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Playing the Jew: anti-Semitism and football in the twenty-first century
Author(s): Stratton, Jon
Date: 2015
Topics: Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Multiculturalism, National Identity, Antisemitism, Sports, Football, Main Topic: Antisemitism
Abstract: There are certain football clubs, mostly but not all in Europe, which have become known as being ‘Jewish’. These clubs include Tottenham Hotspur in England, Ajax Amsterdam in the Netherlands and (with relation to its history) Bayern Munich in Germany. As it happens one club for each country. These clubs do not necessarily have actually Jewish players or supporters. Rather, the clubs’ supporters self-identify as Jewish and are attacked by rival clubs’ fans as if they are really Jewish. This acting out of being Jewish seems to have started around the 1970s. In this article I argue that this development coincides with the increasing integration of the countries of the European Union and a corresponding sense by many members of these nation-states that their countries are losing their political identity. Attacking the ‘Jewish strangers’ has become one way of asserting not just club but national identity. Conversely, the identification as ‘Jewish’ can be read as an affirmation of diversity against the fascistic pressure for a homogeneous national population.
Speaking as a Jew: On the Absence of a Jewish Speaking Position in British Cultural Studies
Author(s): Jon Stratton
Date: 1998
Topics: Jewish Culture, Assimilation, Literature, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: This article addresses the problem of the reasons for the absence of a Jewish voice in British cultural studies. It uses this problem as a way into the broader problem of the absence of a Jewish voice in post-Second World War discussions of 'race' and subalternarity. The article discusses how those identified as Jews were ambivalently constructed as both 'white' and 'Other', and as both members of the British state and as excluded from it. This is tracked in connection with cultural studies by way of the work of Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot and Raymond Williams. It is argued that the assimilationist bargain, rights in return for assimilation, coupled with the ambivalent status accorded Jews have made it difficult for Jews to speak out the way excluded groups such as blacks have done over the last few years.