The Racist Jokes Directed At Celtic’s New Player Are Nothing New, But Still Horrific.

I was not in the least bit surprised yesterday when I read about the racist comments which have proliferated on social media in the aftermath of us signing our new bhoy Hyeon-gyu Oh.

Some of them have made the remarks directed at our Japanese players look both tame and intelligent.

The people responsible are as stupid as they are sick.

For starters, Korea is not a province of China. And there are two Koreas and the crazy man who Trump liked so much runs the North one. South Koreans are the Good Guys on that peninsula. Also, the Squid Game references aren’t smart, but they do reveal a complete lack of any understanding of Korean culture beyond what’s on Netflix, which I guess is to be expected when your whole “cultural” frame of reference involves getting dressed up in July.

Social media is a cesspit. This we all know well, and we happen to live in the vicinity of one of the world’s most depraved open sewers of social media filth. These are the forums and pages and websites which have weaponised child abuse, so are people really surprised at the outpourings of bile over the last few days?

Bile, after all, is their stock-in-trade.

I am not in favour of censoring very much, although my stomach flipped over last night when I found out that Donald Trump is being allowed back on Facebook. I am guessing that Nick Clegg hopes that this proves less consequential than when he broke his party’s electoral pledge on tuition fees. I rather suspect this decision will be vastly more terrible in its impact.

So I don’t believe that all speech should be unregulated or that people should be free to say whatever they want online. In fact, there are laws against much of this stuff but too many people hide behind social media handles and aren’t easily identifiable … which makes what they are doing cowardly as well as vile.

All of this is born out of ignorance, of course, and these are amongst the most vicious and ignorant people on the planet. But it’s also – and this is what we should remember – also born out of fear. Oh how they sniggered and laughed when we signed the Japanese boys … but nobody over there is laughing anymore, and it’s worth keeping that in mind.

These Peepul are scared to death of what we’ve got going on at Celtic Park right now, and you can always tell when that’s the case. The level of their hatreds rises in direct proportion to how frightened they are.

That’s why the volume on this is so high.