Europe past, present

Editorial

In a world that often seems to be coming apart at the seams, humanity might be expected to take refuge in the fraternity of sport. But this redoubt seems especially doubtful these days, as a confluence of ethnic chauvinism, hyper-partisanship, global politics and old-fashioned racism combine to create a tableau of sport as stand-in for war.

The situation is so bad in some parts of Europe that the former head of the English national football team warned visible minority fans not to attend the Euro 2012 football series in Poland and Ukraine this month. His warning could not have been more frank: “Stay at home. Watch it on TV. Don’t risk it, because you could find yourself coming back in a coffin,” warned Sol Campbell.

The confluence of sport and extremist politics emerges not only in outbursts of violence, but in a bizarre ideological marriage. Supporters of the team Steaua Bucharest sport portraits of Ion Antonescu, Romania’s wartime pro-Nazi dictator. Still on the fascist front, Lazio, the Rome-based team whose most infamous fanatic was the fascist leader Benito Mussolini, has a number of contemporary fans who share Mussolini’s zeal, spouting the most unprintable racist taunts against minority players. This is an increasingly common way of undermining the opposing team’s morale, according to reports. And authorities do not appear to be addressing the problem in a serious way. When fans of one team recently taunted a black opposing player with monkey noises, the football authorities fined the team whose fans had misbehaved – but the fine was less than another team was penalized for being less than a minute tardy onto the pitch.

The incidents are not limited to extremist fans, either. Prominent players have been involved in verbal assaults against minority opposing players. Racism experts say hate materials are channeled through teams’ fan bases.

There is, evidently, a commercial component to the hatred as well. In the neighborhood surrounding the football stadium in the Polish city of Lodz, football fans can buy scarves and stickers with the words “Jews forbidden,” a blood-chilling slogan in a city with its history. But Jews should not feel specially singled out. The same shops offer T-shirts with “Burn the Czechs” and “Beat the Greeks.”

A few years ago, during a European match, the coach of the team from Andorra employed language more suited to the United Nations than to the sports field, screaming at an Israeli captain: “You are a nation of killers!”

An official report by the European football authority last year documented almost 200 serious hate crimes at football matches in Poland and Ukraine alone, most of which went unpunished. Yet the countries were nonetheless selected to co-host this month’s prestigious tournament.

Footballers in Poland – and others, apparently – routinely use the word “Jew” as a disparaging catch-all for opponents on the playing field or off, in a phenomenon one observer calls “antisemitism without Jews.” There are almost no Jews in Poland (or Ukraine), yet grab for any epithet to declaim an opponent and what term trips off the tongue?

The overdue light being shone on the darkness of racism and antisemitism apparently at the heart of European sport today comes 40 years after the brutal terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The United States House of Representatives and Canada’s foreign minister have echoed the government of Israel in calling on the International Olympic Committee to offer a moment of silence as this year’s London Summer Games in memory of the 11 Israelis and one German police officer killed in the attack by Palestinian terrorists. The IOC has resisted the idea.

The 1972 attack was a turning point in sport, certainly. But perhaps far more than a moment of silence is needed. Perhaps what is needed on the issue of racism and violence around sports in Europe today is less silence. As one anti-racism activist familiar with the situation has noted – and this should hardly be a surprise – the recent racist manifestations in sports are merely a convenient outlet for attitudes and expressions that are rife throughout (at least) segments of European society far beyond the playing fields.

The continent has a very particular history with violence – which continent doesn’t? – but elections in Greece and other indicators like un-sporting incidents in the sports field suggest a failure to learn from some very bad history. A moment of silence for the victims of 1972 might go a step toward remembering a deplorable past, but all that is deplorable is clearly not in the past.

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