Recently the BBC’s current affairs series Panorama turned its sights on soccer-related racism in Poland and Ukraine, the host nations of Euro 2012. The documentary included footage of thousands of Polish fans chanting anti-semitic slogans and giving Nazi salutes, and showed a group of Indian supporters being beaten up at an end-of-season league match in Ukraine. It also had footage of ‘training camps’ for Ukrainian soccer fans, teaching them how to punch and hit “blacks” and other “undesirables”.
The programme prompted the former England defender Sol Campbell to urge his country’s fans to stay away from the tournament. “Don’t even risk [going],” he said, “because you could end up coming back in a coffin.”
Meanwhile, Michel Platini – president of European soccer’s governing body Uefa – confirmed that referees had been instructed to call a halt to matches if any player is racially taunted, while also warning that players who walk off the field over racial abuse would be yellow-carded. A mixed message, indeed.
To see those Panorama images was disturbing, though in light of the rise of extremist white supremacist movements in eastern (and western) Europe, not really surprising. What was surprising was to see Polish fans raising their arms in a Nazi salute – after all, Poland was under Nazi rule for the duration of World War II, and many Poles were massacred by the Nazis. And yet, while many Polish hid Jews during the war, many also collaborated with the Nazis.
Some Ukrainians, too, co-operated with the German occupiers, participating in the local administration, in the Nazi-supervised auxiliary police, in the German military, and serving as concentration camp guards. However, the absence of Ukrainian autonomy under the Nazis, mistreatment by the occupiers, and the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians as slave labourers led to a change in the attitude among the collaborators.
As is always the case when we speak about racism, several people criticised the Panorama programme for highlighting soccer-related xenophobia. The Guardian reported the executive director of the Jewish community centre in Krakow accusing the BBC of selective reporting. The programme, he claimed, “manipulated the serious subject of anti-semitism for its own sensationalist agenda”, and he argued that the actions of “a few” racists should not taint the whole of Poland.
Meanwhile, the convenor of the England fans’ group said racism in Ukraine undoubtedly existed but took place at an “inter-club” rather than at national level, with a far-right fan culture similar to that of southern Europe.
It is important to ask why soccer invokes racist behaviour, and what this means. Is it about exclusive nationalism, or healthy patriotism? As far as Ireland is concerned, it suffices to look at the outbreak of national pride to understand the link between nationalism and sports.
Nationalism – an ideology that includes as it excludes – is never innocent. Indeed, in its banal forms such as the national flag painted on faces and house fronts and carried on cars, it is as exclusive as in its racist forms, in staking the boundaries between who belongs and who doesn’t. Does the British or Irish display of national pride in eastern Europe include those who are racially different?
Though far from being a soccer expert, I recognise the sport’s huge anti-racism potential. Campaigns such as Show Racism the Red Card and, more locally, Sari, have used soccer to unite rather than divide.
Euro 2012 is an opportunity beyond nationalism, whether racist or banal, to tackle racism and extreme right white supremacy.
Dr Ronit Lentin is head of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity, Conflict at the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears fortnightly in Metro Éireann.
