What does white nationalism look like today? It looks like Etihad Man. A 41 year old ex-soldier in Northern Ireland turned civil engineering manager, whose idea of entertainment is physical and verbal racialized violence at the Etihad football (soccer) stadium in Manchester. He embodies how Thatcherism’s Great Moving Right Show turned into Brexit.
On Saturday, as you can see above, Etihad Man was among a reassuringly similar group of (mostly) middle-aged (almost entirely) white Manchester City fans, hurling objects like lighters and water bottles at Manchester United’s Brazilian midfielder Fred, while chanting racist abuse. His team were losing.
Anthony Burke, outlined above, happened to be photographed and video-ed while making so-called ‘monkey’ chants and gestures at Fred. No one chants by themselves, Burke was simply the most visible of the racist collective. As the video plays, you can lip read him chanting ‘You Black B*st*rd,’ together with the sweet white-haired older woman to his right (our left) and everyone else in shot.
Etihad Man was born in 1978, the year that Stuart Hall first diagnosed Mrs Thatcher’s ‘Great Moving Right Show.’ That movement has brought us to Brexit-Trumpism and doesn’t appear to be finished yet. It is embodied in Etihad Man. He lives in the suburbs. You know he voted for Brexit. He’s separated from his wife. He even has Black relatives. He wrote on Facebook: ‘Listen, I’m only racist c*** because I had a screen shot that made me look it.’ Never mind the video, then.
His well-paid job offers physical comforts. He must have paid at least £50 for his ticket–far more if it was being resold. He’s got a down vest and a nice jumper in case he gets cold. But jumping up and down like a ‘monkey’ will keep you warm too.
That’s actually his defense–he named himself and gave interviews. According to him, he was putting his hands in his pockets. Will it get him off? It might well–he’s out on bail already. But none of the others that share in his psychic rage at the sight of Blackness will be inconvenienced in any way.
For this segment of Middle England, the £50 race riot is the participatory equivalent of being at a Trump rally. Football crowds are self-directed with chants originating from the fans, not prompted by the club. And like the Trump audience, they’re enjoying themselves–only they get to direct their resentments and hatreds at an actual person, right there.
In class-ridden British stereotypes, ex-Army middle managers don’t throw objects and make racist chants. But they do. So while the response has concentrated on excluding one white person, the issue is all these white people in general. Or, more exactly, how does a city go from singing ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ together in 2017 after the bombing at Ariana Grande’s Manchester Arena concert, two miles away, to singing that?
It’s not all of Manchester, I know. But it is less than a week before a general election that has seen the Conservatives’ embrace of white nationalism return them to polling at the 43% level that elected Mrs. Thatcher on three occasions. According the right-wing ‘think tank’ Onward, this election was going to be determined by ‘Workington Man’:
‘an older, white, non-graduate man from the North of England, with strong rugby league traditions and a tendency to vote Labour.’
Almost immediately dismissed, Workington Man faded quickly and the alleged report is not to be found online anymore. But Etihad Man is all too real. Burke works for the Kier Group, a construction conglomerate who made £124 million declared profit on £4.5 billion revenues in financial year 2018-19.
Their webpage entitled “Quality, Diversity, Inclusion” features a group photograph of all white men in hard hats and hi-vis vests, cheering at the camera, as if a goal has been scored:
This idea of inclusion brings together the white nationalism of the football crowd with the Brexit-y uniform of the Yellow Vest. That’s right, the anti-Europeans have appropriated a European symbol of anti-austerity to indicate their support for the UK’s Brexit party of austerity.
Kier do quietly admit:
“We know things aren’t perfect yet – for example, we would like to see a greater number of women and people from ethnically diverse backgrounds fully represented in our organisation.”
One would be a start.
Etihad Man takes his whites-only football culture from work to football and back again. It doesn’t trouble him that his stadium is named after the airline of the United Arab Emirates, whose money has turned Manchester City from an also-ran into one of the top clubs in Europe. I wouldn’t turn up at the Etihad in a keffiyeh though, let alone a hijab.
The response from organized football has been to call for Burke to be banned and for ‘education.’ But Kick It Out, the official anti-racism group, make the limitations of this approach visible on their home page.
While there are three visibly Black British men in this banner, they are all cropped by the frame. Only the young Black woman at bottom left can be fully seen. Meanwhile five white people, including England captain Harry Kane, can be fully seen with two more cropped. It’s a step up from the Kier Group but not very far.
For Etihad Man loves Harry Kane, the white English center forward, wearing the Cross of St George beloved of white nationalists. Etihad Man might be part of England Away, the notorious England traveling fans who routinely vandalize European cities while drunk on cheap beer. He was definitely part of the Army in Northern Ireland, where he served with the Cheshire Regiment.
Etihad Man is already old news. Today’s headline in the Manchester Evening News is a ‘black alert’–it means that a local hospital can no longer guarantee patient safety because it’s so overcrowded. Did no one think for a minute about that name? More work for Kier Group, perhaps–they are in the top three health construction firms. All the people depicted on their Health webpage are visibly white.
