Antisemitism in Football

While racism, racialization and antiracism in football have been extensively studied, antisemitism within football has received comparatively less scholarly attention. Among the possible reasons for this academic neglect are the relatively low number of Jewish professional footballers and the debates pertaining to a hierarchy of racisms and whether antisemitic hate crime should be treated as a distinct form of racism. Yet, as this chapter evidences, antisemitic incidents are a common occurrence in English men’s football, with some high-profile examples both on and off pitch in recent years involving officials, club owners, coaches, players and, most frequently, supporters. The chapter provides an overview of expressive’ has positive connotations, so I would change this to ‘forms of antisemitism expressed within men’s football. It first discusses problems of contested definition of the phenomenon and then covers the scale of ‘religious’ hate crime in the United Kingdom (UK). Next, the nature of antisemitism in the UK is outlined before examining its prevalence and presence within English football fan culture. Finally, the chapter focuses on English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, whose supporters are the target of the majority of antisemitism within English football. This includes a discussion of the different uses and meanings of the controversial term ‘Yid’, which for many people in Britain today is an ethnic epithet and ‘race hate’ term, but which has taken on differing subcultural meanings within the context of English football fan culture. This is because for some 40 years, some Tottenham fans have appropriated and paradoxically used this taboo word as a term of endearment in songs and chants in an attempt to deflect the routinized antisemitic abuse they receive because of their perceived identity as supporters of a ‘Jewish club’.