Elite Hatred and the Enforced Knee-Taking of the Aware ‘Class’

Abstract

This paper takes a political sociological look at the knee-taking in football (or soccer) inspired by the Black Lives Matter campaign. Based upon a study of the new elites, it explores the essence of this performative act and situates it within the ‘obsession’ with racism and anti-racism. Based less on the reality of the problem of racism than upon the emerging values of this new ‘class’, the celebration and promotion of taking the knee is understood as a new type of political etiquette that combines a sense of shame-awareness with a certain contempt for the ‘masses’ who attend football matches. The confusion about whether the support for Black Lives Matter was political or not is discussed with reference to the idea of the changed and to some extent incoherent nature of the modern elites whose values, it is suggested, are more a form of anti-matter than a clear projection of ideas and beliefs. As a result, the quasi-religious nature of the sentiment expressed in modern anti-racism and the action of taking the knee are considered in relation to the ideas of ‘raising awareness’ and of ‘educating yourself’, both of which have an implicitly elitist quality but also lack precision or clarity about either the problem being addressed or any solution to it. Often more therapeutic than overtly political, elite anti-racism is almost by necessity performative, but also comes with a disciplinary dimension for those who refuse to ‘take the knee’ to it. Ultimately, it is suggested that the contestation over the knee-taking gesture reflects a growing cultural divide between the disconnected globalist elites and the more grounded and situated masses who often opposed those who demand their acquiescence towards this performative form of anti-racism.

1. Introduction

Following the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, aspects of football in England were transformed, for a period at least, and players taking the knee before games was incorporated. This began in June 2020, when matches resumed following the Covid pandemic, but noticeably, when there were no fans in the grounds, due to the lockdown. In August of 2022, at the start of the new premier league season, taking the knee was no longer obligatory, but would occur on special occasions, like the opening game of the season (Mather 2022).

Additionally, it is worth bearing in mind that football had been constantly running anti-racist campaigns, slogans, arm bands, and advertisements, for decades prior to the BLM moment. For many, the knee-taking was simply an extension of this anti-racism. But there was also something different about it, not only in the new gesture itself, but in the type of anti-racism that was often implied, rather than spelled out—something related to the idea of awareness and ‘educating yourself’, something that was hard to put your finger on. It also clearly developed with at least some relationship with the movement that called itself Black Lives Matter.

For the first three months of the season, as well as taking the knee, all of the strips of teams in the Premier League had the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ written on them. This is interesting considering that FIFA, the governing body of football, has a rule that prevents political slogans within the game (Bryson 2019). In England, the idea of taking the knee was presented, in part, as coming from the captains of the various teams. Whatever the truth of this, it was also something that was being supported by the governing bodies of football, internationally and in England, and was something that was institutionalised by these organisations. Moreover, it was something that was quickly endorsed by television companies and indeed by corporations and businesses across the world. This raises the question of pressure—financial, organisational, and moral pressure—that may have been used to ensure that every single football player, at least initially, took the knee.

When the fans returned to the terraces after the lockdown, in December 2020, to the surprise and shock of many football officials, some of the fans booed the knee-taking. This was condemned by the FA, and for many commentators was seen as a clear sign of the very racism they were trying to eradicate from the game (Sky Sports 2020). The media response, overall, was condemnatory towards the booing fans (Spivey 2021). Later the following year, the racist nature of fans was once again understood to be demonstrated when insulting tweets were sent to black England players following the UEFA Euro Final in July 2021, and when a mural of Marcus Rashford was ‘defaced by racist graffiti’ (Khan 2021). But as we will see, the furore about this racism in English football is questionable and could be conceptualised more accurately as something of a moral panic, or perhaps more accurately, a moral or amoral crusade (Waiton 2008).

For many, and arguably most academics examining the issue of racism and football, there is a presumption that anti-racism in the game is a good thing and is something that is challenging a deep-seated, endemic, and dangerous prejudice. However, perhaps this perspective needs to be turned on its head, and rather than focus on the ‘problem of racism’ amongst the masses, we should be looking at the problem of anti-racism, and to understand this as something that is driven by a new elitist prejudice about the white working class.

Here, I will attempt to make that argument, by first of all looking at the nature of the modern elites—their disconnection from the public, and their propensity to develop a new therapeutic form of governance that increasingly engages with citizens as vulnerable victims. Part of this story can help to explain why anti-racism has become an elite pursuit, a pursuit that necessitates the constant discovery of racism amongst the deplorable masses. A necessity predicated upon both the new elites’ disconnection from the public and indeed from society itself, and upon their need for a moral purpose and form of legitimation.

2. The New Elites

One of the confusions of our time is that the people who run much of the western, or at least the Anglo-American world, have no name. Old ideas about class no longer appear to capture the nature of society, or to help us understand social, political, or cultural trends. We have perhaps entered what Zaki Laïdi called a world without meaning (Laidi 1998). Even writings about the ‘bourgeoisie’, the old class system, or the establishment, have declined in recent decades, while talk of a new class or new elites has grown (Figure 1).

The modern take on the new elites was developed in part by the American sociologist Alvin Gouldner, who described a ‘new class’, the ‘intellectuals and technical intelligentsia’ who he believed were now central to running capitalist society, while also being somewhat separated from it (Gouldner 1979, p. 1). A more recent, and more conservative, take on the ideologically light elites, discussed by Gouldner, has come from Charles Murray, who describes a class of people who are culturally, rather than simply economically, similar to one another, while being culturally separated from the majority of the public (Murray 2012). This distinction fits with David Goodhart’s take on the Anywheres and the Somewheres: The Anywheres being the professional classes and sections of the old establishment who are economically and culturally liberal, and who, unlike the Somewheres, have no genuine sense of home, of nationhood, or attachment to any particular place or traditional belief system (Goodhart 2017). More aggressively, Michael Lind (Lind 2020) talks about a ‘new class war’ in his book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Metropolitan Elite, and Salvatore Babones (Babones 2018) labels a ‘new authoritarianism’ in his book, subtitled Trump Populism and the Tyranny of Experts. For both Lind and Babones, the oligarchical nature of the ‘new class’ and their decoupling from political communities make them a threat to democracy.

Those studying and writing about this new ‘class’ have many similar conclusions, at least about the values of this group of people, indeed of their nature and position in society. There is much talk of experts or an expert class, of technocrats, managerialism, a cosmopolitan cultural elite, and so on, but there is no one clearly defined name for this group of people. For the purposes of this chapter, we will talk about what Christopher Lasch called the ‘new elites’ (Lasch 1995). Here ‘elites’ is plural, in recognition that there is arguably no clear, coherent elite or class that dominates society but that there is a loose collection of individuals and groups with an amalgam of instincts and values that may not exactly coalesce but rather intertwine and overlap to form a sensibility and an identifiable framework for the development of policies and practices.

The new elites are not a coherent class, but they do have an emerging set of values. Many of these have developed more as a form of anti-matter than as a projection of clear interests; a by-product of the loss of meaning rather than an assertion of belief. Hans Boutellier and others have talked about the amoral or even anti-moral nature of these elites, based as they are on the rejection of traditional moral values, the moral individual of classical liberalism, and the moral ideals associated with a collective socialist society (Boutellier 2019). Elsewhere, I have discussed the new elites and the culture that they encourage as being asocial (Waiton 2008). In discussing the technocratic and therapeutic nature of the elites, one could also describe the new elites as apolitical, or as political with a small ‘p’.

With the collapse of traditional class politics in the 1990s, new forms of politics have been discussed in terms of micro-politics—a politics focused on individual behaviour and lifestyle (Finlayson 2003). This in turn is connected to the idea of the ‘politics of behaviour’, developed by New Labour (Field 2003). We have also seen the emergence of what is called identity politics, which, like micro-politics, avoids grand narratives and can be seen as a counter to them, with a focus on personal and group characteristics as a basis for alliances, away from traditional broad-based party politics, and away from claims to universality, or of ideas and outlooks that are seen to be the basis of unity for people (Figure 2).

As political traditions of the past that were connected, if by now loosely, to grand narratives, declined, there was a struggle for ‘big ideas’. For New Labour, having abandoned socialist aspirations, politics lost its name—it was neither capitalist nor socialist but numerical, a ‘third way’. Historian Eric Hobsbawn noted in 1994 that ‘Never was the word ‘community’ used more indiscriminately and emptily in the decades when communities in the sociological sense became hard to find in real life’ (Hobsbawn 1994, p. 428). Increasingly, new ‘communities’ were discovered and promoted, but, as Hobsbawn notes, these were not communities that had roots and depth. Rather, they were what came to be known as ‘vulnerable communities’ or ‘vulnerable groups’: Communities that were often constructed by small groups of identity-based activists (often funded by the state)—these ‘communities’ were not represented by politicians so much as advocated for—‘included’ and ‘recognised’ (Waiton 2019).

The 1990s was also a decade when, helped by the vacuum of political traditions, managerialism, and technocratic governance, flourished. Over time, the class-based nature of managing institutions was replaced by a top-down progressive regulation of workplaces and, indeed, society—one that has today become subsumed within the ubiquitous governing through equality, diversity, and inclusion (Heartfield 2017). The shift from a welfare to a well-being state (Waiton 2017) reflected a more therapeutically oriented form of ‘governing the soul’ (Rose 1989). A form of governing that was predicated upon the elevation of safety as a new absolute (Furedi 1997), and one that was based upon a new form of legitimation through the ‘protection of the vulnerable’ (Waiton 2019), (Figure 3).

The issues raised above are of some relevance because they emerged alongside the rise of official anti-racism policies and campaigns. The first officially endorsed anti-racist campaign, Kick it Out, for example, was set up in 1993. Today, the Kick it Out website uses a modern progressive form of language to explain that they are ‘leading the way to make positive change’, something they have done by ‘raising awareness’. This was a time, as Brick (2000) notes, when safetyism emerged in football, and regulations became less physically overt (like the caging of football fans in grounds, accompanied by aggressive forms of policing). At the same time there was also a more all-encompassing shift to a ‘caring’ protection of fans, helped by all-seater stadiums and the wider regulation of behaviour (like smoking), and the increased regulation and policing of language.

3. Third Wave Anti-Racism

Surveys suggest that racism and racist attitudes in the UK are declining and have been declining for some time. A study in 2019, of 12 European countries, for example, found that the ‘prevalence of discrimination based on ethnic or immigrant background’, was lower in the UK than any of the other countries surveyed (FRA 2019). Similarly, the British Social Attitudes Survey and surveys by Ipsos find that, ‘the British public have become avowedly more open-minded in their attitudes towards race’ (Ipsos 2020). At the same time, however, the issue of race and racism, and the demand for campaigns to challenge it, appear to be constantly increasing. However, this form of anti-racism has little in common with the political and radical campaigns of the past but have become both a moralistic and technocratic form of policing. The rise of anti-racism in the twenty-first century has been described by John McWhorter as an institutional and corporate ‘new religion’. He states: ‘I do not mean that these people’s ideology is ‘like’ a religion. I seek no rhetorical snap in this comparison. I mean that it actually is a religion… An anthropologist would see no difference in type between Pentecostalism and the new form of antiracism’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 23). Christopher Lasch, in his study The Revolt of the Elites, published in 1995, argued that the issue of anti-racism had become the most acute mechanism through which the disconnected elites were able to express their antagonism to society. Here we find Gouldner’s ‘new class’ of narrow cosmopolitan globalists experience life, despite their position in society—as outsiders—standing not against a particular type of society but standing against society itself. More distant from the public, the logic being drawn here suggests a growing sense of alienation and anxiety amongst the elites, to both society and the public. Without a mechanism and popular framework for directing social processes, those in authority have a diminished sense of capacity that helps, in part, to elevate the sentiment of human vulnerability (Heartfield 2006), something that can be seen with the growing engagement with the sense of ‘harm’ in society (Harcourt 1999) and the rise of the victim narrative (Best 1999), (Figure 4).

Elite concerns about racism in the post-war period reflected in part an understandable reaction to the ideology and devastating consequences of fascism in Europe. However, over time, and with the growth of the globalist imagination of the new elites, this reaction to national socialism became a reaction to almost any sentiment of nationalism or even patriotism amongst the masses (Mullan 2020). For the relativistic Anywheres, the sense of pride in place, in nationhood, felt by the Somewheres, was increasingly interpreted as something extreme, as a dangerous form of bigotry. As Lasch noted, the ‘devoutly open minded’ liberal intellectuals see themselves as a ‘civilized minority in a sea of fanaticism’. The thinking classes, he notes, ‘seem to labor under the delusion that they alone have overcome racial prejudice. The rest of the country, in their view, remains incorrigibly racist. Their eagerness to drag every conversation back to race is enough in itself to invite the suspicion that their investment in this issue exceeds anything that is justified by the actual state of race relations’ (Lasch 1995, p. 90). Over a quarter of a century after Lasch wrote this, McWhorter describes a parallel universe, one in which there is a constant and repeated concern raised regarding America’s denial about race. ‘America is nothing less than obsessed with discussing and acknowledging racism, and those who insist year after year that America wants to hear nothing of it are dealing in pure fantasy’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 37).

With both the globalist anxieties about national chauvinism and the growing therapeutic imagination that elevated the idea of victimhood, a new morality emerged out of the 1990s around the need to protect the vulnerable. As a result, anti-racism now flourishes, less as a mechanism to improve the position of black people in society, than as a self-referential moral crutch, or form of ‘moral sensitivity’ that elevates the status and sense of goodness amongst those who are able to see victimisation. As Matthew Crawford notes, this sensitivity to vulnerability and victimisation becomes a formative basis for the identity of the new elites. As he notes, ‘the white bourgeoisie became invested in a political drama in which their own moral standing depends on black people remaining permanently aggrieved’ (Crawford 2020).

Due to the political and moral vacuity of technocratic governance, the new managerial and administrative elites subsequently came to rely upon their moralising around equality, diversity, and inclusion—around racism—as a form of legitimation. In the process, they set themselves up against the presumed bigots, the new (and real) outsiders—the white deplorables—who they believe lack sensitivity and awareness about the vulnerability of people who must be ascribed a protected characteristic (Figure 5).

Linguist John McWhorter describes the anti-racism associated with BLM as Third Wave anti-racism. Here, the progressive perspective is less engaged by changing the nature of inequality than it is with expressive gestures—of calling out those who appear to question the scripture. Central to the growing anti-racism industry is the social justice politics embedded within critical race theory (CRT), a theory that elevates the idea that racism is endemic, and endemic within white people who embody ‘white privilege’. For critics, CRT has developed as an expression of anti-westernism, replacing class with race, and increasingly discovering racism throughout the western canon (Hearn 2022).

For McWhorter, this approach encourages a Manichean view of the world, an abstract representation that breaks everything down into a modern (or post-modern) form of good and evil, an absolutist perspective that creates ‘this infuriated person [who is] so impatient with different views’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 90). For McWhorter, critical race theory and the playing out of this perspective through Black Lives Matter helps to create a type of ‘therapeutic alienation’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 87). Here, anti-racism becomes more abstract, or metaphysical, with talk of the need to deconstruct ‘our own privilege and the systemic pervasiveness of white supremacy’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 71). This helps to give anti-racism an all-pervasive sense of permanence, something that is embedded within society and within people, in our past, our present, and our future.

This more ever-present, ingrained, almost free-floating racism that is everywhere but still hard to pin down, for McWhorter, ends up being a type of anti-humanist ideology, one that positions whites and ‘whiteness’ as a permanent problem for black people. Racism, in this context can be almost anything. It is everywhere and can be entirely contradictory:

‘To apologize shows your racism; to be refused the apology, too, shows your racism. To not be interested in black culture shows your racism; to get into black culture and decide that you too want to rap or wear dreadlocks also shows your racism. The revelation of racism is, itself alone, the point, the intention, of this curriculum’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 10).

Examining the nature of the convoluted language, the woolly claims, the irrational accusations, and so on, often leads to a confusion about what are often contradictory and illogical arguments set before us. But this is to confuse what we are looking at, McWhorter argues, it is like saying that the Old Testament makes no sense: ‘Of course, the “race thing” Catechism of Contradictions makes no sense, but then neither does the bible’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 12). Anti-racism does not need to ‘make sense’ when it is no longer a political outlook. As a belief system, anti-racism turns racism into what the head of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission described as a ‘secular sin’ (Hume 2012).

Within this confusion, McWhorter notes that, for the modern elites, anti-racism is less about politics than about a type of awareness, a deeper level of understanding, related to a self-understanding, where ‘self-mortification is political activism’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 15). The language is that of ‘social justice’ and you must constantly ‘educate yourself’ (although it is never entirely clear what this means). You must understand the nature of original sin, the higher truth, a truth that, when questioned, results in the accusation that you just do not ‘get it’ (McWhorter 2021, pp. 15–17). To be anti-racist, he argues, is a kind of submission to this truth, and like past superstitions, involves ritual gestures like taking the knee. White privilege is the new original sin and must be acknowledged, not in relation to facts or details but through a form of acknowledgement, or awareness. To say that you are not a racist is simply to prove that you are, indeed that you lack the awareness—and that you need to be ‘Cleansed’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 33, original emphasis), (Figure 6).

Racism, for the new elites, or the new clerisy, can never be resolved, indeed, despite many indicators, it cannot be getting better, for this would question the very purpose of the elites, to question the otherwise empty nature of their technocratic governance, to undermine the feeling that ‘you matter and that your life has a meaningful agenda’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 40). The end result is the construction of an illiberal disciplinary framework bound up with regulations and a new moralised framework for how people think, act, speak, and even feel.

4. Corporate Knee-Taking

Given the modern nature of the elites and the new nature of anti-racism, the framework for the reaction to the murder of George Floyd and for an organisation like Black Lives Matter (BLM) to become a global phenomenon was pre-set. Additionally, with football’s pre-existing and long-standing activities around anti-racism, taking the knee was quickly endorsed and institutionalised within the game.

Demonstrating that the German football association, initially at least, didn’t ‘get it’, knee-taking was questioned as a form of political activism that should be punished. Vice-president Rainer Kock stated that ‘the game should remain free of political statements or messages of any kind’ (Delaney 2020). Immediately, FIFA, football’s governing body, stepped in and suggested that taking the knee was not political, or that it was beyond politics, arguing that players’ protests were worthy of ‘applause not punishment’ (Independent 2020).

Under the English FA’s rulings, specifically, Law 4 Section 5, players are not supposed to have slogans, statements, or images on their kit which could be deemed political. The law states that officials should ask players to leave the field and remove the item. But the football authorities decided that supporting Black Lives Matter was a ‘clear case of anti-discrimination and is not political’ (Grimsby Telegraph 2020). Within a week, the Bundesliga had changed tack, and now all players in the league were to take the knee. The top German team, Bayern Munich, had T-shirts printed with ‘#BlackLivesMatter’ on them. In the game against Hertha Berlin, the referee, his assistants, and the team’s coaching staff also took the knee.

As well as being generated by players wanting to show their opposition to racism, the speedy enforcement of taking the knee was clearly an institutional matter. FIFA, the FA, the German football association, and, indeed, the clubs themselves, all gave their support to players taking the knee. Indeed, as we have noted, every Premier League team had Black Lives Matter printed on the back of their kit.

Beyond football, the police in England were also seen taking the knee at the BLM protest in London. Interestingly, this was a protest that took place during the Covid lockdown, a lockdown that had seen many people being arrested or fined for leaving their home or indeed for protesting against the lockdown itself. The treatment of the BLM protesters could not have been more different. Even the Daily Mail, a paper often seen as being on the right or even the ‘far right’, had a double page spread of the protestors with the headline: ‘A River of Humanity with One Message’; this despite reports of a number of injuries being caused to police officers during the demonstration. Some questions were raised about the knee-taking officers, and while on-duty kneeling was warned against by senior officers, at the same time, the Metropolitan Police explained that officers were free to take the knee where this was appropriate, and the Kent Chief of Police defended the gesture as ‘an act of humility’ that should be welcomed as long as it was safe for officers to do so (Simpson 2020).

Key sections of the modern elites, Crawford argues, consist of those who work in ‘NGOs, the governing bodies of the EU, corporate journalism, HR departments, the celebrity-industrial complex, the universities, Big Tech, etc.’ (Crawford 2020). Football and, indeed, footballers, or at least those at the top of the game who earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a week, could be seen, at least in part, as part of this ‘celebrity-industrial complex’. When it came to endorsing knee-taking and the BLM movement, these various sections of the elites quickly showed their support for the new anti-racism.

Sky Sports adopted the Black Lives Matter logo, as did BT Sports when broadcasting games. Hundreds of millions of dollars were given to BLM and other anti-racist causes by the most powerful tech companies in the world, often with talk of ‘systemic racism’, a key idea within Third Wave anti-racism. This included Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook, while, additionally, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and a variety of gaming companies also contributed (Livingston 2020). Indeed, it is harder to find a major company that did not support BLM or who did not give money to initiatives related to the ‘Black community’ than ones who did. The Apple CEO explained the importance of white awareness, noting the need to ‘re-examine our own views and actions in light of a pain that is deeply felt but too often ignored’ (CNET 2020). Demonstrating this new empathetic form of anti-racism, YouTube explained that ‘We stand in solidarity against racism and violence. When members of our community hurt, we all hurt. We’re pledging $1M in support of efforts to address social injustice’ (Weaver 2020).

In the UK, the tea brands PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea, not known for their radical anti-racism, both backed BLM and went one step further, telling potential customers that, if they were critical of Black Lives Matter, ‘don’t buy our tea’. Initially, Yorkshire Tea had not commented on the issue, but when praised for this on Twitter responded by explaining that they did support BLM but were simply taking their ‘time to educate ourselves and plan proper action’ (BBC 2020a).

There was a performative dimension to the support for BLM. Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, posted a picture of himself taking the knee, and in Scotland, where I live, Leslie Evans, the most powerful civil servant in the country, did the same (Wade 2020). Individuals within the industrial and banking sectors also publicly demonstrated their allegiance to the BLM movement. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the multinational investment bank worth $385 billion, posted a picture of himself taking the knee in front of an open bank vault (Leggate 2020). Indeed, this was arguably part of a wider trend where CEOs have increasingly taken on the role of social justice activists (Gelles 2018). Brian Cornell, CEO of multi-billion-dollar department store chain Target, showed his therapeutic sensibility when stating that ‘We are a community in pain. That pain is not unique to the Twin Cities—it extends across America. And as a team we’ve vowed to face pain with purpose’ (Beer 2020).

Demonstrating this trend and the incorporation of wider identities, and an engagement with ‘vulnerable groups’, McDonald’s temporarily changed its name on social media and promoted ‘Black Voices’. The black voice in particular was that of the transgender activist Imara Jones who believes that there can be no BLM movement worthy of the name until we centre Black trans women. Showing their social justice credentials, this multi-billion-dollar corporation noted that ‘We’ve reached a point in history in which systemic oppression, anti-blackness, police violence and abuse of power, and the numerous other threats to Black and brown communities are at the forefront of the nation’s, and the world’s, conversation’ (McDonald’s 2020).

The capitalised ‘Black’ was assisted here by the influential American Associated Press who explained the change based on the need to be ‘inclusive and respectful’ towards those who identify as Black (Guardian 2020). A study of the British media, a media that, in part, at least, is portrayed as being on the right, and even racist, also concluded that ‘while it created some controversy, the gesture [of taking the knee] has been presented in a mostly positive (or at least neutral) light’ (Spivey 2021, p. 39).

Some writers have suggested that public expressions of support for anti-racist causes is nothing new, citing the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute (Dixon et al. 2022, p. 2). Whatever the similarities, however, Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos did not find themselves being copied by billionaire bankers and giant corporate executives, or find that entire institutions backed, blogged, and tweeted their support.

Anti-racism continues to embody an image of radicalism, indeed many of the statements and pronouncements by billionaires, multi-national corporations, a whole array of institutions, celebrities, much of the media, and even the police, had a linguistically powerful punch. As well as promoting equality, many of the messages contained a therapeutic dimension, one that embraced humility, and an awareness of pain. When taken together, however, it also felt like a script, or a slogan, a mantra, or a form of ‘groupthink’, that one critic described as a form of ‘largely meaningless wallpaper…. [Of] branded thoughts and prayers that all blended together into one undifferentiated mass’ (Beer 2020).

But Third Wave anti-racism is not simply a cynical or opportunistic branding exercise. Rather, both public and private institutions, over the last two decades, have increasingly developed a new form of HR management and governance of their institutions that has elevated the importance of active anti-racism (Heartfield 2017). Indeed, by 2021, the Guardian newspaper noted that 81 percent of companies now carried out unconscious bias training in the UK. Questions have been raised about the effectiveness of this training, but rather than examining the potential myth of endemic racism, or indeed the unethical nature of employers attempting to determine the conscious and unconscious outlook of their workforce, the response has been to suggest that even more must be done to fight the scourge of racism (Parveen 2021).

5. New Politics for the New Elites

Given football’s rules regarding public expressions of support for political causes, the question of whether or not taking the knee and showing support for Black Lives Matter was political or not was of some significance. FIFA suggested that it was beyond politics because it was simply about discrimination, but the fight against discrimination has, historically at least, been seen as highly political. This questioning of what is and what is not political continues to be extremely malleable, seen more recently in FIFA’s decision to ban the Denmark team’s wearing of a ‘Human Rights for All’ kit for the Qatar World Cup. For FIFA, this statement about human rights is political, whereas wearing a BLM shirt and taking the knee is not (BBC 2022).

The accusation that knee-taking was a political act was not helped by the BLM organisation itself, which makes highly charged political statements about defunding the police and dismantling the patriarchal family, and that has members who describe themselves as Marxists. This of course does not mean that this was what FIFA or the FA and Premier League were buying into, but nevertheless, by using the BLM name, the argument that this was a political stance carried some weight. Indeed, by the end of June 2020, following concerns being raised about BLM’s politics and their opposition to Israel, the Premier League felt the need to distance themselves from the BLM organisation while retaining the name as a general stance against discrimination. Specifically, the Premier League said that their campaign was about sending out a message that it is unacceptable to treat black people differently from anyone else (BBC 2020b). Nevertheless, the BLM label and the knee-taking that was associated with this movement remained a contentious issue amongst some fans, who at this point in time remained locked out of grounds. One of the questions raised was why, if this was simply about opposing racial discrimination, did the football authorities not simply promote the anti-racist campaigns they had been celebrating for decades.

There was also a tendency, especially once some fans returned to stadiums and booed the knee-taking, to suggest that this was not about the Premier League or the FA but rather that taking the knee was a personal choice by players themselves (The FA 2021). By individualising the taking of the knee in this way, the argument shifted somewhat and allowed the authorities to suggest that those who booed were simply disrespecting these players who were expressing their opposition to discrimination. In so doing, however, the football authorities left themselves open to the accusation that they were shifting the goalposts to suit their initial and uncritical embrace of BLM. Some fans also argued that players were being ‘used as puppets’ by the authorities’ (Dixon et al. 2022, p. 8).

It is interesting to note that while the BLM slogan and the knee-taking was described as not being political, there did appear to be a party-political divide on the issue and, indeed, political attacks were made against those who refused to back this gesture.

Conservative Dominic Raab argued that he saw knee-taking as a ‘symbol of subjugation and subordination, rather than one of liberation and emancipation’. As a result, Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians demanded an apology for ‘insulting the Black Lives Matter movement’ (Walker 2020).

The BLM slogan and aspects of the movement and protests associated with Black Lives Matter also appeared to be about more than just discrimination and the unequal treatment of black people. The defacing and destruction of statues, for example, during BLM protests in the UK, including one of Winston Churchill, suggested that this ‘movement’ embodied at least some aspects of the new type of anti-racism that has been framed through the idea of a culture war and a type of identity politics.

Nevertheless, the idea that the support given to BLM was not political does have a logic, but this is not because it is not political, but rather because the nature of politics, and indeed anti-racist politics, like the nature of the elites who dominate modern institutions, has changed.

In some respects, anti-racism has lost its overtly political edge and dimension, which helps to explain why everyone from employers to police chiefs can embrace it. It can also explain why the fight against racism can often be seen at sports grounds, rather than in more traditionally political settings. At the same time, anti-racism has developed a more therapeutic and quasi-religious reverence and become a form of awareness-raising that engages with hurt, harm, and pain, indeed, with victimhood.

Anti-racism in the 1980s, for example, was largely the preserve of black activists and left-wing groups, whose message, often carried onto the streets, was highly political and targeted at the old establishment. Today, in comparison, anti-racism is something of an industry, and is more likely to be seen and experienced in boardrooms and, in particular, within the policies and procedures of human resource managers. Indeed, the very fact that challenging racism is often carried out with reference to our unconscious rather than our conscious selves suggests that something has changed in how this issue is understood, to some extent, becoming more of a psychological problem rather than a political one. The technocratisation of anti-racism can also be seen in the way that it has not only been proceduralised but also legalised, turning a once radical, often anti-authoritarian politics into a form of discipline and punishment, where any challenge to society’s structures has largely been replaced by a regulation and criminalisation of behaviour and language.

Here we see a new type of ‘politics of behaviour’, or indeed of behaviourism, rather than something that is associated with conventional politics. This helps to explain why not only the BLM movement but the wider promotion of anti-racism in football over the last two decades has rarely come with any attempt to seriously discuss the issue of racism, but often comes with flashing images across television screens and repeated slogans, telling fans to ‘Say no to racism’ and that there is ‘No room for racism’.

Rather than finding a left-wing newspaper seller attempting to argue about what racism is, football fans are increasingly told to ‘educate themselves’. However, when Gareth Southgate, the (then) manager of the senior England men’s team, and others use this term, they are not standing with a particular textbook or a body of knowledge that fans must engage with. Southgate does not appear to be thinking politically when he tells people to educate themselves. Rather, he is expressing a newfound therapeutic sensibility, or form of awareness, that engages with a certain sense of vulnerability and harm. Fans who boo are not just bigots but are racists who lack ‘compassion’ and engage in ‘hurtful acts’ (Ronay 2021). For CEOs and many others, the problem of racism is conceptualised through the idea of ‘pain’, while the expression ‘educate yourself’ both is targeted at those who appear to be lacking this education, or sensibility, and acts as a progressive projection of the self: There is a potentially narcissistic quality to this projected self, one that is aware of its own culpability, or guilt, regarding the problem of whiteness and white privilege. Indeed, Southgate himself was able to demonstrate his awareness when talking about ‘white privilege’ in football in 2020. This was something, he admits, was not something he had noticed during his playing days. But now, he had become aware of the ‘deeper-seated issues’ and the need to ‘speak out’, in this ‘moment of change’ (Hytner 2020).

The idea of educating the public is an interesting one. Hannah Arendt, in her thesis on education, notes that there is a difference between politics and education. Education, she argues, is for children, whereas politics is for adults. Where education is used as politics, we find a move away from people as equals and the emergence of a ‘dictatorial intervention’ based upon ‘absolute superiority’. Education, she concludes, ‘can play no part in politics, because in politics we always have to deal with those who are already educated’ (Arendt 1954, p. 3).

By educated, Arendt does not mean that you have gone to university or studied a particular issue, but more simply, that you are an adult with your own life, experiences, and understanding. Here we find a serious problem with the idea of educating the public or indeed of ‘educating yourself’. The latter term is relatively modern and is very different from the idea of politics and political discussion. Here, rather than engaging with your equal in a debate, you, to some extent, turn your back on them, and actually close down discussion. Based, perhaps on a sense that the ideas in question are beyond question, there is an aloof sense of superiority, a recognition of your own awareness, mixed with a certain contempt for those who do not get it. But there is also a more confused dimension to this idea, based in part upon a belief that something like racism is all-pervasive, in our past, our culture, our unconscious; it is simply part of what we are as white people. In this respect, it embodies a more anti-human, or a more metaphysical dimension, one that limits our belief that a problem like racism can ever be overcome. Here, we find again the logic of McWhorter’s argument that racism has become a new type of sin, and that anti-racism is a new religion for the elites. To be educated in this way reflects the essence of a more limited elite perspective, one that both attempts to resolve or at least regulate the problem of racism, while understanding that to be truly aware means knowing that this is not possible. Understanding your own racism, for example, is one of the key tenets of critical race theory taught by highly successful individuals like Robin DiAngelo (2019). Rather than resolving the issue of racism, we therefore find that the best we can achieve is to develop processes, practices, and forms of behaviour to manage and regulate society, a job ideally suited for the human resources and inclusivity professionals who help to govern all of our institutions (Figure 7).

In terms of taking the knee itself, this is correctly linked to the actions of American football player Colin Kaepernick. However, in the context of June 2020, it was the Black Lives Matter movement and protests in America that brought the act of taking the knee to public consciousness. Looking back at McWhorter’s argument about anti-racism being a form of religion, he notes that taking the knee has a ‘religious body language’ associated with it, something that is less connected to the past political idea of black and white unity but that embodies a ‘fealty to black people’. He notes that

‘In Bethesda, Maryland, white protesters against Floyd’s murder knelt on the pavement en masse, chanting allegiance to anti-white-privilege tenets incanted by what could only be deemed the pastor of the flock, all with hands actually up in the air. Social media recorded another episode in which white protesters actually bowed down to black people standing in front of them as they received their antiracism testaments, many in tears’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 56).

Elsewhere, news coverage showed white protesters washing the feet of black people, while others painted whip scars on their bodies ‘to show their sympathy for the black condition’ (McWhorter 2021, p. 57). For McWhorter, the religious quality of modern anti-racism means that those who project this sensibility are ‘not just a teacher but a preacher’ (2021: 29). In this respect, it makes sense that individuals like Southgate cannot be more specific about what it is that we need to be educated about. Like religion, becoming aware is less about knowledge or politics than about repentance. Indeed, perhaps to the surprise of some of his professional football players, the pious Gareth Southgate, in his ‘Dear England’ letter, explained that it was the ‘duty’ (of his disciples) to ‘raise awareness and educate’ the public (Southgate 2021).

Modern elites, perhaps helped by their distant nature and disconnect from the ‘Somewheres’, appear to find it confusing that some people react against the idea that they need to be educated. This was seen in the shock and outrage expressed when some English fans booed their teams taking the knee. Perhaps even more starkly, this was seen at the English national teams’ games in Hungary where Hungarian fans demonstrated specifically against taking the knee, rather than in favour of racism, and where Hungarian school children booed the knee-taking English players.

For English commentators, these incidents demonstrated that there was ‘brainwashing’ going on in Hungary. For Gareth Southgate, it showed exactly why English players should take the knee ‘to try to educate people around the world’ (Nattrass 2022). It was clear to the British commentariat that this was an expression of racism; for others, however, what was being expressed was an anger at the colonial sensibility that was seen as being both patronising and a ‘new form of piety’ that they rejected (Furedi 2021). To many Hungarians, William Nattrass notes ‘the educational mission professed by England reflects a curiously self-centred view of the world’. One where the idea of white privilege was projected onto a people and country with a very different history to our own, that includes repeated experiences of domination and oppression. Perhaps in this respect, Gareth Southgate really does need to educate himself (Nattrass 2022).

The ‘white privilege’ narrative is something that Southgate has adopted as part of his educative role about ‘all forms of discrimination’. This allows him to feel confident when promoting his brand of awareness towards English and European fans but leaves him in a bind when it comes to criticising genuinely authoritarian and reactionary regimes, like that of Qatar, where the people who may need to be ‘educated’ are not white. For the England manager there was no question about the need for his players to take the knee during Euro 2020. However, when asked about doing the same in the Qatar World Cup, he deflected by noting that he would have to educate himself and described the seemingly simple and moral question of taking a stand against all forms of discrimination as ‘hugely complex’ (Kilpatrick 2021). One could of course query the idea that the brutal criminalisation of homosexuals in Qatar is hugely complex but that does not appear to fit within the identity politics narrative of ‘white privilege’ that has been adopted within English football (Stonewall 2019).

6. The Deplorables

Writing in 2008, Hughson and Poulton (2008) criticised the FA for adopting a moral panic through its use of ‘extremely outdated’ and ‘tired stereotypes’ of the England football hooligan. Helped by the media, they note, an image of England fans as rough, male, white working-class deviants was evident within the FA campaign to transform the official England fan-base. Here England fans were one-dimensionally and incorrectly represented as culturally exclusive. At the same time, they noted a level of contempt was being expressed towards white working-class fans who did not fit the preferred image of multi-cultural Britain. Ironically, and implicitly noted in their research, Hughson and Poulton draw attention to the exclusion of these fans by the very people who talk about inclusivity. These observations and warnings about the prejudices of those running the game are of significance when we look at the reaction to, and indeed the reactionary nature of responses to, fans who did not take the knee.

Taking the knee before games had taken place in a sanitised atmosphere where stadiums were empty of fans. When they returned in December 2020, some fans booed the knee-taking players. Before talking to any of these fans, or educating themselves about the reasons for the booing, media commentators and pundits denounced them as racists. The chief sportswriter for the Guardian argued that Millwall fans who booed were an ‘embarrassment to the club, south London, football and the rest of the world’ (Ronay 2020). Piers Morgan was clear that they were ‘bigoted morons and if you support them, then so are you’ (Morgan 2020).

Interestingly, even before this, some teams outside of the Premier League, including Queens Park Rangers and Middlesborough, decided to stop taking the knee because it was seen as something that was becoming an empty gesture (Shaw 2020).

Booing fans were condemned but, despite this, some continued to do so. By the summer of 2021 when England played Austria and Romania, thousands of fans were again heard booing the knee-taking players. Indeed, in what could be seen as a vicious circle, football pundit Gary Lineker argued that ‘If you boo England players for taking the knee, you’re part of the reason why players are taking the knee’ (Lineker 2021). For broadcaster Max Rushden, ‘The fact even one person boos taking the knee is reason to keep doing it’. Disillusioned by the booing, Gareth Southgate suggested that some people ‘aren’t quite understanding the message’ (Head 2021).

Further evidence was found of the racist nature of football fans following England’s defeat in the Euro 2020 finals. Racist tweets were sent to three black England players who missed penalties and racist graffiti was reported to have been painted over a Marcus Rashford mural in Manchester. These incidents made the front pages and there was outrage expressed about the continued problem of racism in football. The news coverage was international, and the New York Times explained that the ‘vision of multiracial, multi-ethnic Britain… appeared to vanish’ (Khan 2021). The Guardian reported that, in collaboration with Hope Not Hate, they had found 120 instances of England players receiving racial abuse on Twitter. Gareth Southgate said the abuse was unforgiveable, while noting that much of the abuse appeared to have come from abroad. The Metropolitan Police explained that they were investigating the incidents (MacInnes 2021), while police in Manchester said they were treating the mural vandalism as racist (Gibbons 2021). Later, Southgate suggested that he had to consider whether or not he would allow black players to take penalties if this level of abuse was to be replicated (Lewis 2022). The prime minister was condemned by the financial times for not giving a lead against racism, noting, ‘With the Johnson government unable or unwilling to give a clear lead on racism, it has been left to the manager of the England football team to articulate the role the side can play as a symbol of national unity’ (Financial Times 2021). A Guardian editorial condemned both the ‘outpouring of online racist abuse,’ and the mural with ‘racially aggravated damage’, and linked this to Boris Johnson’s refusal to condemn booing spectators (Guardian 2021). Academics writing about racism in football use these examples to portray the idea that ‘racist abuse continued apace’. Adam Evans, writing for the European Journal for Sport and Society discussed Boris Johnson’s lack of support for taking the knee at a time when these tweets were sent, by noting: ‘Such reactions are, unfortunately, not unusual, and reflect the almost instantaneous, and often anonymous, nature of racism in sport in the present’ (Evans et al. 2021).

The image painted here is one where racism appears to be rife, ‘almost instantaneous’, part of an underbelly of society, something that is part of a wider reactionary problem or that ‘coincides with a more reactionary political climate across much of Europe and North America’ (Evans et al. 2021, p. 189). Twitter itself met with players or their representatives and talked of racism as a ‘deep societal issue’ that they aimed to tackle (Twitter 2021). The problem of racism, it seemed, could once again be identified as a serious and significant problem in British society and especially amongst English football fans.

However, given the mass media coverage given to these incidents, the talk of the ‘outpouring’ of racism and indeed the political outrage expressed about this deep societal issue, it is worth examining what exactly happened with the tweets and the mural before drawing such a conclusion. It is worth noting that, despite the finger being pointed at the prime minister, Boris Johnson himself described the abuse as appalling.

The number of tweets, for example, are interesting when we consider that 31 million people watched the finals, making this the most watched television programme in British history. This means that the percentage of people who sent offensive tweets was 0.0004 percent of the watching public. In other words, 99.9996 percent of those who watched England lose the game did not send offensive or racist tweets. By August 2020, 11 people had been arrested for hate crimes. This is eleven too many, but did it justify the level of reaction or the representation of racist England? (Lee 2021).

After a few days of describing the vandalised Rashford mural as a racist incident, the police concluded that it was ‘not believed to be of a racist nature’. Swear words were scrawled on the mural but none of them were racist. Rashford also received a huge amount of support from England fans on Twitter who were disgusted at the vandalism that had taken place (Halliday 2021).

Coming back to the booing Millwall fans, we find that an official fan club of the team put out a statement explaining that the reason for the booing was not racism and explained that the boos were aimed at the BLM organisation, which it said held ‘extreme political views’. In a statement they said:

‘We fervently believe that the motives of those behind the booing were not racist… Anyone who believes it was a racist act should read the views of those who booed and see they were doing it in reaction to the war memorials and statues of (Winston) Churchill defaced by the BLM organisation and the extreme political views they hold and for which taking the knee is associated with… These same fans have never booed the Kick It Out campaigns on our pitch or the huge work of the Millwall Community Trust and its many anti-racism campaigns’ (Sportstar 2020).

In response to this statement, Kick It Out Chairman Sanjay Bhandari said the attempt to portray the booing as a ‘political disagreement’ with BLM was ‘complete and utter nonsense’ (Devdiscourse 2020).

It is noticeable that, unlike the wide and even international coverage of the racist tweets and the falsely labelled racist graffiti, very few UK newspapers or sections of the media reported the Millwall fan statement. Perhaps these fans did boo for racist reasons but, unlike Sanjay Bhandari, we cannot know if this is the case. For the fans who explained their motivation, there were other issues of concern, but this was rarely taken seriously or even addressed. The main piece of research about fans’ attitudes about taking the knee concluded that ‘The popular response of the media, soccer authorities and Kick it Out to the scattered booing and jeering was to decry it as motivated by racism’. However, it notes that ‘the present research suggests this interpretation was based on ignorance and lacked even inferential evidence’ (Dixon et al. 2022, p. 10).

Pundits, columnists, and commentators of football often present themselves as being part of the ‘people’s game’. It’s the fans that matter, we are told. However, throughout the process of players taking the knee, Dixon et al. (2022) notes, ‘Whilst athletes and governing organizations have been able to make their position clear, fans have been effectively silenced’ (Dixon et al. 2022, p. 2). If those in authority actually listened to fans, he argues, they would find that over 60 percent of supporters think that taking the knee should stop, but not because they are racist. Rather, fans often felt that they were ‘being used in the media as scapegoats for racism’. One fan was frustrated that supporters are often looked down upon and ‘classified as racist who need to be educated’ (Dixon et al. 2022, p. 8).

Rather than opposing the knee-taking for racist reasons, fans reasons for opposing the knee-taking was often in fact an alternative anti-racist perspective that saw the real problem in football as the lack of black people in positions of authority within the game. Other fans questioned the voluntary nature of taking the knee and saw it as a source of pressure being forced onto players.

Dixon et al. (2022) usefully note that ideas of ‘rituals of civility’ or ‘symbolic violence’ can be used when discussing the potential ‘shame and humiliation’ that both players and fans faced when dealing with the moral pressure of supporting the knee-taking. Noting the ‘era of corporate social responsibility’, where anti-racism has become an establishment pursuit, he notes that ‘there are few, if any, companies wishing to sponsor a racist’. Fans recognise that there was a moralistic quality to this new anti-racism, one that brings pressure into the game, something that means that free-thinking, as opposed to racist thinking, is quashed and individuals become, ‘paralysed by the panoptic gaze of the media and its potentially destructive power’ (Dixon et al. 2022, pp. 8–9).

7. Conclusions

The 2024–2025 season kicked off with English Premier League players, once again, taking the knee at the start of the opening game. The gesture seemed a little quicker this time, a fast bend, then up and on with the game. Searching the press for comments about it, I could find nothing. It would appear that the gesture will continue to be used for special occasions but will be done so more quietly, more in the background.

A month before the season started, the Labour Party won the 2024 general election. Denouncing the previous culture secretary, Michael Gove, Labour’s Lisa Nandy announced that the ‘culture war’ was now over and explained that her new government would be ‘more Gareth Southgate and less Michael Gove’. One can only assume that she had not heard the boos ringing out across the country.

As much as examining the ins and out of the knee-taking phenomenon, this paper has been a study of the new elites. Following Goodhart’s categorisation, it is arguably the case that we do indeed have a new societal divide, in our case, between the Somewheres who watch the game of football and the Anywheres who run it.

The global nature of the Anywheres suggests that attitudes and sentiments of the elites are no longer nationally based and grounded but crosses borders and continents. The globalised nature of the new elites could be seen, for example, in the rapid spread of a gesture and attitude imported into Europe, from America, in a matter of days. It could similarly be seen in the ubiquitous BLM support being given by the ‘new class’ (Gouldner 1979), or the ‘new elites’ (Lasch 1995)—the corporations, media, police, indeed from almost every ‘elite’ section of western society. For Dixon et al. (2022, p. 2), what we were witnessing in the knee-taking gesture in football was a form of mutual self-congratulation, one where sport (or at least those who run it) had ‘found its moral voice’.

In writings about the new ‘class’, one of the key dimensions expressed is that of the disconnected nature of the new elites. Living in culturally separated worlds, it is argued that those in authority and running institutions are increasingly cut off from people who are not the same as they are. This disconnected bubble world of the new elites was evident in the shock experienced and expressed by the commentariat and officials when the fans emerged from the enforced lockdown and booed the knee-taking players. There was a silence from those commentating on this first day of fans returning as the boos rang out, a collective jaw dropping, of disbelief that so many ordinary people did not subscribe to the new moral script.

This new type of morality, or moralising, appears to be of some importance, something that is now embedded within the culture of the new elites, developed in part through the imperative to protect the vulnerable. Here we find that new (invented) ‘communities’ are advocated for, something that helps to give a sense of moral legitimation to an otherwise disconnected section of society.

Having initially started with BLM’s focus on racism and anti-racism, the Football Association and other football organisations now had to deal with the public and with an opposition they had not anticipated. As a result, they eventually, and defensively, shifted the meaning of knee-taking to an expression of opposition to all forms of discrimination—from a sentiment of support for a specific ‘vulnerable group’ (black people) onto the rainbow coalition of all groups who have been defined (labelled) as having ‘protected characteristics’.

Fans who had accepted the various anti-racist ‘Kick it out’ campaigns over the years, arguably because they are indeed against racism, reacted to the imported and the more aggressive nature of the knee-taking gesture. It was as if they could feel the finger of racism was being pointed at them, a finger that expressed more overtly the antagonism and the condescension embodied within the new elites, a condescension that was personified in the subservient nature of taking the knee. Perhaps, at least implicitly, many fans sensed that what they were being asked to do was to take the knee themselves to the new moral sentiment of the elites.

Disconnected and unable to engage with the fan reaction, the initial response by those commentating and running the game was to double down. To demand more knee-taking against what they saw as the clear expression of racism. Rather than discussing, debating, and engaging with fans’ disagreements, the separation of sentiments was simply reinforced, and booing fans were represented as something bordering on evil, in contradistinction to the ‘good’ elites.

To some extent this reaction helps to explain why the support for BLM and the promotion of it by many Western European football authorities was said to have nothing to do with politics. The world of politics involves a public and relies upon debate and discussion. What we were witnessing here was something different, something more associated with morality, religion perhaps, with a therapeutic form of blaspheme. To run with McWhorter’s analysis, the elites who told fans to ‘educate themselves’ and to become ‘aware’ were not engaging with minds but with souls.

The idea that elite anti-racism is a new religion may work at a linguistic level, but it feels unsatisfactory. It embodies politics, morality, culture, a therapeutic sensibility, and a new type of discipline and punishment, but to call it a religion seems to miss as much as it illuminates. In this respect, further research into the essence of ‘awareness raising’ could help to give a name to the nature of governance that we now see both in football and across society. Likewise, further work on this idea of education and of ‘educating yourself’ could help to develop an analysis of the nature of the new elites. For, as Arendt noted seventy years ago, ‘Whoever wants to educate adults really wants to act as their guardian and prevent them from political activity’ (Arendt 1954).