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******* Yids

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I’ve just been listening to Talksport, specifically an interview with David Baddiell and his brother, Ivor.

They’ve just made a short film.

“The film is not intended to censor football fans,” said David. “It’s simply to raise awareness that the y-word is – and has been for many, many years – a race hate word. It’s our belief that some football fans may not even realise this, and the film is designed therefore to inform and raise debate.”

Really. I’m always genuinely fascinated by those who completely unsolicited wake up one morning and decide today is the day they are going to ‘inform’ me.

David and Ivor have been season ticket holders at Second Hand Fridge for over 30 years. But apparently one home game against Tottingham Hotspur was just too much for them to bear.

Spurs fans were chanting Yiddo and Yid Army as per, when a rather angry gentleman seated behind the Baddiel brothers decided to take exception to the chants and began shouting back, ‘____ off Yids!’, ‘________ Yids!’ and eventually, ‘____ off Jews!’

This inspired the quite rightly upset pair to complain to Bruce Buck and basically anyone else who would listen.

I have to say I find this initiative and the film extraordinary. Here we have have two Jews (but you don’t have to be Jewish to be upset by bigotry) complaining quite rightly about some troglodyte behind them who was in fact behaving illegally and in a public place.

But this initiative wishes to on the sly, also police and remove from usage one of the central words in Tottenham’s best known chants and it’s variations.

Now I fall neatly into the category of folk who do not feel that the use of the word ‘Yid’ or it’s variants is remotely offensive. It is always sung in a positive, bonding style aimed within the tribe and not at those outside the tribe.

We praise with it, ‘Jermain Defoe, he’s a Yiddo!’, we bond, ‘Yid Army’, we scent our territory at home games with the slow thumps of the stand and a deep, guttural ‘Yids.’

And so, right on cue the comparison to the ‘N’ word comes in. You know, the one that rhymes with ‘digger’.

This is an example commonly wheeled out by those upset by the use of  Yid. It’s a card played heavily in the Baddiel video. The assumption is made that as people of coloured race have supposedly ‘reclaimed’ the ‘N’ word as the Jews have reclaimed the word Yid. The Jews – The Spurs faithful.

I’m struggling to be honest. Really having a bit of bother working out who’s who here.

Baddiel said on the radio that only 5% of Spurs fans are actually Jewish. Where he actually got this statistic from I do not know, but let’s not dispute it. So by his figure that’s 95% of Spurs fans who have no legitimate connection to Judaism other than enjoyment of the occasional bagel.

How then does the reclaiming of a word that you have no obvious link to make any sense? I am a whitey. If I was to wander around the place referring to myself or my friends of any colour as the ‘N’ word, I would be regarded as an idiot.

The inarguable connection between the ‘N’ word is with people of coloured race and specifically in a nasty, demeaning way… So what does this word, bandied about by largely non Jews actually mean?

The word ‘Yid’ to has it’s modern roots in slang, but it’s actual entomology from Middle High German word,  ‘Jüdisch’ which gave us obviously the German ‘Jude’ and naturally… ‘Yiddish.’  The word Yid’s usage in Yiddish is without any offensive connotation.

As a term of racism it’s an anachronism. Alf Garnet bemoaning ‘bleedin’ Yids’ may make some politically correct loons feel uncomfortable, but not me. It was slang for referring to Jews but I’m struggling to see how offense can be really taken taken. On the Richter Scale of Nasty Words, the ‘N’ word has got to be a 9 and ‘Yid’ maybe a just be 3 if said really aggressively and then combined with lots of other nasty words.

This campaign is fundamentally dishonest.

One thing in life that sends me potty is the failure of people to acknowledge consequences. Now, there has to be parameters to this. You cannot say that someone being fat is a just provocation to run up to them in the street and start shouting, ‘Fatty!’ at them. That’s not on.

But if some one is sat next to you on the train endlessly screaming into their mobile phone and you politely ask them to finish the call somewhere else, that’s not you being rude, or intrusive, it’s you responding reasonably to provocation.

This campaign is so dishonest I’m staggered it’s got this far.

The troglodyte behind the Baddiels and indeed the mindless thugs on the film singing ‘Spurs Are On Their Way To Auschwitz’ are simply subhuman scum incapable of controlling themselves – some at the very thought of  Spurs even existing as a football club.

These idiots hear the word ‘Yid’ and feel the overwhelming urge to start making references to gas ovens, concentration camps and Nazi salutes. What the hell has that got to do with us?

The logical conclusion to Baddiel’s argument is that Sikhs ought to remove their turbans at Second Hand Fridge lest the mere sight of their unbelievably provocative head wear sends home fans into an uncontrollable  rage.

Trying to masquerade this as somehow ‘our’ problem is simply dishonest. If Spurs fans were pointing and shouting, ‘Yiddo!’ in a mocking manner at people they believe to be Jewish then fine, but that is not what’s happening here. The clips on the Baddiel’s film  showing the scumbags singing about Auschwitz etc are not clearly signed that they depict football fans who do not support Tottenham.

Instead we have Gary Lineker revealing to us that the atrocities of the Third Reich were a bad thing. Gary, why don’t you hurl yourself into a vat of boiling crisp fat and give us plebs your take on what that was like, you patronising plinth?

I tell you what, David & Ivor. Stop trying to drag us into sewer you share with bigots and perhaps opt instead to take your weaseling, pseudo middle class campaign and shove it up your bottoms?

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173 comments

  • gbaker says:

    I totally agree Harry – what a load of bollox!

    YIDS!

  • billytheyid says:

    Jimmy Joos, your the ignorant foul mouthed idiot which i can only assume follows the BNP. Its your tone which this film is directed towards, i seriously hope i never have dissatisfaction of meeting you at the lane.

  • andrew says:

    Firstly, I presume that by “people of coloured race” you mean black people? Because a coloured race would pretty much describe every species of anything in the entire universe…

    Secondly, while I’m not sure that Baddiel is doing the right thing, I don’t think that the situation is as black (or coloured) and white as you make out. By your logic about the origin of the word Yid, the word Faggot is acceptable because it originally meant ‘bundle’…

    Words are forever changing in our day to day usage, and the fact is that the word Yid has been employed for many years as a derogatory term for Jewish people.

    Since you are not Jewish or black, perhaps you don’t have the right to claim that the N word deserves one rating, and the Y word deserves a 3 at most, since you’ve not been on the receiving end of it.

    As for Lineker patronising us by informing us about the Holocaust, as you may know, there are many people who deny that it took place even today, and due to uproar fro certain groups, it is rarely on the academic syllabus for schools. So many fans are unaware of it, and certainly unaware of the negative connotations of the word Yid.

    However, Spurs fans have adopted it as a defence (because it was an offensive word) and have used it for years without problems, so like I said, it’s a complicated situation. The problem, as usual, lies with the idiots who chant about Racism etc, but that’s not just Chelsea fans because our own fans were on about elephants and god knows what the other night in Madrid… shameful!

    • Harry Hotspur says:

      Mmmn. I don’t agree some of that.

      Entomology of words is occasionally interesting but that’s all it is. I wasn’t pinning my colours to it’s mast, rather pointing out that in current usage in Yiddish it’s not a derogatory term.

      I don’t believe that I said I wasn’t Jewish, that was something else you assumed and in actual fact I have been on the end of being called a Yid on several occasions, by some quite nasty people. Being called Yid didn’t bother me at all, it’s a badge of honour. I was more distressed by the close proximity of the cavemen shouting it.

      Your ‘Holocaust’ never happened argument is surreal. Perhaps you might forward me your list of schools in this country that do not acknowledge it in their syllabus.

      You conclude that the matter is complicated and make reference to the Adebayor song. I’m tempted to really churlish and ask you what your point actually was?

      The Adebayor song was 100% racist beside being cheap and small time. But Spurs fans choosing to use an really, really outdated word is fine by me.

      My real reply to that ponce Baddiel is why he hasn’t challenged THFC for selling so many bloody bagels when only 5% of their supporters are a banker for buying them? They should be selling BLT’s EVERYONE likes them.

      Or is that, like the Baddiel film – a gross generalisation and misleading thing to say?

      The reason I used that awful ‘coloured race’ phrase is proved by you – in so much that no matter what language I used I get it in the neck. Some folk and you appear not to be one such, get ‘offended’ by calling a black man a black man.

      Moving swiftly on…I

    • Harry Hotspur says:

      Mmmn. I don’t agree some of that.

      Entomology of words is occasionally interesting but that’s all it is. I wasn’t pinning my colours to it’s mast, rather pointing out that in current usage in Yiddish it’s not a derogatory term.

      I don’t believe that I said I wasn’t Jewish, that was something else you assumed and in actual fact I have been on the end of being called a Yid on several occasions, by some quite nasty people. Being called Yid didn’t bother me at all, it’s a badge of honour. I was more distressed by the close proximity of the cavemen shouting it.

      Your ‘Holocaust’ never happened argument is surreal. Perhaps you might forward me your list of schools in this country that do not acknowledge it in their syllabus.

      You conclude that the matter is complicated and make reference to the Adebayor song. I’m tempted to really churlish and ask you what your point actually was?

      The Adebayor song was 100% racist beside being cheap and small time. But Spurs fans choosing to use an really, really outdated word is fine by me.

      My real reply to that ponce Baddiel is why he hasn’t challenged THFC for selling so many bloody bagels when only 5% of their supporters are a banker for buying them? They should be selling BLT’s EVERYONE likes them.

      Or is that, like the Baddiel film – a gross generalisation and misleading thing to say?

      The reason I used that awful ‘coloured race’ phrase is proved by you – in so much that no matter what language I used I get it in the neck. Some folk and you appear not to be one such, get ‘offended’ by calling a black man a black man.
      ..I

      • Harry Hotspur says:

        Oh great this lucky bag of a site has jumbled my comment and chopped a bit off the end. Joy.

        I may self harm. Again.

        • andrew says:

          http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6517359.stm

          there’s your site although to be fair it doesn’t prove anything and it’s not really the point that either of us are making, although personally my school did not have the Holocaust on the syllabus… but then you can’t fit everything in.

          my point about adebayor isn’t to do with you, but there are a lot of spurs fans who point the finger at chelsea, but then look at how our own fans were the other day.

          i am jewish myself and have never been offended by the yid chant, im just saying that just as political correctness shouldn’t be imposed on people to the extent that it often is, we shouldn’t tell people how to feel.

          while i personally don’t like that they made this video, i also understand that it must have been really disagreeable for him to be sat there listening to that sort of thing. hopefully we can keep our chant, but like i said, its more complicated an issue that many fans suggest.

    • LosLorenzo says:

      No.

      I’m not saying that yid has never been used as a racist slur. Of course it has. So has monkey.

      A word can’t be racist on it’s own, depends on the context.

      You absolutely can NOT get rid of racism by making certain words taboo. You get rid or racism by helping racists see the errors of their ways. I would claim that social-linguistic pedantry is a rather counter-productive way of achieving that goal. Reading about the Baddiell’s call to arms obviously hasn’t changed my opinion of Jews in general (for the record; I have no problem with Jews whatsoever). It has, however, been quite detrimental to my opinion of two Jews in particular (David and Ivor).

      Sadly, the idiot racists aren’t always able to make that distinction, and let the stupidity of two individuals become a generalization in their minds.

      On a side note, am I wrong in saying that there is a different word (starts with a K, rhymes with bike) that is the ‘Jewish equivalent’ to the N-bomb?

      Doesn’t matter. When we sing about a ‘Yid Army’, we are talking about a football club’s supporters, not the Israeli armed forces. There is no way it can be racist. The context has nothing to do with race whatsoever.

  • astromesmo says:

    I must say that when watching the film – Especially the bits featuring the earnest tones of the BBC’s most famous serial adulterer – I was reminded of the ‘Cake’ episode of Brass Eye.

    Yids… Don’t do Cake!

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