Author: Herzog’s Child

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Given the enormous brouhaha that emanated from the now tedious race-gate, one would be forgiven for thinking the sneering one’s refusal to shake the hand of someone he racially abused was the one and only vile act of February 11th last. Yet the day’s initial ugly act had already occurred when The Greater Manchester Police, those rarefied bastions of all that’s great and good about our society, felt obliged to confiscate and subsequently impound Red Issue fanzine for having the gall to provoke humour through its pages. Concealing a parody Ku Klux Klan cut-out mask embossed with a sympathy message for Luis Suarez, the ‘zine was rounded up from its sellers and carted off to the cop-shop on the grounds that the mask could potentially incite racial hatred and untold disturbance amongst supporters. That the size of the mask rendered it quite impossible to conceal one’s face mattered little. Nor did it seem pertinent that its message was overtly anti-racist. The message from those who felt compelled to drive Red Issue from the streets – an act which could have potentially set the publication’s future into ruination – was clear from their motivations: the satirising of serious situations are prohibited – when it suits those who can divvy out unjustified and criminally insidious authority. On a day blighted by an ever-enlarging grotesqueness permeating the game, the removal from the street of a publication that regularly exposes football’s absurdities was a low that could set a worrying trend. And the most worrying aspect is that most won’t care.