Yid Army, Yiddo, Yids, "The Y-Word". Offensive? My Thoughts.

This is back on the agenda again. The video below by Kick Racism Out of Football was inspired by David and Ivor Baddiel, Jewish Chelsea fans and season ticket holders for 30 years. They say that at one game between Chelsea & Spurs, the Spurs fans were chanting the usual Yiddo and Yid Army songs, when a Chelsea fan behind the Baddiel brothers decided to start screaming, ‘F off Yids!’, ‘F'in Yids!’ and, ‘F off Jews!’. The Badiel brothers snapped, screamed at him for being racist and he backed down. Their arguement is that: "The film is not intended to censor football fans. It’s simply to raise awareness that the y-word is – and has been for many, many years – a race hate word. It’s our belief that some football fans may not even realise this, and the film is designed therefore to inform and raise debate.”

Anyway, the video and my opinions on it are below.



Racism in football is obviously unacceptable and the gassing chant is shocking. But the video above is completely unbalanced and a severely biased misrepresentation of the issue. It makes no distinction between the Spurs fans chanting "Yiddo, Yiddo" and the opposition fans chanting the Hitler song. The video appears to be painting Spurs fans as racists because of their use of the "Y-word".

The word Yid is a slang term for a Jew and was adopted by anti-Semites as a derogatory term. However for Spurs fans, use of the Y-Word represents a triumph over prejudices of the past. Yids" or "Yiddos" began to be used in the 1980s, mainly by rival fans as a term of abuse because of the large Jewish population in the Haringey/Stamford Hill area. Tottenham supporters, Jewish and non-Jewish, united against this and adopted the nickname "Yids", and use it with a political consciousness of the club as a bastion against racism and anti-Semitism, helping defuse its power as an insult and to positively reclaim a racial slur from rival supporters and throw it back in their face.

Chelsea v Spurs and a picture of a racist
scum bag and his corrupted child

There is a massive difference between how Spurs fans use the word and how Chelsea/West Ham/Arsenal etc use it. It was originally chanted at us as abuse in an anti-Semitic way and we subsequently adopted it as a way of making the abuse unsubstantiated. We sing it ironically with full knowledge that we have a multi-cultural fan base and to show that we are united against the racism that we are subjected to.

I accept that when used by opposition fans in a derogatory way, it is racist, and the gassing song, is obviously appalling, and we don't want those people associated with us, but don't blame the "Y-Word" for it. Obviously I'm against any racism but this is a really badly thought out campaign, and this article is my defence of us Spurs fans who appear to be painted as racists by it.

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