Football Hooligans

Imagine a parallel universe, identical to this one in almost every detail. This universe contains an Earth, sitting in an identical corner of Parallel Milky Way, orbiting a Parallel Sun, at the shaky start of Parallel twenty-first century. This Earth is identical to ours in all respects save one – the circumstances of the birth of A. Subject. A. Subject was born in Earths A & B at the same time, but in different circumstances. A. Subject was a simple man, of low intelligence and high gullibility, prone to aggression and irrational violence. On Earth A, he was born to a wealthy Saudi Family, on Earth B to a working class family in a northern English town. His early years were unremarkable, extreme wealth on the one hand and relative austerity on the other. His Saudi Parents despaired of his academic failures, and worried about his penchant for bullying. His English parents thought him tough, and from a young age his father would take him to see the local football team, having been a lifelong fan. As his teenage years passed, A. Subject regularly rebelled against his parents, becoming involved in local Muslim youth groups. He often took to the street in his Northern town, hanging around with fanatical supporters of the football club, festooning his walls with memorabilia. He became enraged at the imperialistic aggression of the decadent west. He got drunk and smashed a shop window after his team was beaten in the cup. He became enthralled with a local preacher who instilled in him images of paradise and a respect for those who had given their lives to protect the faith. He mingled with groups dabbling with crime, and occasionally got in to fights at away games when the wrong person came in to the wrong pub. He began to see that the oppression of his people would only be relieved by force. He began to see other supporters at other clubs as worthless scum. One day, a war was started by the imperialist infidel on a brethren people, and he was inflamed. One day, he was at an away match when a large crowd of mixed supporters started fighting. He had pictures on his walls of those that had killed imperialists with their own life, and were thus perfect men. He organised, through social networking, the meeting of rival factions of club supporters. He took action, finding his way to the warzone, getting training from heroic men along the way. He arranged a date and time, after a big game, where the two groups of supporters could meet. He learnt how to make explosives. He learnt how to use knives and clubs. He drove a car, packed with explosives, to a military checkpoint and blew himself and eight soldiers to bits. He charged at the rival supporters, injuring three or four of them, as well as himself, and wound up in a police cell that night, awaiting a court appearance.
Modern societies are staggeringly complex. Individuals existing in society are mostly attempting to improve their own lot, responding to societal pressures according to his or her character and upbringing. Throughout history, a type a person has existed who was obsessed with an extremely narrow perspective, be it political or religious, all other perspectives being heretical and disgusting. Such men have been responsible for great evil. The profoundly narrow nationalism of the Nazis, and the attraction it thus had for the person of narrow perspective, caused the death of tens of millions of people in history’s most savage war. I shall call this person “The Narrow Man”. Assuming that “The Narrow Man” is an unavoidable statistical reality given a sufficient quantity of gathered humans, one can see that circumstances can greatly affect the capacity of “The Narrow Man” to do evil. During the Crusades, “The Narrow Man” would have been the vanguard of the pillagers. During the Inquisition, the torturer. During the Russian revolution, he would have been the most devoted and violent thug in the secret police, beating up dissidents and torturing prisoners. In Nazi Germany, he would have been a fanatical foot soldier of the SS. In the example above, he finds himself in a fanatical religion, whose extreme outer reaches condone suicide bombing. And in Northern England, he finds himself supporting a football club.
Organised sport in General, and Football in particular, are crucial to the civilised functioning of a society. With the fading of religion as a nationalistic force, and the extreme reluctance of modern western nations to engage in war with one another, sport offers a rare opportunity to satisfy whatever tribalistic longings may exist in an individual. It so happens that, possibly due to it’s working class roots and simple format, that football attracts the kind of fanatical loyalty previously reserved for religion. For this, we must be most thankful. “The Narrow Man”, in modern Britain, has his destructive tribal tendencies focused purely on a sport, and there they shall remain. Football is an essential pressure valve, where the worst characteristics of tribalism and violence can be given breathing space. A few town squares may be smashed up, some people may end up in hospital. But these things are nothing compared to the potential destructive power of “The Narrow Man”. Thank goodness for football.