Yid no more

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STF said:
Spurs have as many as any other team of right wing supporters as well as any other political persuasion people have do not be under any illusion that they don't.
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It depends what you mean by right-wing. I'm sure we've got as many Thatcherites as the other London clubs, but in terms of the extreme right, there's very little of that at Spurs, if any...whereas Chelsea and to a lesser extent West Ham have a sizable minority who are either extreme-right or who sympathise with those views.

Even if you leave aside the anti-semitic abuse from those club's fans....would you ever hear Spurs fans singing "Anton Ferdinand, you know what you are" if the situation was reversed and a Spurs player had racially abused him? Would you ever hear Spurs fans singing "we pay your benefits" to local black people on the way to a game like West Ham fans did when we last played them? The answer is a resounding no.

Likewise, I'd say Woolwich have very few extreme-right supporters.
 
15 pages. Thread starter still hasn't returned to the site since posting. He's got a lot of reading to do.
 
The trouble is that IF the respective countries police forces arrest the perpetrators who assault our fellow fans there is no guarantee that they will be dealt with as the letter of the law demands. Can you honestly believe that a countries legal system are going to apply appropriate sentences to their own nationals for "attacking a bunch of Y Spurs supporters" from another country who are “long gone”. It is neither politically expedient nor popular to imprison their own nationals and the police will always protect their own, after all they have to live there afterwards. ! This is not a general categorisation of all its citizens, but Lyon and Rome have an appalling past historical record in how they have treated Jewish people, whether they support football teams or not and until these remnant cowardly groups are dealt with for good, their actions continue to stain their respective cities reputations in which they reside in. As Spooky stated in his article, Here we go again (Dear Mr Levy, 22/2/2013). he has "re-ignited the Y word discussion and there is no way to avoid it". One cannot minimise a specific part of the clubs heritage and the Jewish connection associated with this. It has to continue to be acknowledged, embraced and proudly owned along with all other supporters from different cultural groups who support our great club. COYS!
 
As for the suggestion of embracing an anti-fascist identity amongst the supporters, personally I would like that but alongside rather than instead of the yid thing. I'm not sure about anti-fascist songs but I would like to see for instance a massive flag depicting a crossed out swastika as you see from anti-fascist ultras on the Continent. IMO it would never happen because parts of our support would mistakenly associate anti-fascism with political correctness.
 
Coming at this as someone from a completely Jewish family but who doesn't consider myself 'jewish' in a religious sense, rather a cultural one. I have always been happy to Chant yid army. When I do it, my motivation is to make noise that will hopefully spur the team on, or if outside the ground, as a way of celebrating our support of spurs. I'm aware of its origins as a football chant but it never really crosses my mind that I'm using the terms as a badge of honour. The only time that there is an exception to this is if I'm heading clear anti Semitic chants from the opposing fans (do basically at Chelsea and west ham matches)
Some really good arguments here on both sides.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that, even if I disagree, i can totally sympathise with all the reasons against. All except 'let's not sing it in case it draws attention to our Jewish routes and we end up getting attacked.' why should we let the ignorant and violent motivation of these arseholes dictate what we can or can't chant at football?

What if the motivation was to target our fans because they were predominantly black? I.e. something that you simply can't hide as its the colour of your skin. Would you advise all black spurs fans to not to go to certain games?
I know that's taking it to extremes somewhat, but I would hate the yid chant to faze out simply because people were scared of neo nazi scum.
 
1882 said:
NOWADAYS???? I think you'll find the delicious irony of ALL of this, is that their support has ALWAYS had about the same ratio of Jewish fans as ours.... And yet for some reason unknown, it's Spurs that have the Jewish attachment!

And it's nothing to do with who runs the club either, as someone rightly pointed out before, the club's hierarchy of not only us, but West Ham's, ArseAnal and of course Chelsea are Jewish... Hmmm, maybe THAT'S what's really grating at the far-right eh?
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I was saying it as in even more so nowadays, if you ask me I think it shows the type of club we are in terms of class compared to all of them lot.
 
palmers_green_yid said:
Greaves, you're right we're not a Jewish club per se, I don't honestly think anyone is claiming that we are. That doesn't mean we should abandon saying yid though, the word yid and associated terms are part of the club's culture just the same as Harry Hotspur, the cockerel on the badge, Glory Glory Hallelujah etc. History is not limited to the club's official view. The word yid is in our history & our culture, in my opinion it's a proud part of our history because it was initiated as a way of telling the fascists in other clubs that we didn't care that we were associated with Jews. We don't have to be a Jewish club to use the word yid, as long as the majority of Jewish Spurs fans are happy with it. I see no logical reason to abandon the term, the only thing which would make me do that would be if a sizable amount of Jewish Spurs fans were unhappy with it.
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Fair comments PGY. I think you might be romanticising our 'anti-fascist' stance, but maybe I'm being too cynical. Also some people seem to actually think we are a 'Jewish club' or anway that we're predominantly a Jewish club, if this debate has done enough to shatter that illusion amongst some people, it was worth it in itself.
 
Africa woo, a long post, but you're missing the point . WE'RE NOT a Jewish club, we're predominantly an English/British club, that is our primary cultural heritage.

Yid Army is sung in the main by beered up bellicose Englishmen, who have no strong affinity with Jewish culture, and many indeed know little about it, or even in some/many cases actually sympathise with it.

It's pantomime lunacy in the extreme. Defending something that doesn't exist by people who in the main haven't a clue about what some people think they're defending, when they're not even defending that, they're just shouting out something 'to have a go back'. Monty Python you are alive and well and shouting 'Yids' in Lyon.:)

As I've said before, they might as well be shouting out 'pink tomatoes' for all the deep philosophical thought that goes into most of the shouting that's going on.
 
The kitty-new members
The old dog-all of us that have had this discussion 30 times
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S.L.R said:
I'm thinking we should substitute it with "beered up bellicose army". Pretty sure we can all relate to that.
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:)

Admittedly 'bellicose army' is somewhat tautological, as IIRC bellicose comes from the Latin 'warlike' or some such.

But seriously, if anyone has seen the 'yid Army' stuff being shouted in the street, down the pub, in the ground, do people seriously think it's some kind of profound anti-fascist statement that's being made. Cos what I see usually are a bunch of white blokes who've been on the beer. And as a white bloke who's done plenty of beered up singing, I can relate to that.:thumbup:
 
S.L.R said:
I agree with that post except to say that Jewish people are white, or at least all the Jewish people I've ever seen!
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Fair play, some of the beered up army may well be Jewish. Here's my guess less than 5% of them in any random gathering giving it the 'Yid Army'. Down my pub 0% per cent, don't know any Jewish people down there who give it all that.

AT the ground, hard to say. I always think most of our Jewish supporters are in the West and Paxton worrying rather than give it the Billy Big Bollocks, but may be well wrong on that one. Probably stereotyping by me. It's so hard to say, again from personal experience the Park Lane loud boys are by and large not Jewish, but hey I'm well prepared to be wrong on that one.
 
White and Jewish is an interesting debate, because the 'Jewish homeland' is supposed to be the Middle East.

So are the Arabs who live in the Middle East white? Or is it because of the diaspora that Jews have become more white over the past 2000 years or so? I honestly don't know.

I certainly agree that the Jewish people I've known are white, but i wouldn't say that of the Arab people I've known. Ah the complexities of race and geography.:)
 
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