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Antisemitism in Dutch football: From (no) punishment to education
Author(s): Seijbel, Jasmin; van Sterkenburg, Jacco; Oonk, Gijsbert; Verhoeven, Joram; Wagenaar, Willem
Editor(s): Poulton, Emma
Date: 2025
Topics: Antisemitism, Anti-Antisemitism, Football, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Education against
Abstract: TThis chapter explains contemporary antisemitic discourse in Dutch professional men’s football, as well as responses to challenge it. The chapter focusses on the different uses and meanings of the word ‘Jood’ (‘Jew’) and forms of antisemitic behaviour within Dutch football fan culture. Ajax has historically been othered as an alleged ‘Jewish club’ and contemporary antisemitic rhetoric in the Netherlands is predominantly targeted at Ajax. Over time Ajax supporters have adopted ‘Jood’ (‘Jew’) and ‘Super-Jew’ (‘Superjoden’) as a badge of honour. The Royal Dutch Football Organisation’s (KNVB) policy to prevent antisemitic chanting and hate speech is mostly focussed on its repression, and supporters guilty of antisemitic chanting are punished. However, in recent years some Dutch football clubs (notably Feyenoord and Utrecht) have developed educational programmes to persuade their fans to abstain from antisemitic behaviour. These programmes are outlined and appraised as a means of effectively challenging antisemitism in football.
Expressing rivalry online: Antisemitic rhetoric among Dutch football supporters on Twitter
Author(s): Seijbel, Jasmin; van Sterkenburg, Jacco; Oonk, Gijsbert
Date: 2022
Topics: Antisemitism: Discourse, Antisemitism: Far right, Football, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Sports, Social Media, Internet
Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyse online expressions of rivalry and hate speech in relation to antisemitic and philosemitic discourse(s) in Dutch professional men’s football (soccer). We collected data from Twitter using the Twitter API and scraped Tweets relating to a match between the supposedly ‘Jewish’ club Ajax and its rival Feyenoord on 17 January 2021. A selection of the collected Tweets was analysed more in depth using narrative digital discourse analysis to interpret the Tweets. The research shows that antisemitic chants and slurs find their way towards the online domain, sometimes explicit and other times implicit. The analysis elaborates how these Tweets, while seemingly targeted towards the football rival, contribute to an exclusionary discourse in which being a ‘Jew’ is not wanted and contribute to the normalization and reproduction of antisemitism in football.
Online Football-Related Antisemitism in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Multi-Method Analysis of the Dutch Twittersphere
Author(s): Seijbel, Jasmin; van Sterkenburg, Jacco; Spaaij, Ramón
Date: 2022
Topics: Antisemitism: Discourse, Antisemitism: Far right, Coronavirus/Covid, Football, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Sports, Social Media, Internet
Abstract: This paper examines online expressions of rivalry and hate speech in relation to antisemitic discourses in Dutch professional men’s football (soccer), with specific attention devoted to how this has developed within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study analyses football-related antisemitic discourses in the Dutch-speaking Twittersphere between 2018 and 2021. Assuming that during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic fan activity has moved increasingly toward the online domain, we specifically examine whether and how the past pandemic years have influenced football-related antisemitic discourses on Twitter. Tweets were scraped using the Twitter application programming interface and 4CAT (a capture and analysis Toolkit), producing a dataset of 7,917 unique posts. The authors performed thematic analysis of the Tweets and a selection of the Tweets was analyzed in depth using narrative digital discourse analysis. The findings show how these Tweets, while seemingly targeted exclusively at football opponents, contribute to wider exclusionary discourse in football and society that may have become more aggravated during the COVID-19 pandemic.