Better fascist than gay in football

THE PREMIERSHIP footballer Nicolas Anelka has identified himself as a fascist sympathiser. It really is as simple as that.

He says that he made the quenelle gesture as a tribute to its inventor, the French comedian and convicted antisemite, Dieudonné. Anelka counts this man as his friend. Let’s consider what this means. Dieudonné has gone to Iran to express his support for Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and dedicated a show to the former Iranian president.

The comedian has attacked Patrick Cohen, a Jewish radio journalist who has publicly criticised him. Dieudonné said: “When I hear Patrick Cohen talking, you see, I think of gas ovens.”

Anelka’s club West Bromwich Albion has received an assurance that the player will not make the gesture again. The fact that he is a fascist sympathiser is clearly acceptable just as along as he doesn’t publicly express it.

The Premier League and the Football Association has a problem here. It should be a matter of deep shame that it is more acceptable to be openly fascist at the highest level of the British game than it is to be openly gay.

It was not deemed a problem that Sunderland appointed Paulo Di Canio as manager, despite him openly admitting he was a fascist.

Now photos have emerged of two other French players, Samir Nasri of Manchester City and Mamadou Sakho of Liverpool, performing the quenelle.

Dieudonné and Anelka have both claimed the gesture is anti-establishment rather than racist. The concern is that the young people watching will see their posturing as in some way cool. Fascists have a long and dishonourable history of representing themselves as the voice of the outsider. For “establishment” read Jewish financiers, Zionist neo-cons and the politically correct, Jew-loving media.

Football has worked hard to counter racism. Anelka has played here for long enough to know how toxic this issue has been in this country.

The irony is that he, Nasri and Sakho are themselves the product of the best aspects of French multiculturalism.

This is not a question of free speech. Anelka and his countrymen are free to express their fascist sympathies, but they need to know there will be serious consequences if they do so while signed to a Premier League football team.