Celtic Football Club
Always Antifascist
are MVFC's supporters all or mostly left wing? i see a lot of the tifo and displays you do, and i admire it. i wish my own supporters group could do the same, but MLS clamps down on politics, and most of our members are apolitical anyway. i always try to support leftist teams in other leagues in solidarity, and i have no stake in A-league yet (kinda followed perth glory a bit since the name of my city is perth amboy, and i met a glory supporter a few years ago and we stayed friends). cheers.
Not really - most Melbourne Victory supporters are apolitical, as fans. There are left-wing individual MVFC fans like myself, just like there are right-wing individual MVFC fans. North Terrace (our “active” support) creates excellent tifos - but there are no organised political tifos, except sometimes against the police and the Football Association here. For example you would not see a Palestinian flag being waved in the terraces in Melbourne like you would at Celtic Park.
Must keep in mind that the A-League is only 8 years old. Although it’s growing, it’s not intertwined with Australian society the same way football is in Germany or Poland or England. Mostly due to the dominance of cricket and AFL here. Therefore there is no natural outgrowth of political expression in the football terraces here.
It’s a pity to hear the MLS clamps down on politics but unsurprising. Are there any examples of fans trying to express themselves politically in the stands in the US?
Yeah, one of the main reasons I sort of support Celtic FC is because of their political history and progressive culture. The Green Brigade is brilliant!
Haha, don’t support Perth Glory! They play boring football and their fan culture is like the EPL =P
And a few aside questions: Is rejecting Sharia law 'islamophobia'? Do you want/support Sharia law for Australia? Do you recognize fatwas? Do you support calls for censorship of cartoons of Muhammad? Do you support the protest that happened in Sydney a few months ago, where children were holding up signs saying 'Behead those who insult Islam'?
AnonymousWhat a bizarre string of questions.
You seem to think I’m an Islamist or something. I believe in secular Marxism. Why would I recognise fatwas, want sharia law in Australia, or actively promote Islamism as a philosophy or political theory?
REJECTING sharia law is not Islamophobic - I reject sharia law. But whipping up a frenzied racist campaign against “creeping sharia law”, creating hysterical myths about what sharia law and Islam actually are, is completely different and pretty disgusting! And that’s what people like you are trying to do. Racist hysteria. All sorts of religious beliefs are used to justify atrocities around the world today and in the past. Christianity and Catholicism have a bloody and violent history of that, for example. The fact that Islamophobes want to hysterically zoom in on Islam as THE (only) problem is nothing but pure bigotry.
I’m not trying to glorify Islam, I’m trying to defend Muslims from the atrocious wave of racist bigotry against them that has been actively promoted by the state and, sadly, accepted by many people since 9/11 (though somewhat less so now).
My general philosophical attitude to Islam is similar to my attitude to most or all religious beliefs. Except that the context of 9/11 and the consequent Islamophobic hysteria about “terrorism” across the entire Western world changes everything. In the context of that bigotry, I think Muslims fighting back against racist prejudices in Australia is a great thing, and accordingly, I’ve attended and promoted countless protests over the years to support their fight against the disgusting racism that targets them in Australia.
The key task of anyone against racism in Australia is to attack anti-Muslim prejudice - regardless of what their opinion is on Islamism itself. Simple as that.
So you believe that 'law and order' shouldn't censor free speech, it should be the mob that does the coercion of the populace? And you believe this coercion is justified because groups opposed to you need to be 'shut down'?
AnonymousYes, I’m against “law and order” politics. I’m against pretty much anything that bolsters the power of the capitalist state, including its armed wings like the police and the military.
No, my point is not to “coerce the populace”. You seem to have no sense of the power relations in society. Geert Wilders and fascists similar to him do not represent “the populace”, they are NOT ordinary working class people who just happen to be airing their views and concerns. They are a dangerous and highly organised force that aim to incite anti-Muslim bigotry and violence.
No, I don’t justify protesting against the likes of Geert Wilders just because they are opposed to me. If that was the case, I’d be picketing something every single day, because I’m a revolutionary Marxist and the cold reality is a hell of a lot of people are opposed to revolutionary Marxism. I believe in picketing against Geert Wilders because he represents a specific and particularly virulent form of Islamophobia that has incited real violence in Europe where the Far Right has been able to establish a foothold.
Once again, concrete examples are key. I keep repeating this but you right-wingers only ever want to respond with mindless abstraction and examples devoid of context. The British group, Unite Against Fascism, played a key role in shutting down the fascist British National Party and their Neo-Nazi leader Nick Griffin, BECAUSE of their “no platform for Nazis” platform.
Negative examples - the rise of Golden Dawn and their street-fighting, immigrant-bashing thugs in Greece, and the fascist Hungarian party Jobbik rampaging around Hungary, physically smashing up Roma and gypsy communities. That’s what happens when the Far Right is not confronted.
You are probably a supporter, or at least an apologist, for the Far Right, so I assume that’s the type of status quo that you wish for. But the majority of us have seen what fascism has done to humanity in the last one hundred years. And we never want to see that ugly face of inhumanity and death ever again.
I support Geert Wilders because I believe he should have a right to free speech. I am an Australian and he is welcome to visit to the country I am a citizen of.
AnonymousFree speech is not limitless. Geert Wilders is an Islamophobic demagogue who seeks to incite racist hatred against Muslims. His ideology resembles fascism.“Hate speech is not free speech”, as a placard from the rally today said.
I have a problem with this extremely abstract idea of totally limitless “free speech”. I *largely* agree with the idea of free speech, but not when it comes to the Far Right who seek to whip people into a racist frenzy against Muslims. They are not simply “expressing their ideas” - Islamophobic hate speech has real consequences.
In Australia, there were racist riots in Sydney (the “Cronulla riots”) a few years ago, which were the culmination of anti-Muslim rants on air by right-wing radio shock jocks. That’s what the abuse of free speech results in.
On a larger, historical, and even more terrifying scale, the failure to stand up fascism in Europe led to the rise of Mussolini’s fascist regime and of course the Nazis in Germany. Just like today, the European social democrats and labour parties of the 1920s and 1930s argued that we should not limit the “free speech” of fascists. THOSE VERY PEOPLE were the ones who ended up in Hitler’s jails and the Nazi concentration camps.
A more contemporary, POSITIVE example is that of Britain. The British were able to push back the British National Party (a fascist party led by Nick Griffin) because of the Left’s “no platform” policy. No platform for fascists. This meant everywhere the BNP tried to speak, they’d be confronted and drowned out by Unite Against Fascism demonstrations. Now the BNP lies in ruins and has been electorally defeated in all its traditional strongholds. This hugely positive result occurred largely because they were DENIED a platform to spout their fascist views.
Btw, I don’t support state censorship to defeat the Far Right. I only support grassroots mobilisations as a method of defeating them. Supporting state censorship just strengthens right-wing “law and order” politics, so I’m not for that.
TL;DR: Fuck fascism and fuck Geert Wilders
