Andy McIver of The Herald thinks he’s doing his club – the one at Ibrox – a service today by writing a piece which demands that they remove the bad element from their support.
Yet in doing so he has written a number of highly suspect things which will do nothing more than encourage the lunatic fringe to believe in many of the outrageous myths which propel their hate.
No more so than when he launches two quite preposterous attacks on the Celtic fans.
Writing of his own club, he says this; “(They) treat last week’s rioters as the target audience. This needs to be turned on its head. They are not the target audience. They are the enemy within, and they need to be purged not by words, but by deeds.”
The sentiment is right on, but every single word of it is undercut by the first half of the article which makes a number of highly dubious claims before dipping right into Whataboutery.
I treated the article yesterday in The Scotsman to the full-scale paragraph by paragraph treatment; I feel that I need to do the same here. Because it virtually demands it.
I think the article said things that needed to be said.
I also understand that McIvor is playing to the gallery himself a bit, and probably thinks he needs to “talk the talk” but none of what he said in the second half of the piece will even register with the Peepul he was writing for in the first half of it.
It was a big mistake to pander to that part of the audience, because our side will deplore the smears on our support whilst that’s the only part of the piece that the Peepul will even remember.
There’s weak thinking behind it.
It was just plain stupid.
The article doesn’t start particularly well either …