Hi everyone. This blog article is a few days old, but I thought it was still highly pertinent: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/english-soccer-hooligans-at-ground-zero/?ref=world
In a nutshell it's about the troubling emergence of anti-Muslim/foreigner hate groups in Britain, specifically among die hard football (soccer) fans. The main group covered here, the English Defense League, takes the inherent nationalism of football fandom way too far... To quote the article, "The fact that the E.D.L. channels the rage of hardcore soccer fans into racist demonstrations against foreigners and Muslims in England is no secret."
Scary stuff, eh? It's amazing (and worrying) to hear that some of the members actually traveled to New York to help protest the proposed mosque on Ground Zero. It reminds us that the impacts of 9/11 (and the mass ignorance/equation of an entire culture with a single violent group) reverberated around the world, and provides an interesting look at the dark underbelly of nationalism. We hear so much about soccer uniting us (the World Cup and so on) that it's sobering to learn about the way it is being used to divide us... it will be interesting to see that the British government does about this.
- Anna M.
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