At a guess it’d be a shit joke about City or PSGs owners
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Not having the time or knowledge to talk about anti-semitism isn’t the same as holding anti semitic views
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I really don’t think any of those tweets are bad.
I don’t understand the terrorist fist jab one, but the Burkina Faso/child slave thing seems like a dark current affairs type joke rather than a “black people are inferior to white people” race joke.
Don’t think the 100 lashes for Evra thing is bad either, definitely don’t think “flogging” would have been any better in that sense.
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I’d be interested in the St Patrick and the monkeys one, given the excerpt shared alongside it. I googled “St Patrick monkeys” and found nothing on several pages of results, either relating to him driving out the pygmies/Africans or any more innocent context. But next to that excerpt, it didn’t look very good on the surface.
@shamrockgooner you able to offer anything on this?!
The terrorist fist jab one seems a bit dodgy. Not to assume the worst of him, I’d have though it was meant to be ironic or something, but I’m having a hard time even understanding what the joke was meant to be, which makes it hard to figure out what the intent was and if it is properly dodgy.
Yeah, I felt the same on this one. I’m not on twitter, but I bet I’ve said something similarly dark about a tragedy or international political situation to be a bit edgy and amuse people on OA/FB/whatsapp, with no ill intent behind it at all.
I can understand you might not want to set a precedent of justifying yourself to every “troll” out there on the internet when you have a big profile and followership, it must be tiring and sets a precedent that encourages people to feel they’re entitled to your time and thoughts when they aren’t. But if I were him and I thought all of these tweets had been taken out of context, I’d be explaining each and every one of them, no way would I let people call me a bigot or a racist if I could explain or justify everything I’d said. But maybe that wouldn’t be the smart move, I’m not famous for my good judgement online lol, but I couldn’t sit back and let people drag me and my name like this.
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Yeah the St. Patrick’s one is another one I don’t understand. I mean obviously there’s the monkey + black people connotation but there’s just a real lack of context.
That and the terrorist jab ones are the most “uncomfortable” tweets but at the same time, I’m not going to let myself get in a tizzy about it when there is almost 0% context and you can see how people took the League Cup tweet totally out of context. There are so many people on Twitter with a political agenda, that I just don’t trust most of the outrage porn that gets posted there because I feel like a lot of the time it feels like someone is trying to manipulate you.
And as for the thing about Arseblog not wanting to write a post about “Yid”, I totally get that. Such a fucking sensitive topic and no matter what opinion you showcase or argument you put forth, you will 100% get attacked and dragged through the mud for writing a post like that.
If I had a huge football blog that was my source of income, the last thing I’d be writing about is why you should or shouldn’t be allowed to use the word Yid lol That’s career suicide in this day and age, especially given his platform.
Not monkeys but:
- Legend says that Patrick cast out all the snakes in Ireland, though many scientists hold that snakes have never existed in Ireland.
I’ve never seen those words in the same sentence before. As ACM says the story was always that he drove the snakes out…or claimed to at least which, if they didn’t exist in the first place can’t be disproved (at the time) I guess.
Snopes says it is bollocks also (didn’t read whole article)
Agree with most of your post, but not some of this bit, no offence. I don’t think there’s the risk of it neing career suicide these days, saying “x is a slur and it shouldn’t be used” doesn’t cost anyone their career these days. Now, if he’d said, it’s totally fine, people should get over it, the word has a different meaning, then I could see it being harmful to his reputation (rightfully so imo) - but someone shared a tweet of his in this thread in which he unequivocally says the word is not OK and is prohibited on his platforms - so he’s not gonna say something that’d get him cancelled.
But I suppose he said to Josh he didn’t wanna touch it almost a decade ago, since then he has come out against the term, so that’s progress, even if it’s disappointing for a member of that community to have felt like their well reasoned concerns were kinda cheaply dismissed (I totally get how that’d feel shitty as a fan). But to be clear, not to say he is obliged to talk about the issue, so I don’t want to drag him too harshly.
Thanks @arsenescoatmaker and @shamrockgooner, I’d totally heard about the snakes story, I think that’s why I found the monkey/pygmy one to be so weird, and kind of intriguing… Do we think that might have been him continuing the monkey metaphor/imagery like in the tweet he came out to defend?
Also, Shammy what are your thoughts about the other tweets, having taken a sceptical position initially like I did?
I’ll move these posts to an arseblog thread in a bit, not necessarily cos it warrants it, but because it would be best to keep it totally clear of the Raul thread so we can speculate about him being a bent cunt without talking about different topics over each other.
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I never said he held those views please don’t misunderstand me. I was just disappointed that, at a time when iirc that comedian David Baddiel (sp?) was really making a push to get Chelsea fans to stop using the word yid that Arseblog didn’t think it was something his blog should cover. Banning the word from the comment section is great but I was probably naive to think that just because I’d written a big research thesis on anti Semitism in college that a blogger with a big audience would be like, “sure guest write a post random guy.”
If I came off as too harsh on him I didn’t mean to. I really don’t think he’s got anything against Jewish people…he probably doesn’t know very many. Ireland isn’t exactly a hub of Jewish culture. 
And even though I was knocking him to @JakeyBoy I completely understand him wanting to protect his brand even if I thought it was a pretty innocuous stance to take back then. My guess is that if I’d had that interaction with him today, when he’s been far more outspoken about social justice and BLM, it probably would have gone different.
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Everyone has a line with cancel culture and this is mine. I’m absolutely not having that arseblog is racist or discriminatory. Anyone making that accusation has never read more than a sentence that he’s written at a time.
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The lashes one and especially the terrorist one are hard to explain away. I’d like to hear what he has to say about those.
Having said that and having followed his blog, podcast, his Twitter and his other more personal Twitter for a number of years he can be prone to an outburst and what amounts to a truly terrible and ill thought out joke. Like you say yourself, we’ve all done it. I certainly don’t think there is a pattern here, we’re talking about someone who must have over 100,000 tweets.
All in all I subscribe to his Patreon. If I thought for one second he held racist views I’d cancel that immediately and these tweets, as opposed to the millions of words I’ve heard him speak and write over the years, don’t convince me there’s a problem.
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And I thought the Athletic subscription was a waste of money.
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I’m not sure I get this bit. So cancel culture has crossed your personal line in the sand and you’re done with the entire concept of it? Or you just think that this doesn’t meet the threshold for offensive or bigoted statements, and that’s what you mean when talking about your “line”?
As per Shamrockgooner. I’m a subscriber to his Patreon membership.
I’ve listened to 100s of his podcasts and have never heard anything that suggests he’s got anything other than normal world views. You can tell is someone is a bit like that, it slips out from time to time.
Unbelievable hack job on Arseblog when you consider that a majority of people in this country voted for someone who is racist, a bigot, a proven liar and allows an unelected friend of KGB operatives to make Governmental decisions (it’s all there in Sideshow Dom’s blog). Let’s perhaps get our priorities sorted?
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Very rich of football twitter of all places going after someone for being racist.
Risque jokes are allowed in my book. The intentions behind doing this to arseblog are not pure. They don’t care about him being racist. They don’t like that he said something bad about Ozil.
Kids these days. 
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I think @Leper meant that none of those comments crossed their personal line for canceling someone.
I’m inclined to agree…although the terrorist one is a bad look.
Like a lot of people I read his blog and listen to his shows. I don’t think he’s racist at all. I do think some of his jokes are bad. I don’t entirely understand that bit about “pygmies” but I’ll read @shamrockgooner ‘s explainer on that.
It does seem a little like Arseblog had some pointed thoughts on the Özil interview and trolls decided to go after him so they dug up tweets and argued in bad faith that he’s racist.
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They went all the way back to 2014.
Lockdown have given people tons of time.
I hope Arseblog doesn’t respond to this at all.
I think that’s more my perspective as well.
Getting involved in such a sensitive political issue like that can be a minefield even if he’s in the right. Plenty of nutty right wingers who could find that as a reason to send him death threats etc.
Maybe I’m a coward or whatever, but I can totally see why he wouldn’t necessarily have wanted to get involved.
Very much the latter, especially with regard to bigotry which I think has to be intentional abuse.
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