Commentary: Racist drivel infests Czech online discussions of World Cup
The World Cup in Brazil has become yet another pretext for the tasteless exhibitionism of Czech xenophobes. The online discussions posted beneath the articles published on our most-read news servers are being exploited to spread drivel about the superiority of the "white race" and to incite hatred of everyone who is different.
What about the fact that athletes in general and footballers in particular are doing their best to fight against racism, and that FIFA has led a costly, long-term campaign against racism? The complexes of these Czech "Nazis" and their need to take out their anger over their own bumbling lives on people of another skin color knows no limits!
The pretexts for these hateful assaults, rabid attacks, and racist insults against dark-skinned players can be divided into three groups. In the first group, Czech xenophobes complain, almost tearfully, that Blacks and Muslims are playing for European clubs in addition to "whites". In the second group, they cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that, allegedly to the detriment of European football, "too many" teams from Africa and Asia are playing in the World Cup.
In the third group, the xenophobes unabashedly self-medicate their painful complexes by vouching for the discriminatory approach and racism of the former colonizers of the indigenous inhabitants of former European colonies, or by comparing various ethnic groups to Romani people in the Czech Republic. If this were not so lamentable it might sometimes even be funny, because the Nazi masturbation in which these humorless individual debaters publicly indulge before the internet audience is more of a testament to their own complexes, limitations, and unstable mental health than they themselves realize.
Envy breeds hatred
During the first phase of the World Cup, these verbal Czech Nazis could not swallow the fact that players originally from Africa or the Balkans were playing on European teams as representatives of countries with open immigration policies. The teams of Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland were the most frequent targets of insults from the Czech online haters.
"The Swiss national team is, according to the names, comprised solely of foreigners. There is only one native Swiss there. It’s too bad they don’t monitor that," points out one discussant in the manner of an informer, who then painfully laments that "I see that the Czech representation will never rise because they don’t have any Africans or Balkan guys."
"Without those newcomers, Switzerland would probably be at the level of the Czech Republic," a fellow-traveller helpfully adds. Because similarly-attuned visitors to these discussions give such lamentations many "likes", it’s not long before the cat is out of the bag in the discussion forums beneath these online articles about the World Cup.
Everyone wants to take a kick at that "foul multicultural Switzerland", where skin color plays no role in how people are treated. "Switzerland is playing at the World Cup? It looks more like Croatia B or Albania and Bosnia together," another defender of the racial purity of European countries posts.
The icing on the cake is the comment that "Well, those are Swiss made to order!!! I don’t know if I would still be a fan of the Czech Republic if the basic team was 11 Mehmeds!"
This hysterical criticism of the multicultural Swiss model clearly shows that the coarse hatred and Nazism of our predominantly skinhead fellow-citizens is rooted in their own sense of inferiority, which produces this hatred of anyone who does not also suffer from such a complex. Another bitter dose of recognition (which they convulsively refuse to drink in its entirety) is the fact that the Belgian, Dutch, German and Swiss social (and, indirectly, football) model they are criticizing is more successful and viable than their own.
The most popular ball game in the world is proof that a fair, non-discriminatory approach to all people, irrespective of skin color, naturally functions better than a discriminatory one. If for no other reason, this is because the diversity and variety of football styles make the game even more attractive and dynamic.
What some discussants do not like to acknowledge ("the Czech representation will never rise because they don’t have any Africans or Balkan guys") is as much of a reason for genuinely crass racists to become enraged as a red flag is to a starving bull. That’s why there is suddenly so much bad blood and hatred toward colorful, prosperous, tolerant Switzerland among the "patriots" of a similarly colorful country who could learn a thing or two about prosperity and tolerance from the hated Swiss.
Instead, the Czech racists increase their hateful insults ad absurdum: "A red-haired Belgian, well fuck me!" – "I thought the USA was playing Ghana… but that’s Belgium…" – "So the Balkan guys playing for Switzerland might come up against the blacks who are playing for Belgium."
"What’s that jigaboo spouting off about?"
Like everything bad, Czech internet users’ racist insults against the football teams representing the countries of Africa in Brazil can also be made to serve a good purpose. They are a graphic example of how Czech antigypsyists and xenophobes lie through their teeth, to put it politely.
Their classic prevarication – "I’m not a racist, because Blacks don’t bother me, but I hate Roma" – is evidently forgotten about during the football craziness, when they show their racism in its true colors. They wouldn’t be Nazis if they didn’t begin by expressing their envy and sense of injustice.
"There is poverty in Africa, so how is it possible there are so many African fans in Brazil?" one writes. "If we had made it, how many fans from the Czech Republic would have been able to afford to go to the World Cup?"
Actually the composition of the spectators at the matches in Brazil is yet another blatant manifestation of racial inequality (by the way): Journalists have been pointing out from the beginning that while Blacks comprise almost three-quarters of all Brazilians, the stands are occupied almost exclusively by white-skinned fans, because buying an overpriced ticket to a match is something only that privileged minority can afford and is inaccessible to the vast majority of Brazilians. Football racists aren’t concerned about that – they prefer to attack Africa and Africans as the symbolic enemy in gusts of hatred.
"What can you expect from the African states?! There’s crime of all kinds there – drugs, gangs, poverty, prostitution," writes one discussant who has evidently fallen under the delusion that none of those things exist in our country too.
"The problem is in the people in Africa, it’s all children with machine guns, civil war and corruption there, they are capable of chopping off their own hands while still conscious and when they get to Europe they herd the foreigners around on Wenceslas Square into the brothels or they sell them drugs," another discussant posts. "I think there is mainly a problem with the representations from the sub-Saharan (black) countries," adds another defender of "white" Europeans against the African football danger, with a slick sort of polish.
"Well, blacks have never done anything, they never gave the world any architecture, culture, inventions, science, nothing nothing nothing," another Czech fathead posts. This, however, is nothing compared to the wave of anger and rage that arose in these online discussions when Yaya Touré, the player who is the backbone of Manchester City and a reservist for Ivory Coast, criticized the referees for harming the African teams and siding with the Brazilian and European ones, calling it a scandal.
Those remarks stirred the hornets’ nest, in the Czech internet environment at least. "It’s more a scandal that the Afros are sprawled all over Europe from Greece to Iceland. Soon it will be rare to see a representation without them. The multis can’t take over sports too," posts one discussant.
"Serves them right, all those starving Africans," another soon adds. "What is that bugaboo spouting off about?" adds a third.
A marathon of arguments then unfolds which is noticeably reminiscent of a crusading discussion campaign by those defending a clean and pure "white" Czech Republic against Romani people. "Blacks have gotten so used to protection on all fronts here that if there is some exceptional circumstance where they don’t get it, it’s automatically ‘discrimination’," claims one discussant.
"Crying with an outstretched hand, that always works excellently for the niggers," posts another. "It would take some positive discrimination, an African team would just go straight to the finals. Then, if it didn’t win, it would be racism," posts a third.
At a certain juncture, as is the custom in such debates, the argument becomes a cesspool. "It’s high time to REALLY start doing them some damage," one user posts. "More bananas on the pitch!"
Long live colonialism!
Given the dominant atmosphere of whiny Czech nationalism, I more or less expected the reactions of the first group of xenophobes, those who are crying over the injustice of footballers from the Balkans and Blacks playing on European teams (even though the Balkans always have been and always will be part of Europe – here it is "darker skin" and unbridled energy that seems to be the problem); the responses of the second group were perhaps surprising to me only due to the medieval nature of the prejudices expressed – but it is the third group, whom we can given the working title of "sentimental colonizers", who are truly unique. While those who posted the statements quoted above seem to have been ideologically infected somewhere at the level of Hitler’s Third Reich, the sentimental colonizers evidently yearn to return to an even more distant point in time, to the "golden era" when the colonial superpowers vied with one another in their genocides of indigenous inhabitants worldwide and the slave trade just blossomed.
I confess that this strong sympathy for the worst legacy of colonialism and slavery has greatly surprised me. Could this be an echo in the Czech Republic of those very popular racist "Southerners" of the United States, spiced with some pro-slavery sentiment?
"Why are the French so good? A good half of their team is comprised of a selection of the best footballers from their former colonies. They have to do exactly what they are told, not what they want, that’s why it’s going so well for them," one discussant writes, developing this colonial vision.
"They’re like gypsies, as long as they are among whites, it sometimes works with them, but the minute you leave them to themselves, it’s bad. The individuals on the European teams are brilliant, but once you put them together, they won’t score. No one is really interested in such teams," another sentimental colonizer writes, adding fuel to the fire.
A third joins the party immediately: "Well, the era of colonization is long gone. At least someone told them what to do then. Now they have freedom and this is what is looks like. They can do our countrywomen for years, all over Europe, but once you put them all together, they’ll return to their coconuts."
As can be seen from these hateful, often openly racist posts, the writers are sure they are not doing anything wrong. Not only does this racism obviously not bother the administrators of these online discissions, they look forward to the sympathies of similarly xenophobically-oriented discussants, who seem, at first glance, to enjoy a comfortable majority online.
After all, how could it be otherwise?! Why should this be strange in a country where it is usual for MPs and senators to make racist speeches, for election billboards to feature xenophobic slogans, and for a journalist with one of the most-read national dailies to defend the anti-Semitism, chauvinism and racism of the biggest official star of this year’s Karlovy Vary Film Festival by writing that sometimes it’s completely normal to make jokes at the expense of Jews and Roma?
