Chelsea to prosecute YouTube anti-semitic singers

Chelsea was in the news for the wrong reasons, when the police announced that they were looking to identify a bunch of Chelsea-supporting dimwits who were filmed singing anti-semitic chants.

The group of 50 were stupid enough to film racist and anti-semitic songs about Tottenham … and then to post it on YouTube. The incident took place at Stoke`s Britannia stadium, which received Chelsea`s visit earlier this season.

The footage caused outrage from Tottenham, who complained to Chelsea about the incident. This caused Chelsea to act, and the club has vowed to track down the supporters in question, if they can be identified, and ban any such supporters.

A spokesperson declared that "Chelsea utterly condemns all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitic chanting, as we are sure do the vast majority of our fans. If we are provided with evidence that season ticket-holders or members have engaged in such activity we will take the strongest possible action, including supporting criminal prosecution."

This is not the first time that Chelsea have taken such a strong stand on the matter. Fans have been banned for singing anti-Semitic songs. During the recent visit of Tottenham last month, the matter was highlighted in the matchday programme: "anti-Semitism is unacceptable, shames the club and the vast majority of our very well-behaved fans and jeopardises what coming to Stamford Bridge should be about".

Well I, for one, hope that the pondlife in question are identified, and that the book is thrown at them. Preferably a very heavy one, with pointy edges. First by the police, who can charge such morons for (quite simply) breaking the law. Then Chelsea can pick up the book and give another throw at their softer organs, banning these sorry excuses for human beings from Stamford Bridge. For life.

Let`s not try to find any mitigating circumstances. Such people are a disgrace to vertebrates, let alone to Chelsea Football Club. The club should do everything it can to distance itself from them, to give such cretins a long time, preferably during a series of dull football-free Saturday afternoons, to ponder how on earth, in 2009, they consider that it is acceptable to sing deeply upsetting and offensive songs about Tottenham`s perceived Jewish identity. Through the sorry excuse of a football rivalry (i.e. possibly the most trivial reason imaginable), they hark back to the darkest event in history. Congratulations lads, you have spectacularly failed your exam as a functioning human being.

And to cap it all, these protozoa sung songs purporting to be about Spurs during a match against Stoke. I mean, there is categorically no appropriate moment to sing anti-Semitic songs, but if you are going to sing about Spurs, at least do it when Tottenham are in the house. To indulge in such behaviour at Stoke`s stadium implies a mixture of randomness coupled with a pathological condition whereby a hatred of Spurs bubbles to the surface even when they aren`t involved in anything. Or was it the case that these sickos thought that they might be able to get away with it because the authorities would be less on the guard for the match being outside London and not involving our North London neighbours?

As if this rapsheet was not long enough and heavy enough, you have to highlight the crass stupidity of people who committed a crime, one they surely know could see them prosecuted by the authorities (including the club who they have soiled) but nevertheless uploaded footage of their degenerate behaviour onto YouTube. These idiots should not hold their breath waiting for an invitation to join MENSA.

So good luck Chelsea identifying these toxic imbeciles. Maybe their ugly mugs can be uploaded as a further warning to any mouth-breathers who haven`t got the message: ENOUGH. Anyone who loves Chelsea cannot EVER indulge in such behaviour. If you feel, honestly, that your enjoyment of life is not complete without casual anti-Semitism as part of an overdone rivalry with Spurs, can we invite you, firmly and politely, to f¨*ck off away from my club? You bring only shame and repulsion to Chelsea, to its fans, and to the vast majority of humanity. There is no place for you in modern football, please find another past-time where your twisted cowardice can find an outlet. Russian Roulette with 5 rounds in the clip, for instance.

Learning of another incident whereby our club has been tainted by association with knuckle-draggers suffering from solid bone from the neck up made me feel ashamed that there could be any link between myself and these idiots. Thanks to your misdemeanours, the club is soiled. Then I realised that there was, in fact, no link between myself and these criminals. There is not a link of Chelsea, for nobody who cares about Chelsea would have behaved like that. In fact, the genetic link between myself and these dolts is tenuous at best.

And I could, at least, take comfort that the club had reacted in the strongest possible way to condemn, figuratively and in the legal sense, these morons. Let nobody suggest that this club is lenient over a criminal behaviour that brings only opprobrium. As I said, good luck in identifying them and making their lives miserable.

Last week, daspecial1 penned a thoughtful piece asking whether Chelsea could be reasonably expected to go further than, say, Spurs in condemning the use of anti-semitic chanting. The debate centred around the term 'Yid`, since Chelsea had prosecuted and banned fans who used a term generally considered to be offensive … but which Spurs fans regularly use, under a misguided idea that they can appropriate as their own.

Such an argument is specious. I`m sorry, but today`s news highlights the risks when football is allowed to become tribal. Scottish football is riven by a deeply unpleasant sectarian rivalry, nobody wants something similar in English football. For this reason, the fight against bigotry in all its forms cannot be limited merely to pointing out the unacceptable behaviour of other people`s fans. It also has to work (and that is the responsibility of clubs to look inwards) to reduce the behaviour of your own that could encourage others to resort to the unacceptable.

For all these reasons, in the name of the fight against a miserable and unacceptable prejudice, it could help, Spurs, that you don`t use a term that (sorry) is offensive. If you allow yourself to use it, you cannot reasonably ask that others don`t. And allowing yourself and others to use an offensive word banalises anti-semitism. There is, after all, a world of difference between celebrating a Jewish identity, on the one hand, and revelling in the prejudices of others by repeating an unacceptable term. If the difference is not clear to you Spurs fans, how can you expect a section of your rival fans, who are considerably lower on the evolutionary scale, to make that difference?

None of this is to suggest that the behaviour of cretins chanting anti-semitic songs on YouTube is the fault of Spurs. Just to ask that Spurs help us (and this is not only a blight from Chelsea fans) stamp out what is absolutely unacceptable.

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