Fascist Galaxy Fans? Uh…wha…HUH?
By: Laurie | March 5th, 2008I got a rather unusual email the other day. My first impulse was to dismiss it automatically.
My second was to think, “Well… The world is a strange place. I suppose it’s possible.”
Tell me what you think. Here’s what it said:
Hi Laurie,
I am a reader of the offside and a supporter of [European team.] I am also beginning to follow the MLS as well. I help moderate a North American [team] forum and earlier today we had a [arch-rival team] fan trying to troll our board. Among the usual garbage that they say, he was also a fascist and mentioned a bunch of teams with right wing supporters such as Chelsea, Rangers, Lazio, etc, but also mentioned the Galaxy. I had to stop and laugh at this and commented how that might be the silliest thing I’ve ever read. He said however that there is a group of fascist fans at Galaxy games, around 10 and growing he said. I was wondering if you were aware of any such group? Thanks for your help!
The reason I didn’t dismiss this was the “10 and growing” part. Ten’s not a lot, especially in a stadium that seats, what, 27,000? But it could be the start of something. Or it could just be ten maladjusted people coming together. Or it could be a complete fabrication — one troll’s way to get attention.
What do you think? Anybody heard anything along these lines? Or can we file it under “garbage rumors”?
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Category: Off the Field
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Comments
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The LA Riot Squad has been accused of being racist (mostly by Chivas fans) but they’re definitely not fascists or even racist.
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United States
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Yeah, I assumed since it said “about ten” it couldn’t be much ado about the Riot Squad/Galaxians issues. So something else or nothing at all.
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So I’ll admit to writing that email. How am I showing ignorance with that email Dave? Some fascists came into my forum and polluted it with swastikas and racism and the such and then claimed that there was a fascist following for the Galaxy. This surprised me as, one LA is a very multi-ethnic community and I wouldn’t think a group like this would be able to exist in LA. Secondly, it’s the MLS, I wouldn’t think there were many politically charged supporters groups, so naturally I went to the only Galaxy source that I knew of. Thank you Laurie for answering my question and all your help in the matter!
SMASH FASCISM AND RACISM!
FORZA CELTIC!Posted from
United States -
Most clubs probably have about ten fascist supporters though? I mean the Ultras in Serie A probably have a few mental right wingers in there. And not the good kind. Its just whether they get together and try and turn the club’s image around, which I suppose is more unlikely.
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Oh Rob, I definitley know about the nuts of Serie A. I guess my email was both a question and maybe a warning?
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More government control and collectivization is a left wing agenda, not right. Right wing Fascism is more in reference with the corporate america understanding of today, which is more of a corporitism than fascism. So fascism is just being used wrong – its left wing.
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If this isn’t true, I — in a bid to have this league/team taken more seriously by Europeans — volunteer to start a fascist supporters group.
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Fascism is a combination of a left wing economic national collectivism (though less extreme than marxists and a lot of socialists) with a right wing nationalistic militarism. The right wing side of fascism is more notable having been at the root of most of the violent conflict involving fascist regimes. Most modern wack-jobs who call themselves fascist are only the right-wing side of it and the economic collectivism is not included.
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The Gals can’t stop stealing the spotlight and now their SUPPORTERS can’t stop either. Damn.
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Get 27K people together for anything (not just soccer) and you’ll have a few dozen fuckwits in there. I would say it’s a non-issue.
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facism has lost its meaning as of late, in Italy it stands for hate basically. What Hitler was for was government control of a country and ethnic purity, and even though the ethnic thing has nothing to do with nay legitimate political force in the US, it can be said that the left wing of politics (liberal or Democrats) support more government control then the right wing (conservative or Republicans). But using the term facism across borders means to many things to translate well, I highly doubt there are any facists in the stands as well.
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Corey – well said. Politics on The Offside! Who is starting the Hillary/Obama thread? haha
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I was going to say what bluemeanies said about the political implications of fascism, but now I don’t have to. It’s neither left nor right, but a combination of aspects of both. But in day-to-day usage it’s usually used to connote “rightwing.” In the skinhead ultra-nationalism sense, not the John McCain Republican sense. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Second, Matt, I have no idea why your comments were sent to the spam bin, but they’re back now.
Third, here’s my concern. In any group of 27,000, you’re going to have more than ten nutjobs. My worry is when they get together and start calling themselves a “group.” Then we don’t have ten individual nutjobs, we have the start of a fascist ultra group that can attract more nutjobs who want to be a part of it. Not a good thing.
Hopefully this is either nothing or will go nowhere. But I thought this merited discussion.
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Back to the game, I found this refreshingly cleared eyed (unspun) view of the Shanghai match. Nice. Maybe now Lalas will quit fantasizing about his “$100 million” a year in revenues and start focusing on his product. I’ve been as disgusted by this whole pre-season tour as everyone else who has commented.
Unfortunately, for those who have complained about Beckham making his own endorsement appearances while on tour, those appearances were more important to the Galaxy on this trip than to Beckham (who was there privately a few months ago). Adidas and Motorola would hardly have set up the team events and done the massive publicity, from which the Galaxy benefited, if the trip had taken place a year ago. I don’t really give a sh*t about the team’s corporate profits, but for those that do this tour may have done more to lower the Galaxy’s stock in Asia than use Beckham to sell the team there. Beckham own image would be pretty hard to tarnish in the area, but the teams that benefited from that in the past have brought significantly more impressive games, and names, than the Galaxy now has to offer.
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oops, ranted on and forgot link to clear-eyed view:
http://shanghaiist.com/2008/03/06/shanghai_east_a.phpPosted from
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Next if this is holding even a shred of truth– that they don;t just get together during a game. Would the “fascist” not want to beat crap out of whomever they disagree with(this presupposes the common connotation of skinhead, violent thug type)? Then after that there would be a small leap to the whole firms, gang etc?
I shudder to that spreading all the way through the league
my two cents
TravPosted from
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I’ve gathered from various history/hooligan discussions that there have been some fascists/skin-head people who decide to take up MLS soccer because thats what the skin-heads in Europe do. I think I saw that one of the notable female skin-heads was a DC fan and lead a small group until they managed to get booed decisively by real fans & Salvadorans and got bored. There was also a group in the Meadowlands that security/boredom managed to hassle out of the stadium (granted, a large number of non-fascist Metro fans also claim to have been hassled by the same factors). In short to deal with them fans and security should make it clear that they are not welcome or appreciated whenever they show themselves.
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Thanks, Diane. I am intentionally NOT reading ANYTHING abou the game until I see it tonight. But yours will be the first thing I look at afterwards.
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Another oops if that was a spoiler, I’ll be watching tonight too. My post was more biz related and I fortunately omitted a score (along with spelling and grammar)
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It’s alright Laurie, it seems all my comments on the offside seem to get put in the spam bin until a mod gets them back for some reason. Thanks for all your help in this subject as well!
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Sorry for all the confusion about the “fascists”. That’s just me and my 10 closest leather daddies out for our soccer fix.
But now that you bring it up, I’m thinking a lot of delicious thoughts about peaked caps and leather jodhpurs… I gotta call my boys, I think we have a theme for the next orgy,er, I mean, gathering.
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Well, there was a tangle at one of the Galaxy/Chivas matches last year where, apparently, racist chants were thrown back and forth between a very small group of supporters for both sides. Don’t know how much truth there is to this story, but I remember reading about it on one of the blogs shortly thereafter.
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Nathan, I somehow knew that this sordid affair had your name written all over it.
Frank, I did wonder if this was an offshoot of that post-game fracas last year — a bit of “must’ve been the fascists” overreaction.
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Those fascists are gonna be in a for a little surprise when a lot of Guatemalans show up to games now that we have Ruiz again.
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Holy cow I can’t believe what I’m reading about fascism here… it’s NOT a left wing thing AT ALL. That canard’s an all too common myth in ‘Merkuh but it’s utterly false. Ask a guy over the sound from Laurie, Dave Neiwert, an expert on the subject, even wrote a couple of excellent books. http://dneiwert.blogspot.com
The big fascist phenom we have in CA are the Minutemen and the morons at vdare, but they don’t watch soccer/football (RWA’s call it “commie-ball”), they do grid-iron.
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United States
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