television pundits playing up the incident to buggery. Gary Linekar loves to lecture all the rest of us.

yes, the fan was stupid to make the eye slit gesture. But does he deserve to get thrown into Broadmoor ? probably not.

its difficult to win an argument with a clever fecker but its impossible to win an argument with an idiot.

Kayla did Anfield & Old Trafford

I did think so, but that's a bit too broad for me I am only concerned with the topic at hand, I have a habit of tumbling too far down a rabbit hole, occasionally with fury, so my limited and oft' troubled brain has to be managed carefully

And it's a no on Star Trek. I have nothing against it or those whom have any commitment to it, just not for me. Any reference to it I need I'll gladly take from the Simpsons, which has single-handedly influenced my understanding of most things beyond my typical interests.

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!

I don't know if any of this has been mentioned but has anyone noted that since out Premier League status, we have had an increase in South Asian football fans coming to our games, spending a good amount of money in the club shop and sampling the whole Palace experience as a tourist activity?

I'm sure the club will want to take action on this incident to make a statement that this gesture isn't tolerated and doesn't reflect the views of the club and it's support.

I don't support the notion that the fan should be arrested or anything of that nature however, Tottenham's ground regulations:

"10. Racial, homophobic or discriminatory abuse, chanting or harassment is strictly forbidden and will result in arrest and/or ejection from the Ground. The Club may impose a ban for one or more Matches." Entering the stadium is implied acceptance of the ground regulations.

The use of anti-semitic language from Tottenham fans has been mentioned as a rebuttal, however from my years of working as a football steward, can tell you that isolating and dealing with mass incidents like these are a lot more difficult than isolating and dealing with the 1 person (seat number giving name and address details, security camera pointing at their direction). Unless the group of people are easily identified (HF for example)

La la la your mum

Maybe he just means what he said? That dealing with mass incidents is easier than dealing with individuals. Where it's someones job to ensure a safe environment for fans, they don't deserve to be intimidated by groups. Such a situation doesn't make them a 'bottler'. It means they're considering their own safety and others.

Edited by footythoughts (11 May 2023 5.46pm)

Well observed. When someone endorses facist groups in one setting, appears to happily converse with some most would deem radicalised, and relentlessly holds distancing and extremely demeaning views towards certain demographics then comes on here with a markedly dialled down persona, day in, day out attacking people with routine views, the only logical conclusion is that they either know that their actual views are way too out there to repeat in other settings, or they are engaging in disengenuous and groomy behaviour. What other reason can there be? At some point in life a degree of self reflection should kick in. Starting with a basic understanding that we should seek to attribute a certain level of humanity to others regardless of colour or creed doesn't tend to be a bad rule of thumb.

Edited by footythoughts (11 May 2023 6.16pm)

All valid points.

To build on your two bookends - of mistake to fanatical racist - There’s a sliding scale between those, sure. It’s also worth noting that you can hold racist views through ignorance, conditioning, conscious, sub-conscious or otherwise (mentioned in an earlier post, seems to have been missed). So yeah, obviously it’s not as simple as no gesture good, gesture bad.

However all we can ever go on is comparison with ourselves and our own experiences. A judgement call has to be made somewhere, somehow - having personal learned experience of this sort of thing (both levels of extremes) I’m afraid I have little time or sympathy for such actions, and to me it shows on probability a high likelihood of someone that is somehow ignorant or worse - you don’t just do that sort of thing randomly, out of the blue at that age. It becomes less excusable the older you get, and these two are hardly in their teens. Probability is key. Just because it could be a thousand other things personally if the probability in my view is high enough I’m not going to sit on the fence.

Logically the very fact they’ve both made said gestures demonstrates a level of acceptance. As for why that acceptance is present, sure that’s more nuanced but the fact others like you and I would never cross that line excludes a lot of the lower end explanations.

At a minimum it’s an example of something personally acceptable or ingrained (sub consciously or otherwise) surfacing as a result of lower inhibition. Now, obviously that doesn’t mean someone is racist to the core, but it does mean that some element of racism is acceptable to them either in that moment or otherwise, and it’s that crossing of the line considering their age, the environment and the current climate around racism that’s key here. You don’t just throw racist language or gestures around ‘by mistake’ these days. Sorry, I don’t buy that.

I might be more inclined to believe that it was more of a moment of madness if others in the crowd were doing the same, I could buy the tribal / herd mentality argument. But it wasn’t - it’s a personal, reactive decision based on some level of acceptance or normalisation.

I can’t know, but I certainly can presume in both these cases for the multiple reasons above that create a strong enough probability for me to make that presumption.

Edited by SW19 CPFC (11 May 2023 9.58pm)

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.