Post by robeiae on Jul 12, 2021 7:42:43 GMT -5
We all know the United States is a horrid place, filled with bigots, white supremacists, misogynists, and violent asshats (the majority of whom are, of course, straight white men). Why are we like this? Simple, we will always be the bastard children of England.
Yesterday, England's national team lost the finals of the Euros to Italy on penalty kicks. This was the first time an English team had reached the finals of a major tournie in over half a century. And they played an Italian team that was (is) undefeated since late 2018 (it's true). A nice achievement, even with the loss.
English fans, during this tournament, have:
booed the national anthems of other teams
repeatedly criticized the manager (Southgate) for his team selection, even as that selection led them to the finals
attacked fans of other teams (plenty of stuff on twitter)
booed their own team when it chose to kneel before games
made utter messes with various post-match "celebrations"
and now, after yesterday's loss, subjected three of their players to a ton of racial abuse, online and from the stands
As it happens, the three English players who missed their PKs--Rashford, Sancho, and Saka--are black. Their ages are, respectively, 23, 21, and 19.
Horrible, right?
And yet, it's a tiny number of people acting out, all things considered. It's just being amplified by social media, again and again and again.
Check out this video, that's being widely circulated:
The people sharing it are claiming various things, that it shows England fans attacking Italy fans after the match, that it shows an England fan punching a kid, and so on. Someone started a thread on reddit using this video. And they rightly deleted it when others pointed out the truth: it was before the match, and it was people trying to stop other people without tickets from forcing their way into the stadium, and almost all of them are England fans. Doesn't justify the violence, but using it to show that England fans were attacking Italian fans is utter bullshit.
So how do we assess all of this? It seems to me that--once again--social media is making the world a worse place, both as a place to allow people to be racist douchebags, and as a place to allow people to misrepresent reality so they can virtue-signal.
Yesterday, England's national team lost the finals of the Euros to Italy on penalty kicks. This was the first time an English team had reached the finals of a major tournie in over half a century. And they played an Italian team that was (is) undefeated since late 2018 (it's true). A nice achievement, even with the loss.
English fans, during this tournament, have:
booed the national anthems of other teams
repeatedly criticized the manager (Southgate) for his team selection, even as that selection led them to the finals
attacked fans of other teams (plenty of stuff on twitter)
booed their own team when it chose to kneel before games
made utter messes with various post-match "celebrations"
and now, after yesterday's loss, subjected three of their players to a ton of racial abuse, online and from the stands
As it happens, the three English players who missed their PKs--Rashford, Sancho, and Saka--are black. Their ages are, respectively, 23, 21, and 19.
Horrible, right?
And yet, it's a tiny number of people acting out, all things considered. It's just being amplified by social media, again and again and again.
Check out this video, that's being widely circulated:
The people sharing it are claiming various things, that it shows England fans attacking Italy fans after the match, that it shows an England fan punching a kid, and so on. Someone started a thread on reddit using this video. And they rightly deleted it when others pointed out the truth: it was before the match, and it was people trying to stop other people without tickets from forcing their way into the stadium, and almost all of them are England fans. Doesn't justify the violence, but using it to show that England fans were attacking Italian fans is utter bullshit.
So how do we assess all of this? It seems to me that--once again--social media is making the world a worse place, both as a place to allow people to be racist douchebags, and as a place to allow people to misrepresent reality so they can virtue-signal.
