A couple of years ago, I did a lengthy article on the etymology of the word “hun.”
It comes from Attila, of course, and his band of savages who laid waste to much of European civilisation.
During World War 1 it was used to describe the Germans after the barbarity of their invasion of Belgium.
During the Second World War Winston Churchill often referred to “Hitler and his huns” in his speeches, most notably in his condemnation of the invasion of the Soviet Union.
To me, the meaning of the word seems clear.
Hun is a pejorative that denotes destructiveness, viciousness and lawlessness.
It is a word to describe those of rapacious bloodlust and limitless hatred.
And viewing the newspapers today and my inbox, sagging under the weight of pictures and stories and links from people who were just flat out appalled by what they witnessed yesterday, it is a word I have no hesitation in using to describe all of those who were involved.
Yesterday, the huns sacked Glasgow.
When St Johnstone won the League Cup recently, not one of us was not happy for them and sad for Livingston. Whenever a club outside of our own wins something our fans are usually amongst the first to offer their fulsome congratulations.
It’s not rivalry that stops us from doing the same to the shower across the city, and nor is pettiness.
It’s because of those kinds of scenes. It’s because of the sectarianism and bigotry and latent hatreds that bubble away under the surface over there. It’s because of the shamelessness and refusal to accept that there is a moral code or law which shouldn’t be broken if they believe that there is the least advantage in it.
Yesterday, during a pandemic, thousands of them breached social distancing guidelines and the law of the land.
They fought with each other.
They fought with the police, those police who were not taking the day off or having selfies taken.
(More on that later, you better believe it.)
They destroyed private property, including the Celtic Shop.
They even desecrated the cenotaph … the fans of the “club of the troops”, pissing all over the war memorial.
Nothing is beneath them.
Ian Archer once termed Rangers as “a permanent embarrassment and an occasional disgrace”; God knows what the great man would have made of Sevco, a permanent disgrace who are so far beyond the point of embarrassment the word has lost its meaning.
Yesterday was the first ever title won by the NewCo.
This is how their “fans” chose to usher in that achievement; with a mass outbreak of lawlessness, violence and vandalism.
This is their version of celebrating.
This is why all of Scotland outwith their bubble detests them.
This is why we sometimes call them huns.
It’s a word I use very rarely.
Today that word is the only appropriate one in the language.
Today they’ve absolutely earned it.