Last night, someone drew my attention to a number of tweets and posts on social media attacking our fans for the Donald Trump banner at the weekend.
One particular eejit was trying to provoke Tom English and Graham Speirs into a bizarre conversation over whether an anti-Pope banner and an anti-Trump banner were necessarily different things.
That this needs explaining to someone is a sign of the low IQ we’re dealing with.
But that individual wasn’t alone.
His was just the most extreme reaction.
Others foamed at the mouth over the “politics” of it, for reasons that are hard to understand.
What Trump’s done here isn’t exactly subtle, and it’s not exactly universally popular. Just about every government on Earth has roundly condemned it, including the British one. His own State Department is said to be in virtual meltdown over it. There are people there who have devoted their careers to a two-state solution. Trump gave it the old two fingered one. Their life’s work is in ruins because this guy is appealing to the lowest common denominator.
He’s a strange one, is Trump, and so are a lot of those who defend him.
I am particularly amused by those who do it from the far right of the Sevco support. Those who are most vocally, and venomously, aggrieved by a section of our own fan base being pro-Palestinian have embraced Israel tightly in response.
Talk about a stupid reaction.
Quite how the same people who dabble on the fringes of fascism here in the UK can readily embrace the hard-core government which promotes the rights of Jewish citizens to a country of their own I really do not know.
The general consensus on that side of the political spectrum isn’t pro-Israel or pro-Jew, it’s Hitlerian, and they make no bones about it.
I’ve said before, any Israeli citizen who’s looking for friends amongst this lot ought to think again.
They ought to book up on the Loyalist paramilitaries and their association with Combat 18 and other UK far-right organisations who would have gladly let the more extreme Arab leaders get on with the job of “driving the Jews into the sea.”
I’ve also read some right old clap-trap about Celtic fans supporting Palestine as being “support for terrorism.”
Jesus, can’t these people do basic research?
One acquainted support for Palestine with support for Hamas.
Ahem, nice try but technically all over the place … besides, since 2016 – and actually before – Hamas has been explicitly concerned with assisting Arab regimes in tackling extremist groups. They haven’t been openly at war with Israel since 2008-09, at the height of the Gaza conflict.
Someone else mentioned Hezbollah; haha. Such poor research.
They are a Lebanon based organisation funded in part by Syria and Iran. Whilst having much in common with Hamas, they aren’t necessarily one in the same and Hezbollah’s interests aren’t so much conjoined with that of the Palestinians inasmuch as they occasionally criss-cross each other.
Neither organisation was affiliated to Al Qaeda – both in fact have history in fighting Al Qaeda forces on the ground.
Both were vehemently opposed to the agenda and leadership of Islamic State; connecting the two was another stupid mistake a lot of these online muppets have made … and neither Al Qaeda nor IS has the slightest connection with the Palestinian cause.
No Palestinian linked organisation has carried out a terrorist attack in the West since the late 70’s, with the Abu Nidal organisation and the PLO now past history.
Honest to God, the ignorance of these people is mind-numbing.
It hasn’t dawned on them that Celtic fans might just be concerned global citizens … that idea is so far from their own reality that I don’t wonder they’ve excluded it from their thinking.
Our fans have a great and honourable history on the side of the Palestinian people.
That really gets up the noses of a lot of folk.
And those who are defending Trump and calling our fans disgraceful for launching an attack on the policies of this “global leader” would do well to check out Roy Moore, the sectarian bigot Trump just endorsed to be governor of Alabama.
One of the things he’s accused of, incidentally, is sexual abuse involving minors; a lot of Sevco’s online bile mongers seem awfully obsessed by that subject.
You’d think they’d have had anti-Trump banners of their own if it bothered them so much.
But it doesn’t. They are shameless, point-scoring, snivelling hypocrites without a shred of decency or humanity amongst the lot of them, and they are mugs if they don’t think the whole world knows it.