la quenelle

is a kind of cylindrical dumpling, speciality of the Lyon region of France, made with fish, semolina, vegetables or other ingredients. It's also, British football fans now know, the name for a Jew-hating salute. I've posted about the French comedian Dieudonne (the man responsible for "popularising" the gesture in France) before, when he was due to perform in Strasbourg. I noted in that post that Marine Le Pen, leader of the racist Front National party, was delighted for him to be godfather to one of her children, and if you look at a picture of him you can see why. Did Nicolas Anelka think nobody would recognise the gesture he made in front of the TV cameras? Or does he not care? The latter, I suspect - he wanted publicity to revive a flagging career. Well, this stuff is not something to play with. You can see why here. Now I didn't know what the quenelle gesture was until a few months ago, and I have never seen anyone doing it in real life - I hope not to - but in those pictures (follow the link above) you can see people doing it all over the world in front of Jew-related street names or buildings. Did no one stop them? Did no one protest? Would you if you saw it? Do you think people are going to think it's funny to do it in public? It has been said here in France that some British humour would be a better way of dealing with this than the "fevered" response in some sections of French commentary, politicians and media getting in on it all over. Well. Humour as a weapon against the Jew-haters. The cabarets of 1930s Berlin were so effective against the Nazis, were they not? In Lyon, where the quenelle gesture has been seen often in recent times, six young Jewish men are to go on trial for attempting to take vigilante ("justicier") action.

Should the quenelle gesture be banned? Was Anelka attempting to incite racial hatred? Dieudonne himself is likely to be charged, not for the first time, with incitement to racial hatred following remarks he made about a journalist on France Inter who challenged him. The journalist's name is Cohen.

Still think you can control them?

keep sport out of politics

Paulo di Canio (pic: BBC)

not much posting lately, as cry-baby bully-boy behaviour (TM Julie Burchill) locally does tend to have a chilling effect, despite best efforts. Be strong, girl. Anyway, this is the new Sunderland manager (Sunderland is a team I have a weakness for) Paulo di Canio, an Italian man who has made no secret of his support for fascist parties. Various Israel and other lobbyists have kicked off, yelling that he should be sacked, should never have been appointed in the first place, blah blah blah, polenta where's my Guardian? Oh hang on, the Guardianistas want the state of Israel destroyed and all Jews killed, so the coherence of that position is what exactly? Ah yes, this is not cosy Guardian land, but the world of football, where men are men and political sophistication is not required when managers' jobs are applied for. Anyway, di Canio's political views are what they are. There is no evidence that he has ever engaged in any illegal activity. It is also the case that there are political parties in almost all European countries which could be described as fascist. These are legally constituted parties. Supporting them is not illegal. Nor is it, nor should it ever be, a bar to employment in any field at all. I am not in fact sure that the British National Party in the UK, or the Front National in France, should really be described as fascist parties. They are both parties of the political left which hold racist views. I don't think that's quite the same thing. Whatever. Those of you who have kicked off on "my father fought the fascists in Italy", well, good for him. I'm glad he did. He fought them so that people could be employed when their political views are not those of the mainstream. Di Canio's political views, as reported, are not mine. They are probably not yours. But he is entitled to hold them, and to express them. He does not help his work as a football manager if he sounds off about them at the expense of the team, but that is another matter. Oh and Guardian readers, remember "We Are All Hezbollah Now"?

Hezbollah

football, high and low

Mario Balotelli and his foster mother

when I was growing up football was for boys and men  However, slightly unusually, my mother, who is coming up to 84, borders on the fanatical in her support of Manchester United, and watches it all on TV.  That team has always left me cold.  My old home team is Luton Town (sad, I know, not fair) and my London team is the great, the magnificent Tottenham Hotspur.  Although I have never lived in north London and have no plans to, and I am not Jewish.  It's still allowed.  I support England.  Of course I do.  And although the anthem played is the wrong one (at the cricket they, correctly, sing "Jerusalem", I am told), I sing it.  I sang it when England played France (we were in an "Irish" pub in Strasbourg, where all the staff are French).  Loudly.  The Marseillaise (written in Strasbourg, who knew?) was sung much more loudly, by many more people.  Word perfect.  And the tune is great.  But French fans do not sing.  Not at the match, and not in the pub, other than the national anthem.  At the match they chant.  But rarely do they sing.  They should learn to do so.

"Italy's pride"

To the real topic of this post - Mario Balotelli.  It is banal to say that a footballer has "caught the imagination of a generation".  I can remember the late George Best, I even met him once (girls, I would soooo have gone there), and he did that.  I have seen quite a bit of Mario (ooh er missus) in recent times, as sig other is a Manchester City supporter.  Mario is eccentric, talented, a bon viveur and a man with a great heart.  Oh, and he can score goals too.  What is not to like?

Hope for the future: in the Italy of today it is a great step forward that the media (think about the ownership of most of it) headline a player of Mario's ethnicity (born in Palermo to Ghanaian immigrant parents) as "Italy's pride".

Fear for the future: as Mario rushes to embrace Silvia Balotelli, the woman who brought him up (top picture), he has already been condemned by far-right groups because he is black.  But now we learn that his foster-mother is Jewish, giving those hate groups another reason to hate Mario.  Mario allegedly told team-mates that the visit they all made to Auschwitz made him think of a box of letters kept by Silvia from her own family's history.  And he sat down on the train tracks there and was quiet for a long while.

We can't have THAT, now, can we, haters?

am I English?

here I am shamelessly plundering the Normster (Norman Geras), who is (a) much cleverer than I am and (b) not English (he was born in what was then Rhodesia).  He notes that various politicians and others (Hilary Benn, Ed Miliband) have been urging us to be proud of being English.  One of them is a quarter American and the other of east European Jewish heritage I believe, and they are both English.  So what, I hear you cry, and so, to some extent, do I.  Norm also notes that others (Dan Hodges, for example, of whom I am rather a fan) take issue with this, and say that while they themselves are English there is no particular marker that they can identify for their Englishness.  I am not surprised that I am more inclined to ponder my own Englishness now that i have lived for almost five years outside England, and, worse still, in the land of the old enemy, France.  I wonder if Norm ponders on his identity as an African.  If he does, he doesn't do it publicly.  And I share the difficulty in finding a marker for my (or anyone else's) Englishness. The first time I ran a training workshop for a multi-national group of lawyers I was gently told off by the training supervisor who observed it: she said "You started on time, as the English do, but that meant that most of them missed the beginning".  A difficult one for me, that.  Norm takes issue with the "no marker for Englishness" brigade as follows:  Their case seems to be one of these three:

(1) no national identity of any kind is coherent or real;

(2) national identity is coherent and real for all other putative cases (being Brazilian, being French etc) except Englishness;

(3) national identities are real for some putative cases but not for others, and Englishness falls into the latter category.

and he demolishes those three premises very effectively.  But where does that leave us?  One of my grandfathers was Welsh and the other Scottish.  The Celtic part of my heritage is real to me.  But I was born in England, as both my parents were, and grew up and lived most of my life there.  I will probably not die there, but that is not the important bit.


What I suppose I believe is that there is no one marker for Englishness.  I'll support England against France tomorrow.  In a pub, which is in my view the proper place to watch football.  I drink Proper Tea.  When I was asked to serve tea recently at a tea party I was congratulated on my assuredness in handling teapots.  "But I've been doing it all my life!" I said.  My earliest memories are of my grandmother pouring tea.  I still put hot water in the pot first, and then throw it away,  as she did,  even if I am using (whisper it not) tea bags.  But there are plenty of English people who never do any of this.


I am sorry that St. George's Day parades are such a rarity.  I think Jerusalem should be the English anthem because , not despite of the fact that, it is an old socialist hymn.  When my granddaughter is my age she will have some memories (I hope) of me and things I did.  They will be part of her own marker of identity.  But maybe not of Englishness.

Euro Krakdown

a bag of these on your head?

that is what the Sun is rather cleverly calling it, as England fans arrive in Krakow for the start of Euro 2012.  They also cite "a local newspaper" as saying that the police will come down on any England fans who cause trouble, like "a bag of anvils".  Charmed by this expression, I looked further. My command of Polish is minimal, but Google Translate gave me this, "torba z kowadeł" for "bag of anvils".  I then consulted Polish colleagues, none of whom had heard the expression, though they did tell me there are various expressions in Polish involving bricks and hammers for dealing extreme penalties to malfeasors. I found two local newspaper in Krakow, and a search on their sites did not reveal that expression.  But then it is likely to be wrong, as Google Translate does not actually translate anything. Anyone help?