If the “woke foriegn ideologues” come, Ibrox’s bigots will have to make a choice..
I’m going to do a longer piece on the behaviour of the Ibrox fans later today. But for now, I want to highlight the fact that the club has released statements not just about the object thrown at the Celtic goalkeeper, but about the wholly unacceptable banner that went up.
And that, I think, is very telling.
See, for many years now, a lot of us have said it wouldn’t actually take that much pressure to force Ibrox to join the rest of the civilised world. Or to get its fans to act like they’re part of the human race. It simply requires someone with the guts to publicly shame the club, or to threaten action against it. We could have solved a lot of the problems with that lot years ago.
It’s simply a matter of will. And if the will is there, things can change. The simple fact is that for far too long in Scottish football, the will has been absent.
Our governing bodies don’t want to govern, and that means avoiding anything which might upset the Ibrox support—even when they behave like absolute animals. Now we’re seeing the worst elements of that support in all their gory glory.
Scottish football has, for too long, been content to do nothing and turn a blind eye. But getting Ibrox to conform is about as easy as it gets. If it’s not UEFA breathing down their necks, it’s the idea that the Americans are. Whatever the cause, it’s got them hopping. It’s got the directors taking action—for once.
I’ll dig into this more later, but for now I want to highlight this point, as I did on the podcast last night: the Americans are already having an outsized impact on the Ibrox club’s relationship with its supporters, and on the culture in the stands.
This is before they’re even officially in the building. If they take a similarly proactive stance once they’ve got full control, then the days when the worst of the bigoted trash were the loudest voices over there are over.
And whatever else this takeover might mean—whatever else it changes about that club—I can only applaud this. I can only hope for it. I can only cross my fingers that the new people coming in, if they do, are the kind who want to leave the 17th century behind once and for all.
I’ve talked about this at length, and it’s not my fault that some of the Ibrox fans didn’t listen. The writing is on the wall.
There’s a section of that support that has to be drummed out. If the new owners want to grow the customer base, it’s that simple. If these people keep ruling the roost, there will be no growth in their wider market appeal.
So, to those Ibrox fans desperate to cling to their so-called culture, I say this: get ready to fight. Because the Americans don’t care about your “traditions”. In fact, they probably loathe everything your culture supposedly stands for.
The woke foreign ideologues may be coming.
And if they get their claws into your club, you’re done. To get their money back out the other side and turn a profit, they need to appeal to a much broader demographic than you and your knuckle-dragging pals.
So here’s your choice.
Are you going to fight for your cultural norms? Or are you going to be good little boys, sit down and shut up?
Because here’s the part you’re not going to like—you won’t have any friends. Nobody is going to stand alongside you. If the club’s traditions and culture are to be preserved, that’ll be down to you. Because everyone else in your support will throw that stuff overboard for the mere chance of success.
Think of your fellow fans like the membership of a political party that has suffered a series of major defeats. A party that used to stand for something, but now stands only for winning. And new leadership comes in—but on the proviso that they’ll throw away all the policies and ideas you joined for in the first place.
Don’t think it couldn’t happen. It happened to me growing up. New Labour changed the heart of what the party I joined was all about. Single parent benefit cuts came within months. Within a handful of years they were following an American neocon into an illegal war. All the old ideologies were cast aside. The belief structures the whole thing was built on—eroded or erased.
So the question is: are you going to fight for the soul of the club, the heart of what you think it means—even if it means alienating your fellow fans? Even if it means scaring off potential investment? Because if that’s the choice you make, then although I think your ideology is poisonous and shameful, I’ll at least respect the commitment to a cause that you clearly believe in and are willing to make sacrifices for.
But if you toe the line… if you sit there in silence, if you let the culture and ethos and all those things you used to say “made your club great” get cast aside just to win the odd Scottish Cup or mount a token title challenge… then I’ll have to ask if you ever really believed in anything at all.
And although it’ll be good to see the back of your poisonous chants and hateful banners—and although it’ll lower the temperature across Scottish football to a point where some of us will be able to breathe again—I have to admit… I’ll find myself respecting you a little bit less, for having proved to be soulless drones after all.
Do you really believe in anything? Or is winning the only thing that matters? If your club one day sits atop Scottish football but it embraces woke ideology and aims to genuinely be “open to all”, how will that sit with you?
To paraphrase a Celtic player from last week, “We’ll probably never know.” But you should be afraid, because that’s the decision that’s coming your way. That’s what you’re going to have to face up to. And I’m not the only person who’s going to be very interested in what you decide.
