mph wrote:
The expression on his face in that photo is terrifying and revolting at the same time.
It's a look of pure hatred.
I feel quite passionate about the 'no platform for fascists' argument. It's a long story but I edited a book for a Holocaust survivor, Leon Greenman his name was. Wonderful man whose wife and two year old son were murdered by the Nazis. Over a three year period, I typed up over 300 pages of manuscripts that he'd written about his experiences, which were the most truly awful things I have ever read. He came to our house once a week, we typed, I made him dinner, he spoke about his life, sang me songs, played with my little boy. In short, he was a good friend.
He survived the death camps and came back to Britain, only to find Blackshirts on the corner of his street telling people that the Holocaust had never happened. He first spoke about his experiences to school children in 1946 and up until his death in 2008, he travelled the country talking to kids in schools, about what bigotry and prejudice leads to and how they should accept and celebrate each others differences. An old man telling the story of how he lost his family was obviously a big threat to the Nazi bully boys – he received death threats right up to the last and lived in a house with steel mesh on the windows and a panic alarm connected to the police station.
Quite honestly, this isn't about football. This is about how we react when people try to make fascism respectable. It isn't, they are not, and we should not allow them to get any kind of foothold in decent society, whatsoever. x