Football's Race War
You might not have heard, but Spain is currently undergoing its own version of a George Floyd moment. Scaled down of course—nothing can really match American production value—but nonetheless, there is a storm brewing, one resembling what much of American sociopolitics has been reduced to: racism and victimhood grifting.
A storm, although in actual fact, it’s more like a tempest in a teacup; as is often the case with these sort of black grievances. It all started last weekend when Real Madrid Football Club went to Valencia to play that city’s main football (or soccer, if you prefer) team. At some point during the match, one of Real Madrid’s players, a black Brazilian who goes by the name Vinicius Junior, had a bit of a meltdown. According to him, the Valencia fans were ‘racially abusing’ him with chants and taunts. One such taunt was the repetition of the word mono, Spanish for ‘monkey’.
The match descended into chaos. Vinicius and his Real Madrid teammates engaged in a fracas with both the fans and the Valencia players, with Vinicius striking the head of a Valencia player who was trying to calm him down. This action resulted in the referee, who had enacted the standard protocols required in situations like this such as pausing the game, issuing a red card to Vinicius. This incensed both Vinicius and much of Spain’s Twitterati who saw it as punishing the victim. After the match, the furore continued and even increased in temperature. What has happened over the past few days has been fascinating, frustrating, and predictable.
Around this time last year, I wrote an essay about the importance of sport in today’s society and the intense efforts to turn all major sports into propaganda machines. There are countless examples of how this LGBT and Black Lives Matter activism has captured the sporting arena, and, as I wrote in my essay, American ‘woke’ culture has infested European football for quite some time now. What happened in Spain with Vinicius is yet another addition to the list of examples, and is certain to send blacktivism in Europe into top gear. Indeed, it already has. The veneration of the black ‘victim’ has gone international, and blacks in Europe and in football are taking full advantage, just as blacks in America have done for decades.
In the aftermath of the Valencia incident, what has transpired is nothing more than another racism con. In this case a pampered multimillionaire who gets paid lavishly to kick a ball is the new George Floyd. Just as happened in this very month of May three years ago when Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose while surrounded by police offers, the System Of Systems comprised of corporate, media, political, and entertainment organisations has once again sprung into immediate action on Vinicius’ behalf.
Up go the social media screeds denouncing the rampant racism in Europe. Up go the hashtags. Up go the messages of support from fellow footballers. Up go the calls to ‘do more’ and, whatever ‘more’ is, do it ‘better’. Ex-England and Manchester United player Rio Ferdinand, who is black, wrote lengthy posts on both his Twitter and Instagram accounts full of exclamatory demands that ‘racism’ be stamped out once and for all. Further confirming the fact that these black athletes like Ferdinand have become nothing more than racial activists, Ferdinand engaged in the typical BLM activist tactic of attempting to coerce institutional power into doing his bidding or else face the disastrous fate of being labeled racist.
The goblin-faced grifter Vinicius himself took to all his social media platforms to brand the entire nation of Spain and the entire Spanish football league as ‘racist’.
Why do I call him a goblin-faced grifter? Well, for starters, look at him. As for his grifting, I shall explain. You see, Vinicius alleges that he was racially abused but video evidence shows that, at least at one moment of the match and in one section of the crowd, they were not chanting mono. They were in fact chanting tonto, which is Spanish for ‘fool’. As this storm continued rumbling in the wake of the match and the possibility that Vinicius had completely overreacted to being called a fool began to circulate, the Brazilian doubled down by posting a video compilation of all the ‘abuse’ he has been subjected to. One example of this supposed racist abuse is a group of fans singing ‘muere Vinicius, muere!’ (in English that’s ‘die, Vinicius, die!’). There is no mention of—or attack on—Vinicius’ race in that obviously unserious ‘death threat’. And what do we make of the fact, then, that virtually every top player of every race and ethnicity has had to endure similar, if not exactly the same, chants and songs and desires directed at him? It’s also worth pointing out precisely why Vinicius is loathed by fans all over Spain and thus is subjected to so many insults as to be able to put together a compilation of them.