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Supporters The Y Word

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Gotnohair62 said:
I wonder why the club are going so far with this and I question the integrity of the so called consultation; might they have already made up their minds what course to take after some meeting with their PR advisors? Perhaps they have an eye towards future buyers and want to sanitise the 'product' as much as possible. Maybe they have concluded a Middle Eastern sheik would be less likely to buy a club who's fans sing so vociferously about being Yids.

I posted this in 2019 the last time everyone outside of the faunae got their knickers in a twist, but it's worth another look.
https://www.thejc.com/comment/comme...ns-chanting-yid-reminds-me-of-a-joke-1.478784
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Bingo.

Minority connections. Tribalism. Even local area connection. Supporters who care (and demand).

All unwanted distractions in todays sports entertainment market.
 
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"stop being racist"
 
Why do people seem thoroughly unable to read INTENT. The intent when it is used is to show solidarity and can be used to oppose racism.

I don’t understand why we need to bow to an antiquated word that no one really says in anger outside of football.
 
Larry David said:
season ticket not getting renewed next season

The atmosphere with the day trippers and the way football is going has made me feel like this for a while but this is the final nail in the coffin for me

Not being able to say a word that is part of my heritage, that isn’t offensive in its original meaning, because Chelsea fans moaned about it, is just so ironic it’s untrue

They’re the ones that took that word and made it negative in the first place

Being a Jew I loved the fact that my race and football team had a link, that I was welcomed in and protected from genuine racists since I went to my first game aged 7, that fellow fans would stand up for me wether they were Jewish or not, and we could all share something.

I’ll continue to use the word at the ground for the rest of the season, if I get banned or fined or whatever for it, I’ll take legal action against the club, who are they to tell me, as a Jew, what I can and can’t say

Then I’m done, let the day trippers spend their money there, I’ll watch on tv and remember the good times I had growing up, standing in the park lane, of what was a true football stadium, no light shows needed, no retractable pitches, just 30 odd thousand people sharing something every week

RIP Spurs and RIP Football
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I'm not jewish, I don't have that much of a connection to spurs, but this post made me a bit emotional because I can really relate to it, except there was no yid army for "my people".

As a south asian muslim kid in the late 2000s, I got called a paki pretty regularly and my response was "actually, I'm not pakistani". In hindsight, I wish I had embraced the slur. There were others incidents like jokes about having a bomb in my backpack, a sikh kid getting the turban ripped off his head etc. I wasn't traumatised or anything, but I was made to feel ashamed about my heritage, and it would have been nice to get a "paki army" or something from the majority.

Any sane person should praise Spurs for such a wonderful expression of solidarity for their fellow man. Instead they are cast as the bigots by the very people who supposedly share the same liberal, humanist world view.

As much as it might make some jewish spurs fans uncomfortable, I just can't find a logical connection from spurs fans chanting yid army to anti-semitism. If spurs fans must stop chanting yid army, it is only as a gesture of respect for Jewish fans, not because the chants were ever morally wrong.
 
BernardMatthews said:
One part of me says that time moves on and things change. Knowing that some Jewish friends don’t feel comfortable with us singing Yid army I can see both sides of the coin.

Is football a pure moral place with no racism, sexism, animal abuse, wife beating, rapists etc etc.??? And are we really the problem here? Well no. Are we the easiest target to start with on something like this. Probably.

I’m guessing songs with Yid will still be sung in pubs and on trips abroad etc just in the stadium people will start to be a bit careful if there is a chance of losing ST cards or memberships.

And in my heart I will always be a Yid. As will many thousands with me. Just the way it is. That’s going to the grave

As an aside I remember turning to my nephew on Saturday and saying hearing McNamaras Band playing at the start of the second half is a reminder of how much I love Spurs and coming to the Lane. Nice that some things don’t change isn’t it. How old is that song??
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Has the club suggested that?
 
KaneIsAble said:
I'm not jewish, I don't have that much of a connection to spurs, but this post made me a bit emotional because I can really relate to it, except there was no yid army for "my people".

As a south asian muslim kid in the late 2000s, I got called a paki pretty regularly and my response was "actually, I'm not pakistani". In hindsight, I wish I had embraced the slur. There were others incidents like jokes about having a bomb in my backpack, a sikh kid getting the turban ripped off his head etc. I wasn't traumatised or anything, but I was made to feel ashamed about my heritage, and it would have been nice to get a "paki army" or something from the majority.

Any sane person should praise Spurs for such a wonderful expression of solidarity for their fellow man. Instead they are cast as the bigots by the very people who supposedly share the same liberal, humanist world view.

As much as it might make some jewish spurs fans uncomfortable, I just can't find a logical connection from spurs fans chanting yid army to anti-semitism. If spurs fans must stop chanting yid army, it is only as a gesture of respect for Jewish fans, not because the chants were ever morally wrong.
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As a white guy, I am not ever going to be comfortable pointing to a white player and chanting ‘Pakeeeeee’. This may not be completely analogous but it’s as near as I can get.

There’s a great scene in the old movie ‘From Here To Eternity’ where Sinatra sticks Ernest Borgnine after telling him ‘Only my friends can call me a W*p’ which pretty much sums it up.
 
Harrison_COYS said:
I'm Jewish myself (all be it not religious), so I can take one for the team here and say what everyone is thinking ......they can get fucked telling me what to say, I'll sing yid all I fucking like because it represents standing up for what's most pure about our fanbase...coming together as one and owning any bs other fans try and throw at us. When I sing yiddo at the top of my voice that is most genuine affection I can show to a player...I've felt a huge amount of joy when signing that with fellow spurs fans and I'm glad I have those memories. Fuck the media at getting offended at every fucking turn. I don't go to a football match for a sanitized experience, I go to watch football with my mates, get pissed up, celebrate our team and scream how much of a cunt Emerson is because he can't fucking cross a ball

Yes some people will get offended but that's life...I can't speak for every Jewish person who may get offended but no group of people get to define what something means for the masses, complicated issue but at the end of the day if your being a racist/antisemitic cunt you should be told to fuck off, if your obv not being those things which no spurs fan who sings that is, then shut the fuck up, there's no bloody issue

I'll make sure to scream yiddo at the top of my voice next time, and then they can have a go for me for being antisemitic towards myself.....stupid pricks....rant over
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They will say you have 'internalised antisemitism'. Remember, they think they know you better than you know yourself.
 
TheGhost said:
As a white guy, I am not ever going to be comfortable pointing to a white player and chanting ‘Pakeeeeee’. This may not be completely analogous but it’s as near as I can get.

There’s a great scene in the old movie ‘From Here To Eternity’ where Sinatra sticks Ernest Borgnine after telling him ‘Only my friends can call me a W*p’ which pretty much sums it up.
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Well, I suppose it depends on who's who in this example of yours. Is Baddiel Sinatra and Spurs Ernest Brognine or the Spurs' jewish fanabase Sinatra and the rest of us his friends? It's the second option isn't it?

As far as I can see the chants were started with good intentions and they were received as intended, until some bad faith actors muddied the water. Happy to be corrected on that.

As for chanting "pakeeee", I suppose if you just started this tomorrow, it would go down like a lead balloon, but if it was born organically out of real solidarity it could take hold, and over time gain credibility. Maybe if you had a different kind of relationship with south asian people, you'd not feel so unconfortable with it?

I don't know what the rules are for reclaiming a slur... I don't think there are any, we'd only know when someone tries it.

It's not quite the same thing, but I remember a couple months back Adele wore a bakini with a Jamaican flag on it, and a bunch of black americans came after her for "cultural appropriation", and black brits and jamaicans jumped into her defence. They didn't see it as racist, they took it in the neutral/positive way it was intended. Something like that could maybe grow into yid army type situation.

Apparently in South Africa they call mixed-race people coloureds. and this caused some outrage in America. I feel like this is a similar situation, people are simply refusing to accept perfectly good explanation for how a racial slur came to be used in a different way than the rest of the world.
 
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Perhaps it's time to take the piss.
Change the chant to WOKE ARMY.
We'd know what we really meant.
They'd know what we really meant but they'd be able to. do fuck all about it
 
KaneIsAble said:
Well, I suppose it depends on who's who in this example of yours. Is Baddiel Sinatra and Spurs Ernest Brognine or the Spurs' jewish fanabase Sinatra and the rest of us his friends? It's the second option isn't it?

As far as I can see the chants were started with good intentions and they were received as intended, until some bad faith actors muddied the water. Happy to be corrected on that.

As for chanting "pakeeee", I suppose if you just started this tomorrow, it would go down like a lead balloon, but if it was born organically out of real solidarity it could take hold, and over time gain credibility. Maybe if you had a different kind of relationship with south asian people, you'd not feel so unconfortable with it?

I don't know what the rules are for reclaiming a slur... I don't think there are any, we'd only know when someone tries it.

It's not quite the same thing, but I remember a couple months back Adele wore a bakini with a Jamaican flag on it, and a bunch of black americans came after her for "cultural appropriation", and black brits and jamaicans jumped into her defence. They didn't see it as racist, they took it in the neutral/positive way it was intended. Something like that could maybe grow into yid army type situation.

Apparently in South Africa they call mixed-race people coloureds? and this caused some outrage in America. I feel like this is a similar situation, people are simply refusing to accept perfectly good explanation for how a racial slur came to be used in a different way than the rest of the world.
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For most of the Jews that support Spurs that I know, it’s your second example. That’s not to say that’s always the case.

For Jews that don’t support Spurs, it’s far more complicated….. and, yeah, we can knock Baddiel as an ass but there are plenty of others who don’t dress up in blackface that feel similarly. They think we’re Borgnine regardless of our context.
Personally, I like the identity but if we were forced to give it up, it wouldn’t change how I feel about Tottenham.
 
If anything, this announcement, has in my opinion already backfired.

I think this forum gets a pretty good cross section of our fan base and their sentiment.

Should they try and ban the phrase, I can see the fans uniting on this and chanting non fucking stop.

Good luck enforcing this.
 
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