The Cult of the Personality

It is now 8 weeks since the NUST AGM and 4 weeks since the publication of election results to the NUST Board. In that time, contrary to promises made at the AGM, no attempt has been made to interact or consult with the wider fan base. This doesn't surprise me; it should, but it doesn't. This depresses me; it shouldn't, but it does. It is also 1 week since "Stand" issue #7 was published, with this article by me in it.... I think it rather relevant....

We must carry on the widest agitation among the masses in favour of an armed uprising and make no attempt to obscure this… or to befog it in any way. We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action. Lenin; Lessons of the Moscow Uprising.

Without question, the internet has had many positive effects on the nature and culture of being a football supporter in the 21^st Century.  Aided by a quick-fire cyber evolution over the past decade that has seen fans interacting and organising through the influence of independent websites, message boards, blogs and social media platforms, Twitter in particular, it has become far easier to discuss not just your club, on line and in real life, but the myriad, disparate elements that combine to make up the life of the contemporary fan, many of whom say they are, at some elemental if ill-defined level, #AgainstModernFootball.

I presume you noticed my semi-ironic use of the typography consistent with a Twitter hashtag at the end of the previous paragraph; this is on account of a process of social media Darwinism, which has seen Twitter wipe the floor with every rival in terms of finding a place for fans of different teams to interact. It is necessary, however shambolically, to get on the dance floor. While most message boards provide team-specific emotional support networks or alternately bear pit on-line fight clubs for fans who vary from laidback dabblers in search of general chat to alpha male, testosterone infused, swivel eyed zealots, the general message board now seems a curious anachronism. Well-meaning dullards with social consciences on their sleeves populate The Guardian, while non-match going polyversity Media Studies and Sociology dropouts lamely attempt to outdo each other in the postmodern, ironic stakes on the like of the frighteningly precious WSC forum. 5,000 word polysyllabic posts simply don’t grab the attention of today’s crusading #AgainstModernFootball cultural gauleiter, not when they have 140 characters, as well as an appended smartphone snap, to describe a Casual Connoisseur polo shirt to feast their intellect on instead.

My league club is Newcastle United; I’ve seen them twice in 2013/2014, preferring instead to concern myself with the role of programme editor at my local non-league side, Heaton Stannington of Northern League Division 2, though I am deeply involved with the pressure group NUFC Fans United. Despite media suggestions to the contrary, many of which are unquestioningly accepted and embellished by followers of other clubs, Newcastle United’s support isn’t predominantly composed of fickle, impatient post 92, replica shirt wearing Sky fans demanding the return of Keegan and a Champions’ League win yesterday. Newcastle United fans, by and large, are ordinary football fans, just like you, who care passionately about the fortunes of their club. Some of them wear club shop tat, while others sashay up the Barrack Road catwalk in designer garb that must cost far more than their annual season ticket. I can’t even begin to speculate how they afford to dress like that.

When people ask me, at work, at Heaton Stan games, in the pub or on Twitter, whether it is difficult for me not to watch my team play, I reply that it is almost impossible, but my personal mantra remains that where Newcastle United finish in the league and who plays for or manages of the team is utterly irrelevant while Mike Ashley owns the club. My unshakeable belief is that we need Mike Ashley OUT and 100% Fan Ownership IN, though I am prepared to accept 51% Fan Ownership as a transitional demand. I realise my view is a minority one, but I hold it fervently and constantly seek to persuade other fans, in the flesh and on Twitter, of the veracity of my belief. Unfortunately, I’m not having much luck, as an insidious apolitical, materialist weltanschauung appears to be gaining currency among those who would consider themselves the advanced section of NUFC’s support.

The quotation that prefaces this article is an appropriate one; supporters of Lenin, then and now, see themselves as part of a self-selected revolutionary vanguard, perhaps small in number and generally slavishly devoted to some charismatic autodidactic absolute ideological leader, but advanced in terms of their political understanding and ability to guide the masses in the correct direction to enhance their political demands. Frankly, as a subscriber to the anti-authoritarian avowedly Marxist theories posited by the Situationist International, such a standpoint nauseates me, but also it begins to alarm me, more and more, especially as I see Twitter as being the breeding ground for similar wrongheaded, perhaps unconsciously proto Leninist philosophical theories among football fans, especially at my own club.

Despite the above average season on the pitch, supporter unrest with the toxic Ashley regime is growing on Tyneside; membership of NUFC Fans United and the moribund FSF approved Newcastle United Supporters’ Trust is massively up and a march before the Liverpool home game, under the banner Time For Change was well attended, even by those well-meaning types in Wonga replica tops who had previously steadfastly claimed they were only interested in supporting the team on the pitch. This to me was a glorious affirmation of the Situationist concept of spectacle, as Guy Debord described it; a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambience and a game of events. It was a revolutionary moment for almost all Newcastle United fans and garnered almost universal supporter approval. However those among the support who were most conspicuous by their absence from the march, from subsequent engagement with fans’ groups and from any meaningful involvement in attempting to save the soul of the clubs are those who it seems are most likely to use #AMF as a hashtag, as #AMF appears to mean little else other than a shallow insistence on being conspicuously attired in exclusive threads on a match day.

Indeed, the majority of them took to Twitter to denounce and denigrate those who took part, generally on the superficial basis of the attire of the marchers. Such appalling commodity fetishism is the clearest example imaginable of false consciousness among a layer of NUFC’s support whose inertia and social media profile mark them out to be de facto ideologically right wing, whether they accept this or not. Marking the distinction between the haves and the have nots in terms of their wardrobe is Thatcherism, pure and simple.

I think it undeniable that many current football casuals, as opposed to the originals from the 80s, are middle-class, conformist, affluent and socially, if not politically, conservative. They probably view any suggestion they are either Leninists or Thatcherites with equal bemused revulsion, but their class origins and loyalties perhaps need serious consideration. Certainly, to be able to afford £600 jackets one must have a more than decent income. While some of those espousing the quality of 6876 do have a public school education, this is by no means compulsory. As the Duke of Wellington observed, one does not need to have been born in a stable to be a horse; conformist attitudes, such as veneration of the forces of social control, by criticising players such as James McClean who chose not to wear a remembrance poppy, or regarding the inquest verdict after the execution of Mark Duggan as right and proper, on account of ideological proximity to the police, seem to as common among the bona drag popinjays as the replica shirt wearers.

However, there is an even more bizarre ironic inconsistency to the confused ideology of a gang who are closer to Leon Brittain than Leon Trotsky. Thursday evenings allows the Materialist Marxists to remember their social conscience for an hour; Question Time sees them attempting to be more Karl Marx than Karl Lagerfeld. In such a limited time scale and on such a restricted platform, they denounce coalition politicians with a scorn normally reserved for their opinions of less well dressed NUFC fans. In my eyes though, adopting such a stance, as well as an #AMF hashtag does not materially advance the cause of football fans one iota.

Football fans, at Newcastle United as at every club, whether they shop at Peaceful Hooligan or Primark, are of equal value and equal validity. We are all one and we are all equal. We do not need charismatic self-appointed leaders imposing their will on the minority of servile self-interested camp followers of such quasi dictators, while claiming this is the authentic voice of the #AMF tendency. The game is ours; the clubs are ours. Let us unite democratically, as we are all of equal worth and have the right to an equal voice, and seek to assume what is culturally, spiritually and emotionally rightfully ours. Let’s be properly UNITED.