A few weeks ago we went on Jeremy Vine’s BB2 radio show to talk to David Baddiel about Tottenham Hotspur fan’s use of the Y-word. David Baddiel, was David Baddiel, the formerly decent comic (barring a few misplaced gags at Tottenham’s Jewish fanbase and getting blacked up while mocking Nottingham Forest striker Jason Lee because […]
David Baddiel meet Nick Cowen
A few weeks ago we went on Jeremy Vine’s BB2 radio show to talk to David Baddiel about Tottenham Hotspur fan’s use of the Y-word. David Baddiel, was David Baddiel, the formerly decent comic (barring a few misplaced gags at Tottenham’s Jewish fanbase and getting blacked up while mocking Nottingham Forest striker Jason Lee because his dreadlocked hair, to Baddiel, looked like a pineapple – the player eventually reacted by shaving his head) turned crusader for the Jewish minority.
As we spoke to David it became clear that regardless of what arguments we made for Tottenham fan’s continued right to use the word, he wasn’t going to listen. We think it’s because none of The Fighting Cock are Jewish. In fact he made a quip that even the BBC couldn’t find a Jewish Tottenham supporter to argue the toss with him (actually the caller that followed us was a Jew but anyway).
The thing is Baddiel probably has a point, we can never really appreciate what it might be like to hear the hissing from his fellow support at Chelsea and common neanderthals West Ham, or the chanting of ‘Adolf Hitler is coming for you.’ But the writer of the letter below does, and he’s the exact person Baddiel thinks doesn’t exist, as he patronised and belittled us with petulant tuts, and sarcastic huffs at Tottenham fans as if we couldn’t, as reasonable human beings, ever conceive of where he is coming from.
David Baddiel. Meet Nick Cowen.
All views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Fighting Cock. We offer a platform for fans to commit their views to text and voice their thoughts. Football is a passionate game and as long as the views stay within the parameters of what is acceptable, we encourage people to write, get involved and share their thoughts on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.
7 Comments
Would you like to write for The Fighting Cock?
08/10/2013 @ 10:28 am
David Baddiel will shoot up in my estimations if he has the balls to reply to that letter. A shame we all know that he won’t.
08/10/2013 @ 10:55 am
OK for Badiel to blacken his face to make racist fun of others tho.
08/10/2013 @ 11:35 am
David Baddiel had the unique quality of being a ‘comic’ without ever once producing a funny line. He lived a parasitic existence reflecting in the genuine comic talents of Rob Newman and Frank Skinner. Now he presents himself as some sort of philosopher, but is equally redundant in that role. A sad case.
N.B. I am one of many jews who identify totally with being a Spurs yiddo.
08/10/2013 @ 12:09 pm
how many people have reported being offended ………………….none
the met have more important things to do than make the stupidity of this PC nonsense enforcement
baddiel is a self interested commentator who stands in the wrong club in contradiction of the views he states
08/10/2013 @ 1:01 pm
What more can you add to this letter… I have infact read this somewhere before and sent the link to ‘Mr PC’ and new ‘saviour of football’ (sarcasm) Clark Carlisle. For an intelligent guy he made some very strange points regarding this. It was as if, and I imagine this to be exactly the case, he was against it because he is against everything. Her basically finished with one of the closing arguments idiots use… “it’s not me that says it, it’s against the law… end of!”… well, it’s not the end of and it’s not against the law… he failed to respond to my very courteous (not sarcastic) tweet pointing him to this when it appeared in another article a couple of weeks ago. this says it all really… people need to stop looking at the word and look more at what it’s about, inclusion!
08/10/2013 @ 9:05 pm
Nick Cowen’s letter is superb and as he rightly says, the real issue here lies with West Ham, Chelsea and Leeds. Although I’d add Man Utd to that list after my wife and I were both called “dirty yiddo c***s” outside Wembley before we played them in the Carling Cup final. Two of the Met’s finest stood only yards from us and did absolutely nothing. At the Lane on Sunday we could clearly hear the vile chants coming from the away end (we sit in the Paxton Road upper), especially the “Viva Lazio” and “he’s coming for you, we can’t say his name, he’s coming for you”. Yet somehow Sullivan and Gold both ignore this and praise their fans behaviour?!! Baddiel insults everyone with his views on the hollocaust, we may not all be Jewish but any half decent human can understand the full horror of that. All the authorities and clubs failing to deal with the abuse directed at all Spurs fans is the real issue to be addressed, but it’s always ignored or swept under the carpet. Do they really think that will end if we just stop using the Y word as they suggest?
11/10/2013 @ 2:58 pm
I just want to get my thoughts down in the hope it makes some sense to me.
When my allegiances to Spurs solidified in the early 90’s, I used to support a team as best as you could when you don’t actually go to games. My mum and dad were not into football but they did both go to Stamford Bridge when they were younger and as such, were plastic Chelsea fans long before it became fashionable to be a plastic Chelsea fan circa 2003.
It wasn’t until I was about 16 that I first heard someone being described as a yid. I’m not Jewish, nor did I live in a Jewish area. I knew that Yiddish was a language used by some Jewish people because I had studied about Judaism (amongst other religions) at school and recognised some of the vernacular.
The first time I heard the word Yid aimed at an individual had nothing to do with religion, though. Not on the surface, anyway. I was walking down the road in a Spurs scarf and two older lads walked past in Tottenham shirts, when one walked past, winked and said “yiddo” and carried on.
Obviously I knew it was a term of affection, since these were one of my own. I felt quite chuffed at that. Part of a clan or group or family or whatever. I also now realised what some people were singing when I was watching a Spurs game on the telly. I never really took much notice before because I wasn’t there and therefore, wasn’t really interested in the chants.
Over the next couple of years, I learnt about Tottenham’s Jewish association. I first made the connection when my mate of many years, started telling me the chants that he would sing when he went to the football with his dad – mainly involving foreskins and Hitler. Two guesses who he supports? Correct. West Ham.
Up until my first game aged 19, I had found out about the term yid. Why we started using it and a bit more about our history, on and away from the terraces.
I loved it. I was now going to football more and more and apart from the game itself, was there anything better than chanting “YID ARMY” in unison? Not only did we have this battle cry, it was positive reinforcement of a term that was meant to be derogatory and racist.
I was in a pub watching Chelsea v Spurs when arfa Tottenham put the ball in the Chelsea net. Some fat cunt in a Chelsea shirt turned round after conceding yet another one and snarled, “You fucking yiddos”. I stood up, laughed and said “Yeah, we are fucking yiddos”. The spurs fans in the pub laughed and started singing “we are the yids…” Chelsea just sat down and shut up.
That reaffirmed it. This was a good thing. It just deflected any racist bollocks and we were united as fans.
One day, at the lane, I met a mate of a mate who was Jewish. I knew plenty of Jewish people at Spurs by now but this guy was different in that he didn’t sing any of the Y word songs. I asked if he found it offensive and he said he didn’t find Spurs fans singing it offensive at all but he used to get beaten up at school and called a dirty yid. As a result, he didn’t really want to sing it.
This put a big cloud over the term for me. I knew that using the term was a stand against what had originally been a prejudiced word and I suppose I had thought that all Jewish fans would be well up for the solidarity shown for them. Now I had met someone who didn’t like the term and wouldn’t get involved, even though he was aware of the way Spurs fans used it.
This is when I wondered about the usage and whether it was appropriate.
All of the reasons for not using it seemed obvious. In fact, David Baddiel’s logic struck a chord. If Chelsea and West Ham and City etc. were shouting anti-Semitic abuse at us, we are hardly helping things by singing these songs. If anything, it’s encouraging them, right?
A year or so of joining in with the chants but still being a bit unsure, the aforementioned beardy twat came out with the Y word video and from that point; I knew that this was an issue that probably needed to be addressed before we could move on.
Baddiel was right to bring it to the public attention. Despite what a lot of people think, I do feel it’s important to challenge or at least understand what we do, rather than just go about something simply because everyone else does it.
What Baddiel did wrongly though, was immediately blame Tottenham fans for any anti-Semitic chanting in the game. It was pretty plain as far as he was concerned, the buck stopped with us.
David Baddiel and his brother, so incensed by the racist chanting of their own fans that they had to move to another part of the stadium, decided that the issue lay with Spurs fans for their use of the word yid.
David Baddiel, who only seems to pipe up when he has a book or tour to promote (coincidence I’m sure), clearly had it all worked out and that a debate or discussion amongst clubs, fans, the Jewish community, police, politicians or anyone really, wasn’t worth it because Spurs were to blame for anti-Semitism in football. So while it was a good thing for the issue to be brought to the fore, it was such a one-sided haphazard way of doing things, that it actually secularised people rather than encouraged a genuine debate on the issue.
So really, as far as that dickhead or anyone from any standpoint where they are more bothered about self-promotion than tackling genuine issues (society of black lawyers, this means you) are concerned – there is no issue. Bollocks to them. They don’t want to play properly, so fuck ‘em.
For the rest of us, though, we should probably stop and think about it and here is where I am.
The issue is so complex, with many variables. We can’t tackle every thread of the argument but we can look at a few of the common ones. Let’s take probably the key one. If Spurs stop singing “yid”, fans of other teams will stop their singing their songs and hissing.
Maybe this is true. I personally doubt it but the only cast iron fact here, is that no one knows for sure. So let’s turn that point around. Why should Spurs stop first? Whether you agree with it or not, everyone knows that Spurs fans don’t sing Yid as an insult. It’s a term of endearment. It is also a fact that the origin of Spurs’ usage was to counter offensive chants. So even though the abusive chants came first, we are meant to believe they wouldn’t be heard if Spurs fans stopped singing? Brighton fans don’t sing “we are the queers” but they get plenty of chanting about their gay fans. I have heard plenty of songs or implications about West Ham being a bunch of pakis due to a large Asian community in East London, but they don’t sing up about it. This may be the right thing to do but my point is, it ain’t stopped the songs.
Tackle prejudice chanting in the grounds. All forms of this should be punished. When it gets to a point that it is all but obliterated from the game, come to Spurs fans with a new debate. “Why are you still singing it?” because the abuse deflecting reasoning won’t wash any more. Don’t hammer the guys using it positively though. Tackle the bad guys first.
Another point thrown into the debate. Most fans who sing it are not Jewish. I don’t need to regurgitate why Spurs sing it but one point that seems to be overlooked, is that many of them are and are proud to do so. Not all, as I mentioned earlier. So what is the issue here? The word yid is offensive to some people and not others. And sometimes even people, who find it an offensive word, are not offended by its use in certain environments, like my mate’s mate. Complex, right? Whatever you think, everyone will agree, it’s the term that causes the bone of contention. Is it right for people to say that word or not?
Context is very important but also the evolution of language. These points have been raised before but it’s important. Despite this and the origin of Tottenham’s usage, the word doesn’t really mean Jew any more. Spurs fans don’t sing “Jew army”. Yid is a mono-syllabic chant which can be altered into many variations (Jermain Defoe, he’s a …) and can be sung by even the biggest and ugliest knuckle draggers out there. The history of Spurs’ usage is important but the evolution is just as crucial. It just doesn’t mean the same thing anymore. As it is, I’d wager that most people’s response to what the word means, will have something to do with Spurs. Don’t ignore the historical meaning but override it. Don’t forget, yid was a perfectly fine word before it was corrupted by fascists.
Let it fully evolve into a term for a Spurs fan.
I am not saying that people can’t be offended by Spurs’ the use of the word. To me though, it seems ridiculous not to tackle this in a positive way. If it’s ok to turn a genuine term of endearment into a racist slur, then it’s just as acceptable to take it back.
The history of the word is important to Tottenham fans just as it should be for people who have encountered the term as a derogatory smear but it is just a word and when you remove that intent, you are just left with an inoffensive jumble of letters. Every single Tottenham Hotspur fan who sings it, does so in a positive way – as in “you are one of us”, part of a clan or group or family or whatever.
This is all it should mean.