How To Spot a Racist

29 Mar, 2026

To Start: Some Clarification

I want to be clear about what kind of racism we are dealing with before we begin. This is not about the canteen lady who asked me (one of the only brown kids) if I knew the ham and cheese panini had pork in it for seven years straight, it isn't about the microaggressions, the othering, the dirty looks. The internalised product of the horrors of the United Kingdom are for another day. No, this is about the kid who cornered me after class to ask if I was a muslim, the guy in the lobby who starts saying racial slurs and the average EDL'er.

Now, About That Lobby

One of the frustrations with getting into a more online focused gaming community instead of the comparatively cosy world of fighting games (where the online was so bad for so long that the community now has a central focus on offline first) is the sheer amount of everyday bigotry that just, happens. Several times I joined a new Rematch team after playing with someone in the official disord, only to find out that them, or the team captain, or their best friend was entirely comfortable calling every black avatar they saw a monkey and even just calling black people in the discord racial slurs to their face. I was struck with both disappointment and the acknowledgment that yes, although the community I spend my time in is mostly progressive now, online gaming is still very much Like That.

Now I had a task, because unlike previous years, a lot of these people weren't comfortable speaking their mind at first. They would wait until you had a repour with them and try and get you 'in on the joke', they almost viewed it as a bonding exercise, but the question remained...

How do I spot these fucking weirdos before that happens?

I was racking my brain over this until I came to a pretty simple realisation.

The thing about bigots is that they are by and large all pathetic losers.

The moment I noticed this is the moment my tact changed, I would talk about my own life and in turn about the lives of the people I was on call with, a guy from Manchester having a playful argument with his girlfriend, a TA at a SEN school in London, a 40 year old dad with seven kids (yes really), all of these people had things going on in their lives, they had a real social network and regularly spoke to people who loved them. They were personable and made conversation, they seemed content.

The driving force of bigotry is isolation, and so, the targets of radicalisation are the isolated. The kind of people who don't have social networks to fall back on, who don't leave their house and meet people from different backgrounds and cultures and are thus not duped by the scaremongering of outside forces. Unfortunately, as you probably already know, this phenomenon is all to common. And it's getting worse across Europe and the US.

I Lied To You: This Article Is About Football Leftism

The thing is, there is one place where the scourge of increased isolation has not yet hit young men, one place where the young men who consistently vote for the far right were actually 3 times more likely to vote against the tide of fascism in the last election, and it's the same place where a lot of our more well connected Rematch players have come from, the UK.

By and large the UK has a lot of the same issues has the rest of Europe and the US, decades of cuts have left social services on a lifeline if they even exist at all, public transit is also struggling outside of London which can make getting to and from any third spaces difficult. But there are third spaces that have survived in spite of this.

Football leagues, like the little league I coach at on Saturday mornings, are so culturally ingrained in the UK that they seemed to have escaped the austerity measures that have plagued the rest of young adult life¹. In fact, 5-a-side is really common across all age groups, providing (primarily but by no means exclusively) men in the UK with a sense of community and a tangible connection to their communities in a way that feels so uncommon in the modern era.

This is also true (to a lesser extent) of football fandom, be it in stadiums or in pubs, thousands if not millions of people across the country gather every week in a communal social setting, friends are made, drinks are had, and a group that is so often radicalised in other parts of the world feels a little more at home. Keeping pub culture alive also helps close the social gap between men and women, which in part explains why the discrepancy between young men and women is so much smaller than in other countries.

The ties culturally also give football a space in the communal fabric of the country. It is basically secondary to the weather when it comes to small talk, and it's much easier to jump into a more fun conversation from it if you're interested.

I would be remiss if I did not point out the more explicit sides of this across the beautiful game. For one, football players are being increasingly racially abused across the country, whilst football may slow the tide, it is also inevitably going to experience the consequences of the UK's far right. In fact, it can be used maliciously at times to spread such an agenda, but unlike the rest of the country, the FA and it's players seem somewhat invested in actually combating it. Obviously they could and should do more, but campaigns like Kick It Out are genuinely successful, and the FA shows a lot of pride in the immigrant backgrounds of a lot of its players, pride that is often reciprocated by fans when the team is playing well.

I want to exemplify this for a second by talking about the Euro 2020 finals and the penalty shootout. The last three players on the penalty list were Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford & Bukayo Saka. All three of them are black, and all three of them experienced the kind of hate you would expect when they missed. Saka most of all as he was still a rising talent at the time, and he missed the last penalty.

What stands in contrast to the rest of the sporting world though, is how Saka was treated by fans after the fact². Everywhere he went, he was clapped, by everyone, even at arch rival stadiums, even at the most hostile grounds in the country. There was an almost completely unanimous sense of solidarity with him and his experience of abuse. Whilst we consider that the bare minimum in a just world, this world is not just, and it is so often the case that any pushback against the abuse of the white man is met with an even stronger backlash, and it does mean something that in spite of the rising racism across all other aspects of British life it's biggest cultural export has not yet followed suit.

Epilogue: The Right's Response

Reform and Farage have been much more willing to try and take advantage of the political capital in football. In fact, Farage recently did a press release where it appeared he had been given an exclusive tour of (and endorsement from) Ipswich Town. Interestingly, the CEO immediately put out a statement saying he was sorry for any offence and that Farage had just paid for a normal private tour and taken some pictures ³. I cannot think of another institution of this size that has ever done this when faced with Farage's slimy grip, the world of player power (and the diversity + age group of those players) truly puts us in a position where the largest cultural stronghold in the United Kingdom seems to wholeheartedly reject the fascist constantly parroted by the rest of the establishment.

Whilst Farage has historically corrupted British institutions from within, there are a selection of creators who exist to do so from outside the traditional political system. Clavicular, for example, recently claimed that going to a pub and watching sports is one of the worst things you can do⁴. In the interview he states that he believes most people have mis-prioritized lives, that people by and large aren't worth talking to, and that one should instead completely shut themselves off from others and read studies on how to improve their jawline. This is pathetic loser shit. It is the sign of a man who knows that the happiness and social wellbeing of other men is an existential threat to his politics and business model, because a happy man does not watch Clavicular, a man who plays 5-a-side with middle aged men every week knows that you can be content and have a potbelly and a hairline that has seen better days as long as you have people who love you. No, the incel must hold himself to an impossible standard to the point where he separates himself from anyone who is content with not meeting it.

Imagine telling the average pubby to looxsmaxx. You'd be called a fucking melon.

Thanks for reading! If you have any feedback my discord is chakkie