Brian Wilson cannot claim victory after he let this club be smeared.

If you are a politics watcher, or if you pay attention at all to the world in which we live, you will know that this is an era without shame.

That is the only light in which I can understand Brian Wilson addressing the Irish Celtic Supporters Association in the brazen fashion he apparently did, attempting to spin something which ought to be unspinnable.

I do not know how many people in that room were convinced by what they heard. The people I have spoken to certainly were not.

The minutes of that brief discussion were posted online today.

I will talk more about what was said on signings later, because that was the same dire litany of excuses we have already heard too many times. It was another version of the mentality I wrote about recently: a club living on fear, run by men who have imposed limits on Celtic based on their own personal lack of imagination.

But for now, I want to focus on what Wilson said about the Celtic support, and about the club being smeared in the aftermath of the match against Hearts.

This is the second time Wilson has attempted to use the club’s silence as a shield. Worse than that, it is the second time he has tried to present the club’s silence as a virtue.

We knew the truth would come out, he says. We knew we would be vindicated in the end. So, we let the press write what it wanted.

That is some defence.

To me, it sounds very much like the people who dismiss anti-Catholic singing from the Ibrox stands as no big deal. As I always tell them, if it was your blood these people were up to their knees in, you might have a different appreciation of the problem.

Had this board been attacked in the media in the way the supporters were, I have little doubt we would have heard something from Celtic long before the official story collapsed. But it was only the supporters getting it. It was only our reputations being tarnished. So why should some fat cat sitting in the executive box care?

It did not affect them. Not directly. It was only this club’s reputation and the reputation of its fan base being dragged through the mud for a fortnight.

Nowhere in modern communications strategy is silence considered a virtue when you are under attack. If you are being smeared, you respond. If you are being slandered, you react. You do not sit there and hope circumstances eventually bail you out.

People do not remember the final vindication. They remember the weeks of lies that went unanswered.

These people really are incredibly arrogant. They believe silence radiates competence and control. It does not. It radiates contempt and cowardice.

Nobody seriously believes they were simply waiting for events to bear us out. The only way events can bear you out is if you have already put your case in front of the public. A public debate has two sides. You do not get to claim victory in a debate where your side refused to speak.

As usual, Celtic allowed other people to define the terms of the discussion. The club allowed others to frame the argument. If you are on the end of a one-sided beating, you cannot pretend doing nothing is a show of strength. It is not. The world knows it is not.

Besides, while the directors hid in the backroom, someone at the club was fighting on its behalf. Just not them.

The manager publicly refuted those claims within days of the first one being aired. The manager challenged the official narrative out of Hearts. The manager dared Tony Bloom to provide evidence for what had been alleged.

So, this was not Celtic acting in a dignified manner by remaining silent. This was the directors hiding behind a 74-year-old man and allowing him to strike the blows on our behalf, while taking the hits in return. And he did take some hits.

There was also the collective weight of fan media. We did not stop hammering away at the official narrative. There was not a single day when we were not fighting the club’s corner.

The club, by the way, which has banned us.

So yes, it sticks in the throat a little when these people suddenly pretend they had it all figured out. It sticks in the throat when they pretend to have shown courage we know they did not possess. Because the manager they are presently betraying, and the fan media groups they are presently excluding, were the only ones mounting any kind of resistance against a torrent of pressure and lies.

Brian Wilson’s comments are not merely unconvincing. They are insulting, because everyone knows the narrative is false. Everyone in that room must have known it was false. There was no virtue in remaining silent. There was no masterplan. There was no strategic brilliance.

There was only absence. There was only cowardice.

There was only the sight of a board crouching behind the manager and hoping the storm would eventually pass.

That is what makes Wilson’s attempt to dress this up as wisdom so offensive. It advertises the contempt these people have for us. We are either supposed to accept it and move on, or believe it and move on.

But everyone knows it is fiction. Everyone knows the club did not lead. Everyone knows the board did not defend the support. Everyone knows they left others to do the work they should have done themselves.

And all that does is deepen the disgust so many of us already feel towards them.

Like I said, this is the era of shamelessness, where those in authority feel no compunction about looking people in the eye and telling them something they know is not true.

Wilson comes from politics. He understands communication, or at least he ought to. He understands narrative. He understands public trust. He understands that when an institution is under attack, silence is not dignity. Silence is surrender. Silence is complicity.

We all realised this. The manager spoke. Fan media spoke. The people who stayed quiet were the people with the titles, the salaries, the power and the responsibility. Now they want credit for the eventual collapse of a story they did not publicly challenge.

No chance. As I said at another time, in another place, the guy holding your jacket as you go into battle isn’t really your friend. You do not get to hide and then claim you won it. You do not get to leave others in the firing line and then say that was strategy. You do not get to watch your own supporters being smeared and then expect gratitude because the truth eventually crawled into daylight without your help.

And if Brian Wilson thinks supporters are going to swallow that, then he has learned nothing from the collapse in trust between this board and the fan base.

A little later, I am going to write about Wilson, because his conduct since becoming chairman, interim chairman or whatever the hell the position actually is now deserves a proper look. He has forgotten the one ironclad rule of political communication: it depends on trust.

And he has burned through that with staggering efficiency and speed.

But that is life at Celtic right now. It is shameful stuff.

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