The headline of this piece will not surprise a single person, anywhere. The Daily Record, either as a wilful distortion, or out of utter pig ignorance, has done its usual and written a story about our fans which casts them in a wholly negative light. As usual they’ve done neither research nor outreach. And they appear to have ignored well known facts.
I spoke to people who were there, and who saw trouble flare-up elsewhere in the city yesterday.
Indeed, everyone on social media knows exactly what was going on in the East End before and after the game.
What actually happened – as five minutes research would have revealed – was that far-right activists from all over the UK descended on Celtic Park, and they did that for one reason; to cause bother. They attacked Celtic fans without provocation, which is what they travelled here to do.
And they picked the wrong supporters to do that to, because whatever limited resistance these people might encounter elsewhere, Celtic fans are not going to allow themselves to be set upon by thugs without a response.
The media can run all the nonsense it likes, aided and abetted by Police Scotland; our supporters will never apologise, and nor should they, for putting the dregs of humanity on their toes.
Whilst we’re on the subject of Police Scotland, that was an embarrassment for them yesterday and it’s not surprising to see them doing the old “one side was as bad as the other” deflection. It keeps people from asking about their own performance, which was woeful.
Their police intelligence unit is great at terrorising kids with their video cameras and their “discreet surveillance” and general level of harassment.
But their expensive, tax payer, funded department was sleeping at the wheel yesterday and missing in action when the real trouble makers rolled into town.
Its information was either badly flawed or non-existent, and that’s ridiculous considering that far-right groups had been buzzing over this draw for months and the visit from one of their high ranking goons was well trailed on forums belonging to several different organisations and clubs.
Celtic cyberspace knew about it well in advance of the game; somehow our much lauded policing organisation did not.
What an abject display that is from them, and serious questions should be getting asked by our elected representatives about exactly what value for money the taxpayer is getting from the football unit.
They couldn’t even mobilise properly last season when an Ibrox fan group advertised a sectarian rally threatening violence with a leafleting campaign weeks in advance of the event. I don’t know why anyone expected them to be on their game here.
That’s a question you might think that The Daily Record would have wanted to focus on, or maybe they could have concentrated on how the military wing of hard-Brexit-land thought it could come up here and bring havoc to our streets with impunity; those are two stories which are surely far more socially significant than having their usual anti-Celtic dig.
In other words, I thought they might put actual journalism first since they’d have been shooting into an open goal.
Too much to ask?
I guess so.
The paper has no problem spreading far-right propaganda, having played an active role in spreading disinformation about events in Sunderland last year when Celtic went down for a pre-season game. Their coverage of that, and the way they drooled over one of the nation’s low IQ far-right nutters, was deplorable.
Once again, in this case, they went straight for the core audience and the lowest common denominator by focussing on a story about how our fans were involved in a fight. They should ponder on what happens if one guy attacks another and that person doesn’t defend himself.
That’s not a fight, it’s a rout, and that’s how people end up in hospital or worse.
That wasn’t going to happen, and there should be no apology from the people in our support who protected themselves since the police absolutely failed to.
No-one wants to see scenes like these around football in Scotland, and especially not at Celtic Park. But having spoke to people who were there I am fully confident in saying our fans defended themselves when attacked.
These people speak the language well, so they’ll understand exactly where our supporters were coming from.
Perhaps it will make them think again before deciding Scotland, and Celtic Park, is a good place to peddle their hate.
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