"Yid" chanting...

[Funkapuss]

The problem with that is that is a usage in Yiddish, not in English. It's use in English is racially laced.

It's a racial term, just like Jew/Jewish. The question is whether it's an offensive term no matter the context.

Yid/Yiddish is used to describe the European Jews and their language and culture, ie European Jews didn't speak Hebrew in everyday conversation they spoke Yiddish. Much of American Jewish culture is Yiddish culture for example. It's a word they used among themselves without any derogatory connotations at all. The problem lies with the fascists in England using the word in their abuse, which seems to have given rise to the idea that it's an offensive word on it's own.

 

[Johnboy40]

From a West Ham blog
https://www.westhamtillidie.com/posts/2013/09/23/the-y-word-those-tottenham-songs

The use of the Y word has made the headlines in the last few weeks.

It all begun when the Football Association issued a statement warning all supporters that the use of the Y words could result in a banning order or criminal charges.

David Cameron entered the debate when he told the Jewish Chronicle there was a difference between Spurs fans “describing themselves as Y**” and the word being used as an insult. Even David Gold was quoted by Hugh Southon saying David is unfazed by use of the Y word by Spurs fans.

As we approach the Spurs away game on Saturday 5th Oct what is clear is that West Ham and the police have zero Torrance with West Ham fans using the Y word or singing any Tottenham songs which could be considered anti Semitic.

In a piece in the Sunday telegraph quoting a piece from Saturday’s West Ham v Everton programme it said “Any fan found to be acting inappropriately – including racist, anti-semitic and homophobic behaviour – will be punished to the full extent of the law and banned from attending matches. “The club, along with the Metropolitan Police, will continue to operate a zero tolerance policy towards any form of discriminatory behaviour.”

The trouble last season at Tottenham away was widely publicised with two fans receiving a police caution and another receiving a life ban. West Ham said in a statement at the time “West Ham United are in contact with Tottenham Hotspur to assist them with their investigation into the conduct of a small number of supporters and alleged inappropriate chanting during yesterday’s match at White Hart Lane”

What is less well publicised is what happened at Stoke home game last year.A group of West Ham supporters started singing the Tottenham song which starts ’We’ll be running about Tottenham with our…’ Although the game was televised on Sky this passed off without a mention as the ‘Tottenham song’ has been regularly sung at non Tottenham games over the years.

During the Chelsea home game uniformed Met police officers stormed the Sir Trevor Brooking Lower stand and arrested several fans pointed out by a plains cloths cop.
None of us understood what was going on at the time but it later transpired that a police undercover operation had videoed fans singing songs which the police and the club regard as anti Semitic. These fans were later charged, pleaded guilty at court and received 3 year banning orders.

I guess the point I am trying to make is singing a song can get you arrested, a criminal record and a banning order from the club you love and support. It’s just not worth it! I know we have all probably sung something in the past we shouldn’t but hopefully that was because we were too young to know better or they were different times. The club & police have been it clear that the defence it’s only football banter no longer holds any water with them.

Last year a Jewish West Ham supporter who is a journalist wrote this in The Guardian which I still think makes interesting reading on the subject one year later.

It can be found HERE

The Guardian article he links to is a great read. dismissed the Baddiel argument simply and intelligently.
and if asked to debate it would, i have no doubt, be shouted down by Baddiel in the same manner that flav was.

 

[We8Arsenal]

 

[Abbey Yid]

Anyone else get an image in their head of Baddiel in the away section at Spurs, with 2,000 around him singing "Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz" and him not so much as twitching..

And then 34,000 defiant Spurs fans blow the roof off with "Yid Army" and he goes all David Brent style with "oooooh, offensive.. not having that"

 

[sammyspurs]

suck it

 

[1882]

suck it

SERIOUS point here... we should simply persist with the "YIDDIO-YIDDIO-YIDDIO-YIDDIO" chant... for as far as I know, not only is YIDDIO not offensive to Jews, it isn't actually a word!
Perfect compromise IMHO... let the Chelsea fans continue their Hissing and Zeig Heils... we can retain the moral high-ground by continuing to sing a nonsense, made-up word!

Let Baddeil argue THAT!

 

[Eskimo]

SERIOUS point here... we should simply persist with the "YIDDIO-YIDDIO-YIDDIO-YIDDIO" chant... for as far as I know, not only is YIDDIO not offensive to Jews, it isn't actually a word!
Perfect compromise IMHO... let the Chelsea fans continue their Hissing and Zeig Heils... we can retain the moral high-ground by continuing to sing a nonsense, made-up word!

Let Baddeil argue THAT!

He'd probably say its mocking them being money lenders Yid IO

 

[Ph0n1k]

Hello all, im new here, an this is my first post.

This is Simon Sharmas piece from the FT today after this tweet on the 15th:

After listening to David Baddiel on Talk Sports about antisemitic chants at Stamford Bridge I've changed my mind about the "Yids" problem..

Good night Yids!” tweets the cheery Talking THFC Spurs blogger, managing to sound both endearing and sinister, like a Cossack tucking you in before the rough stuff starts. I should take offence; God knows I’m good at that. I am still trying to work up a lather of indignation to support a move by the Football Association – endorsed by the chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association as well as The Board of Deputies of British Jews – to prosecute Tottenham Hotspur fans who chant “we’re the Yid Army!” from the stands at White Hart Lane, giving voice to the team’s old association with north London’s Jews.

There is no doubt that, in some places and at some times, the Y-word is as vilely racist as the N-word – even when embraced by those who sing it. I remember seeing it in Mosleyite daubings on walls in London and Essex. But for this life-long Spurs supporter – a Yiddisher Yid who sees the popular Yiddish-Hasidic newspaper Der Yid on sale every week in Brooklyn – it is a bit of a struggle to get incensed.

I sympathise with the rage of author and comedian David Baddiel, when as a Jewish Chelsea supporter he has to endure merry cries of “Death to the Jews, f*** the Jews” every time Spurs play his team. But perhaps that is a problem for Chelsea and other clubs that tolerate supporters sounding off like they are at a Nazi rally. Prosecuting Spurs fans for calling themselves Yids seems to criminalise the targets of hate speech rather than the perpetrators. And they, believe me, are out there in toxic force on the web, where neo-Nazi sites fall about laughing at the joke that Spurs must have 6m fans.

Of course, not all London Jews are Spurs fans and still less are all Spurs fans Jews. But the connection is not entirely spurious either. The reason my dad passed on the allegiance to me was because the synagogue he helped establish was near White Hart Lane. On my seventh birthday in 1952 he gave me a postcard with the autographs of the team that had won the league the year before. I can still recite those names – Ditchburn and Ramsey, Nicholson and Duquemin, Medley, Bennett and Burgess – like a litany.

Later, in Golders Green, a few miles to the west, it had to be love at a distance since Shabbat observance stopped us going to the games, then played only on Saturdays. But when the rabbi started his sermon we would bolt for the doors to chew over the prospects for the afternoon.

Then came Bill Nicholson’s magic team – Blanchflower, Mackay, Bobby Smith and the rest – not just winning the double in 1961 but doing so with an intelligent elegance that redefined the game just as the pre-Munich crash Manchester United had done under Matt Busby in the 1950s. It was the English game at its most thrilling: short, sharp passing; sudden bursts of acceleration; John “the Ghost” White intuitively moving into spaces he had no right to find, a will-o’-the-wisp in baggy shorts until his career and his life were struck down by a bolt of lightning.

In the years that followed, Busby’s United and the Ajax of Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff also mastered that degree of lethal grace. And it was in Amsterdam in the 1970s that the ugliness started to throw a shadow over Ajax’s brilliance. Into the city with a traumatic Holocaust history – where Anne Frank had been hidden but also betrayed, and which had lost 80 per cent of its Jews to the death camps – came Feyenoord supporters from Rotterdam, swastikas tattooed on their arms.

Its a commonplace now to say it does not matter who started the aggravation but it seems to me that it does. For Ajax, long associated with a Jewish population in much the same way as Spurs, the waving of Israeli flags and the singing of “Hava Nagila” were a response to the Rotterdam swastikas, not the cause. The escalating spectacle of rival chants, recently refined by other sides into “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas”, along with the hissing that has piped its way to English grounds, grew distressing to the few Dutch Holocaust survivors and their families.

The true horror was the emptying out of historical meaning, the trivialisation of genocide into Holokitsch. Is that not the real problem? Historical ignorance of the doltish kind that for many years allowed the Cleveland Indians baseball team to adopt the grotesque caricature of big-nosed “Chief Wahoo” as their mascot. Or, even more offensively, the tomahawk chop of Atlanta Braves fans: comic-book editions of histories of oppression and extermination.

With the light tribal comedy of team solidarity comes a waiver from historical understanding. But words, chants, signs and gestures can never cut loose from the drag weight of the past. The right response to the Yid Army at Spurs and the Jew-baiters among the Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge is not prosecution but (and I know this will be seen as another case of professorial optimism) to educate them into understanding what it is they are actually yelling; whose bones they stand on when they jeer and cheer.

Perhaps, rather than have a platoon of chant cops patrolling the stands, we could flash up on the screens a photograph of a chimney, a train and Arbeit Macht Frei before the team announcements. That would shut them up.

 

[jimmyriggle]

has there been any statements made by the official supporters clubs of chelsea or west ham yet? Or by the clubs themselves?

I think David Gold said something last week but the silence from West London is deafening considering the main complainant here is one of their fans

 

[1882]

I always did like that Simon Sharma!!!

 

[eggsoakley]

Made me think.

 

[GeorgeKirchner7]

Why don't all of us Spurs supporters just become Jewish. That should end the debate!

 

[1882]

I know I'm probably bypassing the gag here... but the sound of Spurs fans singing YID ARMY (taken from Fulham away if i'm not mistaken?) and a load of Hasidic Jews bouncing up and down (Gants Hill ole boys indeed... the cheek of the fucker) looks and sounds FUCKING AMAZING! (Or was that not the point??)

 

[Phil1988]

Would any of us actually stop using the word 'Yid' in chanting if it actually got to the point of being banned? I've read talk of prosecution and bans if these moaners had their way. I think we should actually be praised for turning something which people used as an insult into a badge of honour. It's part of identity and should never be taken away from us.

 

[Schoolboy'sOwnStuff]

Would any of us actually stop using the word 'Yid' in chanting if it actually got to the point of being banned? I've read talk of prosecution and bans if these moaners had their way. I think we should actually be praised for turning something which people used as an insult into a badge of honour. It's part of identity and should never be taken away from us.

The police will only arrest on suspicion of inciting hatred. By the law, you're in the clear, because it's not inciting hatred.

However, if the FA and/ or the club make it a condition of entry, they can eject/ ban you.

 

[1882]

If we were all to chant summit like;
"If you're proud to be a Yiddo clap your hands" ...it would leave no one in ANY doubt as to our motives!

 

[Daniel]

@ 1882 think that should be the chant for Saturday just to clear this up!!! I mean how can they then turn that into a bad thing? it would suggest baddiel and co are ashamed to be Jewish if they still have an issue with us.

 

[Burko]

"We are the yids" is another one unlikely to cause offence.

 

[pjohn5]

Statement from Chelsea

MESSAGE TO SUPPORTERS ATTENDING TOTTENHAM GAME
Posted on: Fri 27 Sep 2013
This Saturday we make the short journey across London to face Tottenham Hotspur, in what promises to be a passionate and exciting encounter.

Your support is an inspiration to the players as we seek three important points. However, for a small minority of fans, matches with Spurs have also brought deeply unpleasant and unwanted anti-Semitic behaviour, which has no place in football or anywhere in society.

Tottenham supporters using the 'Y' word as a form of identity is not an excuse for abusive chanting.

All forms of discriminatory behaviour and language are abhorrent and this includes the 'Y' word.

The Football Association reiterated in its directive announced earlier this month that the use of the 'Y' word in football stadiums is unacceptable and could amount to a criminal offence, and leave those fans liable to prosecution and potentially a lengthy Football Banning Order. This is fully supported by Chelsea Football Club. We have continuously worked to eradicate all forms of discrimination, both at home and away, and the diversity within our club is obvious to all. The players on the field, fans watching from the stands and the religious background of our directors and owner all illustrate a multi-cultural club of which we are very proud.

We need your help to bring to our attention anyone taking part in anti- Semitic behaviour or any other kind of abuse.

A dedicated phone line has been set up - 07537 404821 - for supporters to text, allowing fans to anonymously report abusive or offensive behaviour in strict confidence. You can also contact Kick It Out on 0800 1699 414 or by downloading their smartphone app.

http://www.chelseafc.com/news-artic...essage-to-supporters-attending-tottenham-game

 

[Schoolboy'sOwnStuff]

Statement from Chelsea

MESSAGE TO SUPPORTERS ATTENDING TOTTENHAM GAME
Posted on: Fri 27 Sep 2013
This Saturday we make the short journey across London to face Tottenham Hotspur, in what promises to be a passionate and exciting encounter.

Your support is an inspiration to the players as we seek three important points. However, for a small minority of fans, matches with Spurs have also brought deeply unpleasant and unwanted anti-Semitic behaviour, which has no place in football or anywhere in society.

Tottenham supporters using the 'Y' word as a form of identity is not an excuse for abusive chanting.

All forms of discriminatory behaviour and language are abhorrent and this includes the 'Y' word.

The Football Association reiterated in its directive announced earlier this month that the use of the 'Y' word in football stadiums is unacceptable and could amount to a criminal offence, and leave those fans liable to prosecution and potentially a lengthy Football Banning Order. This is fully supported by Chelsea Football Club. We have continuously worked to eradicate all forms of discrimination, both at home and away, and the diversity within our club is obvious to all. The players on the field, fans watching from the stands and the religious background of our directors and owner all illustrate a multi-cultural club of which we are very proud.

We need your help to bring to our attention anyone taking part in anti- Semitic behaviour or any other kind of abuse.

A dedicated phone line has been set up - 07537 404821 - for supporters to text, allowing fans to anonymously report abusive or offensive behaviour in strict confidence. You can also contact Kick It Out on 0800 1699 414 or by downloading their smartphone app.

http://www.chelseafc.com/news-artic...essage-to-supporters-attending-tottenham-game

I love the way they focus on 'the Y-word', but ignore the hissing and the references to Hitler and Auschwitz.