Tragedy chanting is yet another symptom of a deeply sick society
The resurgence of tragedy chanting coincides with a broader erosion of fundamental decency and respect in public life.
The year is 2024. It has now been almost 35 years since the Hillsborough disaster claimed the lives of almost 100 people. It has now been almost 39 years since 39 lives were claimed at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels. It has now been more than 65 years since the lives of the majority of the finest English football team of its era were taken in Munich.
And these deaths are funny… how?
In one sense, it feels astonishing to be having to return to the subject of ‘tragedy chanting’ again. But then again, in another sense it totally doesn’t feel astonishing in the slightest. Almost a quarter of the way through it, the 21st century increasingly feels like a race to the bottom in terms of the way in which we behave in public spaces.
We now inhabit a culture in which to show any sort of empathy, anything whatsoever beyond performative cruelty and inhumanity, is considered a form of weakness in an attention economy in which edginess is now one of the best ways to draw attention to yourself. Never mind that the attention you might draw is similar to deliberately wetting yourself in the middle of a shopping precinct. Just feel the engagement, baby.
For many years, we seem to have laboured under the misapprehension that it was the separation of the online and ‘real’ worlds that was to blame for this, that the anonymity granted by the internet persuaded people to be the worst versions of themselves. But if anything, the increased preponderance of tragedy chanting is proof that this isn’t really the case. Online spheres may ferment the sort of blind rage that leads to such behaviour, but there’s little doubting that this particular blind rage is—and really never has been—confined to these spaces.
The greatest irony of the sights and sounds of the end of last Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final between Manchester United and Liverpool is that they have stripped away what we should be talking about. This was one of the finest and most dramatic matches of the season in any competition, a fitting end to a round of quarter-final matches which demonstrated that there can be plenty of life left in this competition, if only the actual football is allowed to speak for itself.
But no. Here we all are again, the topic of conversation dragged back to the behaviour of… well, can we even call it a ‘few’ any more? Because it certainly didn’t look or sound like it at Old Trafford on Sunday afternoon. But this isn’t really about Manchester United, and it isn’t really about Liverpool either. It’s about a society and a culture that doesn’t care any more, a world that has decided that our right to be cruel has trumped anybody’s right not to be subjected to that cruelty.
Of course, in the particular case of these two clubs there is an added tranche of irony. Both Liverpool and Manchester United have been stricken by tragedy in the past, but while you might think that this would have had an influence on the way in which supporters of the two clubs came to view tragedy chanting, it doesn’t seem to have done so in a positive way. There’s every possibility that those who sing the loudest about Hillsborough would be the most offended by songs about Hillsborough and vice-versa without appreciating these double-standards.
There are no winners in this conversation. There’s no victory to even be had in this particular race to the bottom. For one thing, this absolutely isn’t about these two clubs alone. A club owner killed in a helicopter crash? Oh, how hilarious. The death of a player on his way to sign for a new football club? Fair game, apparently, as is that of a six year-old child from a rare form of cancer.
And these, you’ll note, are just the stories that make their way all the way to court. For every one of these, there are doubtless scores of others who harbour the same views and are more than happy to publicly express them at any given opportunity. We can’t blame it on the follies of youth. Of those who ended up in court, one was 32 years old and another 48. The slab of pink meat who went viral contorting his face into various shades of ugly at the end of last Sunday’s match at Old Trafford will never see 50 again. This is an issue that cannot simply be explained away in the ways in which many often seem all too happy to do; at least, when it’s someone from their side doing it.
To a point, we shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. Right at the top of the news agenda, the actual government itself continues to weasel-word its way out of having to admit that one of their biggest donors is pretty much an unapologetic racist because they’ve swung so far into extremism themselves that they’re concerned at losing their few remaining supporters.
It often feels as though every single discussion of this nature seeks to frame the wilfully offensive as victims themselves, as if they weren’t themselves the cause of the criticism that they’re now facing. The well of discourse has long been fundamentally poisoned by the bigots and their apologists. That this should have extended into football shouldn’t come as any form of surprise, but it also makes finding some sort of solution so very much more difficult.
So, what do we do? Tragedy chanting has been a criminal offence since August 2023, and that doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference. Responsible fan groups such as supporters trusts call for a winding down of this absurd rhetoric, and it seems to fall upon deaf ears. The likelihood is that the answer will take a long time to get here until our society has grown up a bit and that until then, if it ever comes, the steady drip, drip, drip of prosecutions and banning orders will continue. We certainly can’t expect any leadership from above, as has been proved repeatedly in recent years.