Confession time; I have come to love the organisation that calls itself SPAD.
For the un-initiated, they are the Scottish Protestants Against Discrimination, a “pressure group” which has sprung up in the very recent past to campaign on behalf of the world’s only oppressed ethnic majority now that the Ba’ath Party is no longer in charge of Iraq.
I have come to love them for all the reasons we’ve come to love Statement O’Clock At Ibrox; for the LOL’s.
I love them for their glorious, misplaced, sense of entitlement.
For their rage against the dying of their culture.
For the way in which it shows backward, hick, hillbilly ideology and its adherents in their proper light; demented, clownish, desperately flailing against the tides of history and time.
Let’s start with the name.
If there is one group of individuals who have never, in the course of recent history, suffered from discrimination it is Scottish Protestants.
Indeed, it’s not for nothing that I have sarcastically referred to the Peepul who were out in George Square last month protecting statues which have stood for eons as “the pride of the Empire”, for as much of that empire was built by white Scottish Protestants as was secured by any others.
And oh, how they lorded it over large tracts of land and their populations.
It’s one of the things they “celebrate” every July. It’s in their songs, such as Rule Britannia. It was a Scottish Protestant who wrote that dirge, a song about English exceptionalism at a time when there was a German on the throne.
They have always been a little mixed up, a little confused as to their wider identity. In short, many of them are thick.
But discriminated against? Hell, no. It was Catholics who couldn’t get jobs in Scotland once because of the old “what school did you go to?” question. It was them on the other side of the desk, asking it, and sneering whenever someone gave the wrong answer.
Indeed, when you see these Peepul up close you come to understand that discrimination isn’t really their concern … actually let me try that again; it is their concern but it’s not because they believe they are subjected to it.
Their problem is that they’ve lost the power to subject other people to it.
That they are no longer running things their way.
Today a Celtic fan hilariously hoisted a Nine flag up the official mast of Glasgow City Chambers.
It was a quite sublime stunt in a week where Sevco has been promoting the idea that this is their city.
SPAD erupted in amusing apoplexy.
Their quite unhinged statement refers to a “flag of ill-repute”, demands an apology.
From who and to who?
From Catholics? From Celtic? From the council?
To Protestants?
A lot of them support Celtic. A lot of them found that stunt hilarious.
They don’t feel in the least bit offended and they sure as Hell don’t feel the least bit discriminated against and, indeed, as many of them will be left-wing and both socially and politically aware, they’d find the idea offensive.
SPAD see themselves as a hard-core organisation “fighting for their culture.”
In fact, tonight they look like the thin-skinned liberal “snowflakes” they and the right so often rail against online.
Their statement has the stench of madness about it yes, but it stinks of something else too, something that should give these Peepul pause … it reeks of self-pity.
I sometimes think that SPAD comes off as so deranged and lacking in self-awareness that this has to be some kind of wicked joke, Tims at the windup, something confected, something dreamed up on the Kerrydale Street forums or somewhere like that.
Today I know that it’s not, because the tone of their demented communique is just too real and raw, just too close to the bone, just too redolent of genuine pain and suffering.
These muppets really do believe everything they claim.
They feel downtrodden. Put upon. Discriminated against.
What must it be like to live inside their heads?
I can’t answer that … but from the outside, it’s bloody hilarious watching them!
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