They overwhelmingly suffer from tribalism
Sports fans/ultras are just an expression of the existing sentiments of the community they come from. Racist fans aren’t born in a vaccum, they do however display their beliefs very openly and publicly.
Not all of them are right-wing. Here are some examples of non-reactionary clubs (I don’t know if all of them are specifically leftists):
OP talks about American football, you respond with actual football teams
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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A lot of work was done, at least where I live, to divorce mass sports from their left-wing origins as activities done by poor people.
When I was much younger I lived in a big American Football town in the states, so I admittedly still have some affinity for it. It’s not great, and I hardly ever keep up with it after leaving the US, but it’s hard to totally shake something you grew up with.
The Commanders getting that as a deregatory nickname is a pretty recent ocurance since they only just got renamed to the Commander, so I am not surprised somebody latched on to anti-communist rhetoric and it stuck. If I am being extremely generous, I doubt most people even think of the political connoations there. Though obviously the idea is supposed to be that “communism = bad”.
Sports in America seem very inorganic. Soccer in Europe has a long history where they started off as small clubs and only at some later point becoming owned by corporations. I hear that there have been cases of American teams just up and leaving their city to move to a different one which is completely unheard of in normal circumstances.
This sport in particular involves roided up folks giving each other concussions with each training session and game probably taking one day off the brain’s healthy lifetime. New players (disproportionately black) are obtained by teams in events called drafts that look uncomfortably similar to slave auctions. It is not surprising that the supporter base for this leans chud.
I’d still say non-American football still takes the cake for the most reactionary fanbase, possibly just due to the sheer mass appeal that it has. Like it’s shockingly normalized to be racist/sexist and chuddy. Every year theres some controversy about players being heckled with the N word or other slurs, and it dies out in the headlines in a few days, while the actual issue persists. Any news or discussion about women’s soccer is immediately ridiculed and mocked, and theres just endless amounts of toxicity which is at this point just baked into soccer fan culture as well.
Over the last couple of years with the Saudi league making news, rather than the logical reaction of criticizing the oil billions that make it possible, I saw way more football fans just resort to anti Arab/Muslim racism, even disappointingly from non-western fans, that’s where soccer is currently.
I wanted to add something. It is true that the soccer fanbase is a vast ocean of irredeemable chuds. But there is a small clubs whose histories are rooted in left wing thought of some variety. Liverpool for example as an area is Labour leaning because they hate Thatcher and her austerity. Celtics are republicans and hate the Queen. These elements are unfortunately being watered down slowly as football has become corporate and Europe becomes more reactionary but it’s something that was there.
The only thing similar I can think of when it comes to American sports is that the Green Bay Packers have an interesting ownership structure. Apart from that I haven’t heard of anything like that.
Yeah you are right. There are a lot of aspects of this:
- racist spectators yelling n-word/throwing bananas at black players (99% of the time they have a black player on their own team)
- football fans on social media being absolute subhuman scum
So yeah its possible that what I said about concussionmania is not relevant.
Competitive team sports are just more attractive to fascists. (not to say that liking sports makes you a bad person) Leftists naturally have a more co-operative attitude while fascists thrive off the win/lose dichotomy. Leftist have more important things to obsess over while fascists are always on the hunt for a group to otherize. Sports gives them a perfect target in the form of the opposing team and their fans to practice hating and dehumanizing.
Not me though STANDARD ALLEZ 🔴⚪
A lot of sports started from a working class background but got coopted by the ruling class, which means these sports attract more reactionary ideas.
Well I know mass sporting events were co-opted into being displays of nationalism (unifying the classes under a common cause regardless of where they sit in the stands), so that might be a contributing factor.
This is why I despise the Olympics.
At its beginning, the modern olympics were only for “amateurs”, meaning no professionals were allowed.
Did this mean no professional pole vaulters could compete? No it meant if you were a day laborer you had an unfair advantage because you worked out during your job.
And now we look at the olympics and it’s only rich kids who have enough free time to practice their sport more than a full time job.
