Colonel_Reb
Hall of Famer
by Colin Liddell
(9/22/08) When our kindred folk the ancient Greeks established the Olympic Games in 776 BC, they intended that sport and politics should be separate. During the games, a truce was in effect among any Greek states that were at war and politics were put on the back burner as the gods were honoured by athletic competition.
Unfortunately, in our modern era, sport has become a political football. It would be naïve of Nationalists to neglect this important fact and negligent of us not to deepen our understanding of how sport is politicized, especially as this is often inimical to the interests of our people.
Any nationalist who has noticed the exaggerated acclaim that non-White athletes like Tiger Woods and Lewis Hamilton receive, or who has witnessed the changing face of England's Premiership, against the backdrop of campaigns to 'show racism the red card' and 'kick racism out of football' will have an instinctive sense of how deeply politicized sport is. The recent Beijing Olympics have only underscored this point.
A few months ago, you may have noticed the 'institutionalized racism' treatment that the Premiership received from the media, simply because there had never been a British-born Black manager. You may also have noticed the alacrity with which Paul Ince was then installed as manager of Blackburn Rovers.
This year also presented us with the spectacle of two 'English' clubs contesting the European Champions League Final, while all our international teams sat out Euro 2008. This highlighted the degree to which the English Premiership has been ethnically cleansed of indigenous players and colonized by foreigners. Out of the 28 Chelsea and Manchester United players who played in the Champions League Final, only 7 were indigenous British players with another 3 of mixed ancestry. Euro 2008, meanwhile, was dominated by foreign imports into the Premiership, reminding us that English players are a shrinking minority in their own top league.
Trends like this don't just happen by chance. There are often powerful, unseen forces driving them that need to be correctly identified and countered. To best understand how sport can be adversely impacted by forces that should have nothing to do with it, it is best to look across the Atlantic to America. This has the most developed racist sporting system in the world, and gets away with it, simply because the racism is directed at Whites. Here we can find, fully developed and out in the open, the insidious anti-White racism that is now beginning to infect our sports. This is most noticeable in the most popular sports of American football, basketball, and baseball.
Anyone watching American sports might get the impression that Blacks are some kind of supermen, and that Whites exist simply to provide cute little blonde cheerleaders to cheer on these ebony titans, as well as the passive horde of couch potato fans whose TV subscriptions pay for their lives of unbelievable bling and excess. In other words, American popular sports routinely present an extremely degrading image of White people.
It hasn't always been this way, of course. Don Wassall, a White American nationalist who runs Caste Football (www.castefootball.us), a website dedicated to exposing the deep anti-White racism in American sport, has made a study of the changing racial demographics of American sport.
"The NFL began integrating in the 1950s," Wassall wrote in an email. "By the end of the '60s it was roughly one-third black and two-thirds white. By the mid '80s, those figures had reversed, at two-thirds black and one-third white. Since then the black percentage has increased, but only very slowly. The NFL currently is about 70% black and 30% white. Over 90% of the starters on defense are black and close to 80% of starters altogether. In basketball, the NBA has been 80% black, give or take a percentage point or two, for at least a generation now."
Blacks do less well in baseball, where they have fallen back from a peak of 28% of players in the mid 1970s to around 8 or 9 percent today. This is less than their 12 or 13 percent share of the total U.S. population. But instead of Blacks making inroads here, it is Hispanics. According to Wassall, Hispanics, range from 100% White to 100% Black, but most are mixed race (White and American Indian, with a significant number also having varying amounts of Negro blood). 30% of Major League players are now Hispanic, while the minor leagues, the feeder system for the two pro leagues, have become majority Hispanic.
Given that America's population is still around two-thirds White and the vast majority of sports fans are White, the overrepresentation of non-Whites creates an image of White inferiority. This is compounded by the dominant historical narrative promoted by the mass media and Hollywood. This suggests that Blacks have always been physically superior to Whites, so that when racial barriers in sport were removed in the 1950s and 1960s, their sporting domination was a foregone conclusion. A key phrase that often crops up in this context is "athletically gifted," a coded racist term that is routinely applied to Black sportsmen to imply an innate physical superiority to Whites. As we know from our own experience in Britain, racist claims like this go unchallenged as long as they are directed at Whites.
INSULAR SPORT
A key feature of American sport, however, is its insularity. The most popular sports in America are comparatively minor elsewhere in the World. American football is still largely confined to the North American continent; outside the U.S. professional baseball can only be found in a few East Asian and Caribbean countries; while basketball is mainly an amateur sport elsewhere. This means that American sport faces few external reality checks. But, when it does, it often does surprisingly badly.
In 2002, when America hosted the FIBA Basketball World Championships, America's much touted "Dream Team," featuring Black superstars from the NBA, finished sixth, behind Yugoslavia, Argentina, Germany, New Zealand, and Spain, teams in which amateur part-time players were common. Results like this, strongly suggest that the prominence of Blacks in American sport may be due to factors other than sporting excellence.
The dominance of Blacks in American football also looks questionable when a similar sport played widely around the world, namely rugby, is dominated by Whites and has comparatively few Black players.
Why do American teams do so abysmally at international competitions in their own major sports? Either the players are overrated and lack talent or they don't feel motivated to play for the national teams. It seems to be a combination of both these factors, with a third, less obvious but more important one - the increasing sporting marginalization of the White majority. While much is done to encourage non-Whites to play sports, Whites are discouraged. This effectively wastes most of America's sporting potential as Whites have proved time and again that they are among the World's premier athletes.
Although only 10% of the world's population, Whites routinely win over 90 percent of the medals at the Winter Olympics and over 70 percent of the medals at the Summer Olympics, including many medals in sprinting and jumping. Whites dominate most sports in the world, including soccer, boxing, tennis, golf, weightlifting, mixed martial arts, ice skating, and swimming. Recently a Bulgarian even became the first White man to win the grand sumo tournament in Japan.
In addition to the general evidence of White sporting prowess, American sports fans are also notoriously statistically-minded. They keep numbers on every aspect of their favourite sports. This means that discrepancies in the treatment of players are hard to hide. For example, J.B. Cash, who writes on American Football for Caste Football has detailed countless examples of White players being sidelined or passed over when their stats would have demanded better treatment. White players are simply not considered for some positions, regardless of their ability, simply because they are White. In the NFL, positions like cornerbacks, tailbacks, and running backs are exclusively reserved for Black players.
Furthermore, it is a one-way street. One of the few positions that Whites have always naturally dominated in American football is the position of quarterback, the all-important playmaker for the team. But rather than allowing talent to decide who plays this position, there is constant pressure by the media and people within the game, urging teams to develop and select Black quarterbacks, even when their stats show that they are inferior players. While the exclusion of Whites from the positions of cornerback and tailback is put down to a lack of 'athletic ability,' the failure of Blacks at quarterback is regarded as damning proof of continuing 'institutional racism' in the game that can only be overcome by yet more 'affirmative action.' This is very similar to the situation with regard to Premiership managers, where natural White dominance is interpreted as proof of racism.
NATURE OF THE BEAST
But, if American sport is so racist against Whites, the key question remains why? After all, some might ask, how can there be racism in sport when Whites are still in the majority in the country? Doesn't racism only affect non-White minorities? Also, team owners are businessmen, mainly interested in winning and making money. Surely their chief concern is simply to recruit the best players whatever their race?
These questions can be answered by looking at the phenomenon of anti-White racism in greater detail. There seems to be three main factors that drive it: (1) ethnic pandering, (2) racial inclusivism, (3) and White guilt.
RACIAL INCLUSIVISM
This is one of the central operating principles of American society. As with any multiracial society, the potential for serious conflict is immense. As we see when race riots erupt or when there is a major disaster like Hurricane Katrina, such societies are riven with dangerous racial fault lines primed on a hair trigger. Because of this, American society has to make constant efforts to preserve the façade of unity, and work overtime to give every group a perceived stake in society. While most groups are able to carve out a niche for themselves on their own merits, others are not. The supporters of inclusivism believe that those that aren't, require some kind of preferential treatment, otherwise they might become alienated.
Blacks, with their high incidence of failure in areas like education, crime, drug addiction, family breakdown, and poverty, are highly susceptible to developing feelings of social exclusion. Because of this, American society at the political and institutional level, assisted by the media and popular culture, makes additional efforts on their behalf to make them feel included. Areas in which they have the most potential to succeed are identified and practically reserved for them, creating, in effect, a kind of caste system. Music and sports are two areas where Blacks clearly have some ability. With the support of the establishment, however, they are able to dominate such areas to a degree that is simply not justified by their numbers or talents.
ETHNIC PANDERING
In the past when Whites completely dominated American sport, many teams openly pandered to local White ethnic groups, like Italian, Polish, or Jewish Americans. Teams would recruit players from the appropriate ethnic group to give fans someone to root for and thus increase attendances. This is why some American teams have names like the Boston Celtics or the Minnesota Vikings, a remnant of the early days of racial pandering. The only group that wasn't pandered to were those of British descent. This was because they were the first group whose sense of ethnic identity had become diluted in the increasingly abstract national identity of America.
An interesting example of racial pandering is provided by the Dodgers baseball team. Originally based in Brooklyn, New York, the team used to pander to the city's large Jewish population, taking special care to recruit and develop Jewish players. However, after the team moved to Los Angeles in 1958, they changed tack and started hiring more Hispanic players to appeal to their new audience.
Ethnic pandering remains a powerful force in American sport, but only among groups who have retained a strong sense of ethnic identity and loyalty. In effect, this means Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics. The White groups that used to have a similar strong sense of ethnic awareness - the Italian, Polish, or Jewish Americans - have for the most part lost this, as their concrete ethnic identity has become increasingly diluted in the abstract, non-racial identity of America. This means that White fans are happy to support and idolize non-White sportsmen, while Blacks and Hispanics, by contrast, are known to exclusively support their own kind. Teams aiming to expand their fan base, therefore, have nothing to lose and much to gain by pandering to non-White communities.
Most teams are also based in large cities. As Whites have increasingly fled to the suburbs and small towns, these have become overwhelmingly non-White. This has further strengthened the process of ethnic pandering, and also increased political pressure from city governments on the teams to adopt a more 'favourable attitude' towards the dominant local groups.
WHITE GUILT
This is a significant factor in American society, due to historical reasons like the former enslavement of Blacks, as well as the present state of America's Blacks. The fact that Blacks do less well in most areas of society, combined with the official view that all races have identical potential, means that many Whites subscribe to the theory that Blacks are held back by racism, 'institutional racism,' and 'social injustice.' For this reason, they see nothing wrong with supporting 'corrective racism' in sport as a form of compensation. This kind of moral off-setting is especially popular with Whites who have no connection with sport and therefore have nothing to lose by it.
A combination of inclusivism, ethnic pandering, and white guilt are the driving forces behind America's sporting racism, which then operates through a culturally-reinforced myth of Black sporting prowess and a complex system of 'affirmative action' (i.e. systematic anti-White racism). I have already mentioned racist attitudes in the media and among the top people in sport, but this is just the end of a long tunnel of racial preferencing, which starts in school and runs through America's all-important college or university system. This plays a disproportionately large role in shaping American sport because the vast majority of professional NBA and NFL athletes are recruited directly from the main college teams.
In school Black kids are pushed in the direction of sports, often as a response to their refusal to participate in more academic subjects. In many schools disruptive behaviour by non-Whites is rewarded by granting the troublemakers a privileged position on the school sports program. This is entirely in accord with liberal and left-wing educational theories that downplay punishments and emphasize rewards, even when they haven't been earned.
This policy also tends to create a hostile environment for any White student who wishes to play sports, as the sports team becomes a kind of dumping ground for ethnic hard cases with chips on their shoulders. In a sense, the poorer academic performance of Blacks ensures their dominance of America's racist sports system. Colleges, desperate to avoid charges of racism, have to find alternative ways to induct large number of Black students. The solution is sports scholarships. The colleges and universities use their sporting programs to boost the number of Black students, effectively discriminating against many equally or even more talented Whites - all in the name of 'equality.' A White kid wanting to go to college soon finds out he has to study. A Black kid, by contrast, often gets a leg up through sports.
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM
But what significance does this elaborate system of racial preferencing in a distant land have for us here in Britain? Our major sports - football, rugby, cricket - are not overwhelmingly dominated by racial minorities as in America; British schools and universities are not able to impose 'affirmative action' in the same, pervasive way as their American counterparts; and British sport is not as insular as America's. Any national team from the UK that was weakened by affirmative action selections would face far greater reality checks and would quickly be exposed as a sham. Aren't comparisons with America's sporting system therefore irrelevant?
No, because the same factors that operate in America - inclusivism, ethnic pandering, affirmative action, and even White guilt can also be found in British sports, and they are likely to increase in influence.
Affirmative action is already present in the UK in considerable force. Not content with Blacks playing a disproportionately large part in our national game, the multiculturalists now have their sights set on boosting the number of Asians in British soccer. There are government and FA supported organizations like the Asian Football Network and the British Asian Sports Awards that seek to promote and reward participation in sport by this specific minority. There are also Asian teams, like Walsall-based Sporting Khalsa Football, and five-a-side tournaments, strictly for Asians that exclude Whites.
Needless to say if such teams, networks, organizations, and tournaments sprang up to support young White players, they would be branded as 'racist' and wouldn't receive any of the taxpayers money that finds its way into ethnic sport.
Premiership teams are also actively promoting affirmative action and racial pandering. For example, Fulham FC, which is owned by the Egyptian millionaire Mohamed al-Fayed, runs an initiative called "Different Cultures Same Game" which, in its own words, seeks to "redress the lack of ethnic participation in football activities, including attendance at matches and also challenge the shortage of black and Asian representation at coaching and administrative level."
As the proportion of non-indigenous people in our society increases through continued high immigration and higher immigrant birth rates, we can expect to see more examples of this kind of racial preferencing, with increasing echoes of America's sporting caste system. Continued domination of business, government, and other elite professions by middle-class Whites will increase pressures to hand over less vital areas of British society to other ethnic groups in an attempt to buy 'social peace.' Its high profile makes sport an obvious candidate, because it creates far more perceived inclusivism than actual inclusivism.
With the combined pressure of government, media, clubs, and sporting administrators, there is a very real possibility that British sport may follow the path of French football. Back in 1984, led by Michel Platini, France won the European Championships with an all-White team. But within two decades the team had been so transformed that even the Socialist head of the Languedoc-Roussillon regional government, Georges Freche, complained. "I'm ashamed for this country," he said. "Soon, there will be 11 black players."
This drastic change occurred because of a similar set of conditions to the ones now arising in Britain. While much of the credit must go to the excellence of the generation of Black players that emerged in the 1990s, this revolution was also the result of a concerted policy of ethnic preferencing, which involved ethnically-targeted sports facilities, ethnic pandering, political pressure on club teams to develop youth programs aimed at urban minorities, and bias by football institutions like L'Institut National du Football.
Ethnically-targeted sports facilities played a part in the early career of Thierry Henry, who grew up in Les Ulis, a public-housing slum of under 30,000 people on the outskirts of Paris with a high immigrant population. Although suffering from serious social problems of crime and deprivation, it nevertheless had incredible sports facilities. These included an impressive sports arena, containing two excellent soccer pitches and a running track. It was here that the 11-year-old Henry played for his first team, Les Ulis.
But promoting sport among minorities in this way is gesture politics. Rather than dealing with the insurmountable problems of a racially divided society, French governments have preferred to make showy gestures of support for 'social equality.' Promoting sport among young Blacks and North Africans, and building shiny new sports facilities has the double benefit of being reasonably cheap as well as high profile. The success of the 1998 French World Cup winning team, which included North African, Black, and indigenous French players, was quickly turned into political propaganda to show how 'united' multi-ethnic France was. This PR exercise was later exposed as a hollow lie when France's young Blacks and North Africans took to the streets in the extensive riots of 2005, and, in at least one case - the synthetic soccer pitch and changing rooms at Aulnay-sous-Bois - destroyed some of the sporting facilities that had been gifted to them.
In addition to the pressures that have distorted American and French sport, British sport faces an additional threat. Unlike America or France, our main sports are increasingly globalized. English football, for example, has a satellite and cable audience around the World of billions. This means that English football faces the threat of ethnic pandering not only from local ethnic communities, but also from viewers thousands of miles away. In recent years English and Scottish club teams have recruited players from foreign countries in order to boost their overseas audience. This is the main reason that Manchester United bought Park Ji-Sung and one of the reasons that Glasgow Celtic bought Shunsuke Nakamura. Both Korea and Japan represent lucrative viewing markets.
PLAYING FOR PRIDE
While sport may be regarded as a lesser political issue for most political parties, for a party like the BNP, which emphasizes pride and identity, it is of much greater significance. At some time or other we have all felt the intense passions that sport arouses and the powerful sense of belonging that it engenders. We also know the power it has in promoting positive role models for our all-important young people. A race that believes it is poor at sport loses confidence in itself. By contrast one that has confidence in its sporting heroes has greater pride and self-belief in other areas.
The effect on health issues also cannot be ignored. As we see in America, negative myths about White sporting ability can have a negative health impact, especially among lower income Whites. As belief in White sporting prowess declines, passivity and obesity increase, and fitness rates go down. This also helps to reinforce the negative cycle. Any group that is deprived of its sporting pride increasingly adopts unhealthy lifestyles. This may also impact on its demographics.
Since the days of the Roman amphitheatre, sport has played an important part in depoliticizing the masses by providing them with an enthralling and distracting spectacle. This can be seen today by visiting any pub and listening to the vast amount of conversation devoted to sports trivia. If these topics did not exist, people would certainly focus on politics a lot more.
Sport can serve this negative political function because people enjoy talking about it so much. For this very reason, if nationalist political notions or narratives could be successfully introduced into it, it has the potential to become a very potent vehicle of our message. Do we have the right to do this? As long as anti-White racism seeks to hand over our indigenous sports to outsiders and foreigners, and athletically disenfranchise our people and take away their pride, I believe the answer is yes. The more that people are made aware of how anti-White racism operates in sport, the more they will sympathize with our cause.
Also, in view of some of the comments that have been made by EUFA chief, Michel Platini, and the head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, our message is a relatively mainstream one. Against the vested interests of transfer agents, globalized sports media, and those clubs that have turned their backs on their traditional duties to support local communities and our young people, Blatter is lobbying for a change in European Union law to introduce a six-plus-five plan, which would see a quota of six home-grown players per team and five foreign players. While this wouldn't solve all the problems of sport racism, it would definitely send most of the teams in our globalized Premiership back to the drawing board.
For more information on the British National Party and Identity magazine:
http://www.bnp.org.uk
http://www.identitymagazine.org.uk/
http://www.castefootball.us/viewarticle.asp?sportID=9&te amID=0&ID=23341
Edited by: Colonel_Reb
