Taking the knee

[Blue One]

Not sure if this has been covered in another thread, but seeing the ‘outrage’ at Millwall fans booing the ‘taking of the knee’ at yesterday’s match shouldn’t have been a surprise. Since March the politically correct lobby has had the unique benefit of not having to worry about actual fans, or take their viewpoint into account around this political homage each match to BLM - a widely discredited extreme political movement, not an anti-racism lobby group.

The fact that sport has chosen to embrace such as overtly political organisation as a vehicle for anti-racism efforts is regrettable, but hopefully a ‘reset’ is now underway. I’m sure though that the PC lobby will shout and squeal and not give up its newly acquired power over UK football easily.

One to watch.

[Blue One]

It’s interesting to see from some of the replies on here that people are either intellectually unable, or unwilling, to separate anti-racism from a fairly loathsome Marxist movement and that the FA/clubs embracing this movement’s symbol at the beginning of each match was ill-advised and damaging to the objectivity and independence of the game.

Also, no-one has said that the Millwall fans aren’t racist, just the observation that fans not liking this overt political gesture are been ignored up to now because Lockdown conveniently allowed those behind it the impunity to enforce it.

Many different factors here, all separate, all linked, but all different.

[Blue One]

So FIFA doesn’t allow poppies to be worn by UK teams, but an overt political gesture at the beginning of each match is allowed.

You get the point here? Tolerance of certain things, intolerance for others. Not a level playing field (no pun intended) at the moment on what is officially enforced and what is frowned upon by our increasingly Woke/PC establishments across government and sport.

You could also cite the generally perceived inbalance in the policing responses in the UK to BLM protests earlier in the year and anti-Lockdown protests.

There is a widely held view (that I subscribe to) that the vacuum created by lockdowns has allowed an unhealthy environment to exist for the advancement of agenda politics and a corrosion of objectivity in society generally.

The football taking of the knee being just one example and the reaction to it yesterday a recoil that was always going to happen. Where the the new medium will be remains to be seen.

Edited by Blue One on Sunday 6th December 10:18

[Blue One]

Randy Winkman said:

Exactly. I don't think they were booing Marxism.

On the other hand, I do think it was convenient for the FA the way that CV19 matched with the BLM thing in relation to football. It means there have been months of "taking the knee" before the inevitable booing started. It wont work at all with fans in the grounds. But then again I think they should have stopped it at the beginning of this season. It's just a gesture now.

The FA is on the ropes right now and paranoid about being seen as ‘out of touch’ or ‘racist’ so they wouldn’t have dared try and stop this before now, but agreed, it seems inappropriate now and to have served whatever purpose it was meant to serve quite early on as a gesture of support etc.

[Blue One]

ddom said:

People go to watch football to escape politics, not to open a debate on it.

That’s the crux of it.

This is the other key point, people resent being 'politically educated' so that they will 'know better' by an aggressive Woke/PC establishment (goes back to Blair), you don't want that crap at a football match, save it for the next party political broadcast. There is an overwhelmingly patronising approach to this sort of preachy screechy nonsense of the PC/Woke brigade that rubs most decent people up the wrong way.

In addition, to make the crossover of mixing BLM (radical political movement advocating Critical Race Theory) symbolism with the FA's legitimate 'Kick it out' anti-racism campaign, and effectively replacing it with that was a massive error of judgement. Self-defeating and short-sighted, hopefully they will learn from this, or they will just alienate the majority of fans from what they are trying to achieve.

[Blue One]

Since the match on Sunday, it now seems those pushing this knee agenda are now basically saying anyone booing 'taking the knee' is now racist, and as guilty as those actually being racist about the players on social media. This weak and sweeping generalisation is just an effort to make this nonsense 'acceptable' and to ostracize those that continue to have issues with this politicisation of football and our public life with this unpleasant symbolism at major sporting (football) events.

[Blue One]

Tannedbaldhead said:

crankedup5 said:

I remain unconvinced that the gesture will actually achieve anything at all, but I get it raises the profile of the issue.

170 pages with 3,382 posts and counting on the subject just on here and social media is full of comments regarding it. An achievement in its self.

What it also does is disconnects a certain type of Englishman from his football clubs and his country

This guy is really struggling as he feels his government consists of a Brown Chancellor, Home Secretary and Minister For Health; a Prime Minister under the thumb of a very woke and very liberal "life partner" ; The Mayor of his capitol city is a brown Muslim,; a channel flick from BBC to ITV morning television confronts him with 3 out of four main presenters from ethnic minorities; a royal family which (especially when Charles becomes King) shares very different views from his; a Brexit where he feels Europe has run rings round us; he reels from the defeat of The West by the Taliban; he looks at world beating British sportsmen and women such as Lewis Hamilton, Andy Murry the new generation of young black England footballers and now Emma Radacanu and feels no sense of identification or pride, he feels his soldiers died in Northern Ireland for nothing as the likes of Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness ended up practically running the country and in his eyes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are getting all their own way while England suffers.

What the English team are doing when taking a knee is further disenfranchising, beleaguering and disempowering these Phil and Grant Mitchell look-alikes. If just for that it's a very well worthwhile practice

I find this post absolutely fascinating on all levels, and contradictory - on the one it spells out the de-facto disenfranchisement of the White ‘man in the street’ over the last 30 years, but then celebrates this fact with a sense of righteous indignation along the lines ‘how dare these white proles have an opinion contrary to those of us who know better’.

I mean it is almost something the Party would have been proud of in ‘1984’…

Unwittingly our friend here has somewhat let the mask slip on his half-baked ideas because of course the whole construct presented by the media and the establishment now of a ‘black face’ Britain is not supported by facts. Only around 15% of this country is ‘non-White’ of whom maybe a third are Black. Yet our media, education system and establishment driven by a Woke/BLM/PC hysteria want us to all buy into a multicultural non-White, ‘Cancel Culture’ ideal that does simply not exist outside of their own offices and meeting rooms.

Since New Labour, a choke-hold has been steadily imposed on our society by the Establishment to support a narrative that is essentially anti-White, anti-British and that looks to curate, censor and dictate a moral, ethnic and political agenda through education, the media and government on the country.

For those ‘cognitive misers’ who do not invest in their own reasoning or understanding from available data, these ‘thought pathogens’ become contagious and end up dominating their thought and actions.

Of course New Labour started this, and opened the door to all the reverse thinking we are being told to follow today, and allowed mass migration to help make their Brave New World a reality, but we aren’t there yet, and hopefully enough normal people, no matter what their colour or race, will see this edifice for what it is – a whole framework of faulty and damaging philosophies and morals that will (and are) undermining our society for everyone.

[Blue One]

Countdown said:

With all due respect, that's a load of bks.

Society is gradually ostracising the racists and the bigots. They're the ones feeling a chokehold but they can't accept that they're a minority, and they need to believe that it must ALL white/British people who are being censored.

Edited by Countdown on Thursday 4th November 11:29

What you are actually saying this that those who support this new narrative and vision are 'right' and those who reject it are by definition either 'racist', 'stupid' or just 'plain wrong'

That about sums up the kind of censored and intolerant approach we are increasingly seeing in our society where debate is stifled, contrary views to the 'official narrative' are stamped on and we must all slavishly follow the narrative we are told.

Out of interest, have you studied the forms of propaganda or control used by the Nazi's, Soviets, Communist Chinese and the like? I suspect you'd approve of them as they support the same approach of central control of messaging, belief systems, the suppressing of any debate of contrary viewpoints, and basically imposing a cultural and spiritual vision all 'good citizens' are expected to follow. Nice one Comrade!

The shame of it is we in the West (partly fought) two world wars in the C20th, and the Cold War, against these types of ideas, now from within they are being slowly imposed on us like a parasite eating away at our freedoms, democratic traditions and liberties from the inside.