Von James M. Dorsey
Fans in the Middle East, Europe and Asia highlight the importance that sections of the football family attribute to social justice.
Soccer fans are on a roll in the Middle East, Europe and Southeast Asia. Fans in Turkey and Egypt have defeated legal efforts to criminalize them as terrorists, while Malaysian ultras are tackling corruption and mismanagement of their country’s soccer association. In Germany, the pitch anticipated the government’s shift in policy toward the wave of refugees sweeping Europe, with fans expressing support a week before the country opened the floodgates.
Although these incidents were unrelated and occurred in widely different political and social environments, they share a number of things in common: They all focused on aspects of social justice, repression, corruption and compassion toward the needy.
The incidents further highlighted the soccer pitch’s significance as an early indicator of societal distrust in government and institutions. That distrust was similarly expressed in the recent electoral victory of controversial leftist Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party. Corbyn’s success constituted a rejection of corporate politics.
Von James M. Dorsey
