Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (may the Lord bless them, keep them holy and healthy and bestow magical, mystical properties of wonder and awe upon them) have sent out a survey to all of its 150,000 members. Asking their opinions of the persistent use of ‘the Y word’ by Spurs fans.

Because Spurs fans are known as ‘The Yids’. Or ‘The Yid Army’. Which is different from the Israel Defence League in that they don’t wear uniforms. But ‘yid’ is a horrible, inflammatory, nasty, divisive, derisive term. Everyone agrees about that. When its spat at other people. But when you use it upon yourself, as the Spurs fans do, even those who aren’t Jewish, can it still be seen as in any way ‘anti-semitic’?

The Police and the Crown Prosecution Service investigated this a few years ago and found that there were no grounds for… well, for anything. The Spurs fans, following years of abuse in the 1970s by other teams calling them ‘yids’, said, ok, that’s who we are. And they embraced it. It is NEVER used as an anti-Semitic term by Spurs fans. In fact its the exact opposite. It is unity between the fans. Jewish or not. ‘We’ are all ‘yids’.

And the survey asks the fans if they’re happy with this word? If they think it is inappropriate (which it kind’a, sort’a, definitely is). And also whether they should be allowed to continue using the word. Last time they asked, about 75% said they were happy for Spurs fans to continue using the word ‘yid’. That’s among both jews and non-jews.

But the problem, as always, is the question as to whether it invites or encourages anti-semitism, or apparent anti-semitism, from other fans. Which it emphatically does. Though it has to be said, way more from Chelsea and West Ham fans than virtually all others. I make no judgments about that fact, just kind’a put it out there. Not all scumbags are anti-semites.

And of course all London clubs have their Jewish followers. And it is they that really hate the ‘y-word’. David Baddeil (big Chelsea fan; well, keen fan, little bloke) and his brother have written between them about forteen volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica size just about Spurs fans and the yid word. Because football is a massively tribal thing. And Jewish Chelsea fans hate seeing their ‘tribe’ shouting apparent anti-semitic things. And not so ‘apparent’ things.

Coutinho? Dybala?? Sessingnon???

Happy Wednesday

The Yid
xxxx