O/T:- Taking the knee - a double standard

[Lullapie]

What bothers me about the whole taking a knee thing is the expectation on people to do it, regardless of whether they want to or not. On top of that, there's this simplistic and dangerous argument that if you don't take the knee, you must be racist. In the same way that if you don't wear a poppy, you must have zero respect for people who fought and lost their lives serving the country. That's bull****.

In my opinion, what you think or feel about an issue is nobody's business unless you want it to be. Public gestures, particularly when performed through coercion, mean very little. I would rather live in a world where we all assumed everyone was decent and open-minded until they proved otherwise, rather than one where everyone is assumed guilty of thought-crime until they perform a certain gesture to prove otherwise.

Exceptional post Slack Pie.

[drillerpie]

There was some controversy in Italy after the match against Wales. A couple of the paragraphs in the article (taken from La Repubblica - the Italian equivalent of the Guardian) might be relevant to the conversation on here. Enrico Letta is the leader of the Italian version of the Labour Party.

I've done a very quick translation in English below each paragraph.

It seems La Repubblica hasn't read the script about pretending that taking the knee isn't connected to BLM. It also seems that the idea of people who don't want to take the knee not being pressured to do so, is as fanciful as it sounds.

di: Matteo Pinci
ROMA - 21 Giugno, 2021

"Inginocchiarsi? No a imposizioni dall'alto, ognuno è libero". Il presidente della Federcalcio Gabriele Gravina ha liquidato così il caso dei calciatori inginocchiati contro il razzismo. La protesta simbolo del movimento Black Lives Matter aveva generato polemiche dopo la gara col Galles: solo cinque azzurri su undici avevano scelto di inginocchiarsi prima del fischio d'inizio.

"Take the knee? No to imposing it from the top down, everyone is free to choose". This is how the President of the Italian FA liquidated the controversy over footballers taking the knee against racism. The protest, a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement, had generated controversy after the match against Wales: only five of the eleven azzurri chose to take the knee before kick off.


Letta agli azzurri: "Inginocchiatevi tutti"
"Vorrei fare un appello ai nostri giocatori: che si inginocchino tutti, perché francamente l'ho trovata una scena pessima. Se si mettono d'accordo sugli schemi di gioco, si mettono d'accordo anche su quello, è meglio anche perché i gallesi erano tutti inginocchiati, gli italiani no", ha detto il segretario del Pd Enrico Letta ospite di Lilli Gruber a Otto e mezzo su La7.

Letta says to the azzurri: :"Take the knee, all of you".

"I'd like to make an appeal to our players - that they all take the knee, because frankly I found it to be an awful scene. If they can agree on tactics, they should be able to agree about this too. It'd be better, because the Welsh all took the knee, but not all the Italians did.

[ForeignLegion]

Obviously the Italians are without any left wingers in their squad