It does seem to have become worse recently, although we are a long way from the dark days of the 70s and 80s. May we never see those days again.
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There is an entire political party who are giving voice to this racism. It’s called the GQP. In the UK, it’s the Tories. 
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Based upon… what, exactly?
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Surely being bad at penalties makes them more English?
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The US doesn’t need other countries to use intelligence agency operations to destabilize our country.
Case in point - Cambridge Analytica. Key people Steve Bannon, Rebekah Mercer, Robert Mercer. A subsidiary of a company Wikipedia describes as:
“SCL began targeting elections in developing countries in the early 1990s, and has engaged in psychological warfare in military contexts as a contractor for the American and British militaries……
…It performed and data analysis on its audience. Based on results, communications would then be specifically targeted to key audience groups to modify behaviour in accordance with the goal of SCL’s client.“
Pair that capability with a private military, ALEC and dark money and…well…you see why we’re where we are today. And staring down tomorrow.
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Racism was just as prevalent back then. If not more so. We really can’t blame its persistence just on people younger than ourselves.
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If they had one all racism would have been directed towards Italy, probably.
It stinks. This is not the majority of England fans but it is a large group of people emboldened by a racist PM and a government that cultivate right wing politics and feed hate for their own agenda.
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Back when? Who said anything about blaming folks younger? I’m just saying I’ve noticed a marked change in the willingness for racists to announce themselves.
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On Twitter in the 80’s?
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That’s because they feel it’s safe for them to do so now; thanks to 45 and the complicit GOP here, and to all the bigoted fuckery that’s been “normalized” throughout the world, they are no longer afraid to show their true colors.
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Even Tory peers are recognising this, with Sayeeda Warsi’s comment pretty much nailing it:
“If we ‘whistle’ & the ‘dog’ reacts, we can’t be shocked if it barks & bites"
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I think international coordination between white nationalists is real and important. That doesn’t mean the American white nationalist movement needs Russian propagandists to function, but it’s known that they use Russian propaganda (and American senators retweet Russian propaganda).
But setting Russia aside and getting back to English racism, I think the alignment between American and UK white nationalists if awfully significant. America electing Trump probably did more to bolster white nationalists in other countries than any other country ever did to bolster white nationalism in America. Nigel Farage travelled to America to appear on a stage with Trump to bolster Farage’s reputation with white nationalists in the UK. Murdoch (originally Australian of course, they’re in on it too) owns Fox News but also owns substantial foreign media including UK newspapers.
If someone looks at current racist movements and sees an international web, I think they are seeing it because it is there. But it would be crazy for someone to see that, and conclude that these movements exist because of foreign influence. They are aligned, they collaborate, they don’t create one another.
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The Brexit vote was the trigger for Britains increase in white nationalism and other bigotry. Racism, homophobia and transphobia rates jumped significantly the day after the Brexit result came in.
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Except it’s never just “one fluke” or “one call.” It’s always a summation of events leading up to that point. Sure, a ref may make a bad call, and that may decide a game. This happened with Denmark vs England. But if Denmark had scored 2 before that event, that bad call wouldn’t have made a difference.
It’s ALWAYS the whole game. The whole season. The whole event. It’s never just “one fluke.” One fluke deciding things is way too much risk for a good team.
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The moment they learned 50% + 1 were willing to leave the EU, they assumed that the 50% + 1 were all racists like them, and that they were the majority. It doesn’t even matter that some had reasons that had nothing to do with racism, it was the impression they had that it was okay to be this way.
Also, I’d think Brexit gave Trump the chance, not the other way around. The republican primaries had finished by the time the Brexit vote happened, but nobody thought he had a chance in hell.
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priti patel is the pits. She’s the child of immigrants, and lacks all empathy for immigrants and indigents.
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the teams? Yeah.
As a racist you won’t get very far in pro football since all teams have all kinds of nationalities in them. Pros also often play for several clubs in different countries and travel a lot.
That breeds a kind of culture where racists are not really thriving.
Fans OTOH…
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Gareth Southgate did say in a press conference that
I know a lot [of the abuse] has come from abroad. People who track those things have been able to explain that. But not all of it.
And from what I saw on the players’ social media profiles, a lot of the accounts leaving racist comments didn’t appear (from usernames etc) to be English.
Of course, this isn’t saying the English are blameless- there certainly were also English people abusing the players, and the people who vandalised the Rashford mural were almost certainly English.
And people outside/unconnected to England racially abusing the England players doesn’t necessarily mean an organised psy-ops campaign- they could be people who had money on the team, or just assholes.
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When Trump won the election, Farage nominated himself to be British ambassador to the USA, boasting that he had a great personal relationship with Trump and would be able to negotiate a fantastic trade deal.
(AFAIK, all British ambassadors are career diplomats.)
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