.
Because all too often they can.
As far as I’m concerned the only criticism I have with what Phil wrote is that he pulled his punches.
I’ve seen the abuse these people hurl. I’ve dipped a toe into the toxic swamps where they congregate to shit in the water. I’ve read vicious attacks on named individuals too numerous and sickening to recount; one of them is young Jay Beatty, who no human being on Earth could ever hate as much as some of these Peepul openly claim to.
In their readiness to embrace hate, in their vindictiveness, in their evil social, religious and cultural bubble where they do view the rest of us as somehow Lesser, dehumanizing language is par for the course with them, and their recent obsession with pedophilia is revolting and unsettling; even Gary Glitter doesn’t spend as much of his day thinking about child abuse as some of these folk do. In their conduct they remind us what their mind-set has traditionally endorsed.
In another time and place they would have been herding people to “shower rooms” like cattle, and probably whistling whilst they worked.
I have no interest in making nice with scum such as that and the idea that we can all live together in peace and harmony is ludicrous.
It belongs in Utopian fiction, not public policy, and I thought the whole reason an organisation like SRTRC had for existing was to make sure these people were exorcised to the margins.
Now I’m told the goal is to make them part of the mainstream.
By educating them.
By understanding them.
What ivory tower sentimentality.
What nonsense.
Well count me out.
These people crawled out from under a rock and they’ve banged on the bars here and somehow been able to brand someone who stood up to them as just as bad as they are, and I refute it utterly for the slander that it is, not just against Phil but against every single one of us who refused a seat at the back of the bus, who shouted them down, who puts up, every single day, with the abuse and the hate and the threats that SRTRC folded under in five minutes.
They’ve made a tragic mistake here and done the work of the enemy, the one they’re supposed to be fighting against.
This week, they pandered to them instead.