Sunday, February 12, 2012

Racism - not the real issue? A paranoid delusion, or something to be scared about?

I wrote this a few weeks ago, and chose not to post it, because if anyone does ever read this blog, I was scared that they would think I had completely lost it, but that isn't a good enough reason, so here is a little piece of class consciousness writing from a non-reconstructed commie....

WARNING! I may have ingested some paranoia juice before writing this. Feel free to ignore, and don't think any worse of me for it. (Please).

Seriously - I don't believe what I am about to write is true, but a little part of my brain thinks it might be, and that scares me. Even if this particular issue is my own fantasy, I worry that the wider message is true...

The recent racism storm that seems to have blown through English football has taken many by surprise. It shouldn't have. Those of us who have an interest in the Barclays premier league would like to think that this barbaric and ignorant prejudice was a thing of the past. That only stupid ignoramuses still took part in racist behaviour and that surely we had done enough to "clean" the game of this sort of thing.

We were the stupid ones.

Anti-Racism is a wonderful cause, but unfortunately, many of us who espouse it, are ignorant of the other prejudices which can creep into our thinking. When we say that racism is a thing of the past, we pretend that racism is about insults on a playing field. Racism is about a lot more than that. It is about who has power and who doesn't and what they do to keep those without power in a position of submission. Racism cannot be torn apart from the class conflict which has been the primary source of injustice in the UK since the feudal system was first brought into question. Racism is a tool of the ruling elite. Those who are currently rich and powerful would like all the poor of the country to fight as much as possible between themselves, so that they will not be able to unify against the ruling elites who would desire to entrench power in their hands.

Don't worry I do realise this is beginning to sound like one of the more paranoid parts of a communist manifesto, but bear with me...

It's not very pc to mention it, but racism tends to be a curse of the working class (and the highest reaches of the aristocracy). This has a number of reasons - one, is that racism can be cured through education, so the more a person has been deprived of an education, the more they are likely to fall under the spell of this disease of ignorance. But the more powerful reason that racism is part of the fabric of the British working class is because the ruling aristocracy desires it to be so. The more the "chavs" (white working class) and the "coloureds" (non-white, mostly working class) are at each other's throats, the less time they may have to realise that most of the issues that they feel aggrieved about actually have nothing to do with each other, but with the economic situation. Why do I mention this - because obviously the vast majority of footballers are working class. The offer of riches is the carrot used to help them make huge amounts of money for the ruling elite. Is it conceivable that all these working class heroes are also AntiRacism warriors? Not sure.

And here comes the dark truth that everyone is beginning to be aware of. Poverty in the UK is a decision of the government. If they wanted a more equitable system, it could be delivered. The government has the power to take from the rich what they have plundered and give it back to the poor. They choose not to. If anyone is wondering where did this storm of racism come from, then look no further than Wall St/the city of London. It is any coincidence that these incidents have been brought to public attention when the people have started to wake up to the fact that 99% of the country is being ripped off by 1%. When that 99% look like they are on the verge of unifying, the 1% got scared. It is unthinkable that these two incidents suddenly happened, when similar incidents have not been happening before. I assume they have been happening in the past. But the media has never been asked to make an issue of them as they were in this case. Usually, it would the opposite of corporate interest to highlight racism in football - doesn't look good for Sky trying to sell their product to the prawn sandwich brigade. But in this case the special interests in the media were bought out - asked to highlight the problem instead of brush it under the carpet - assured that they will be able to make enough short term gain off the issue, and that it would not harm the long term cash-cow too much.

So yeah - all this may be super-paranoia, but...

Isn't it too co-incidental that racism invades the country's richest sport just when class consciousness has raised its head for the first time since Tony Blair killed Labour back in the early nineties?


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