Below is an edited version of a speech given at University College London’s Union Debating Society. It was delivered in opposition to the motion, ‘This house believes that Tottenham Hotspur fans should stop chanting “Yid Army”’.
I’m going to make three quick points. The first is that when it comes to the meaning of words, context does matter. It matters who is using a word, the reasons for using a word, and the intent behind using the word. This applies to the word ‘nigger’, for instance - there’s a difference in meaning between a black person using it with a friend, and a white racist using it. And it certainly applies to Spurs’ fans use of the words ‘Yid’, ‘Yiddo’, ‘Yid Army’, and so on. It’s been said before, but it’s worth restating: Spurs fans use the word Yid as a positive form of self-identification, not as a term of anti-Semitic abuse. In the mouths of Spurs fans, Yid is an affirmative word, not a negative one. They greet their favourite players, from Glenn Hoddle to Les Ferdinand, with the chant ‘Yiddo’ - and the players, recognising that it means they’re loved by the fans, embrace it. That’s how positive a word it is. Players don’t experience Yiddo as an insult; they want to be Yiddos.
Of course, Spurs fans are aware of the potential negative connotations of the word. During the 1960s and 1970s, Spurs, a club that historically had a large Jewish fanbase, were routinely taunted by opposition fans as ‘Yids’. Their response was to take the taunt and adopt it as their own. They turned a term of terrace abuse into a term of terrace pride. For Spurs fans, there is something inspiring about the moment when they’re all singing and chanting ‘Yid Army’; it’s that empowering, quasi-tribal moment that all football fans love, the moment when you feel part of a collective, something larger than yourself, something empowering - especially if your team’s winning.
The second point is to concede that, yes, in the mouths of Chelsea fans or West Ham fans or Leeds United fans, Yid is a term of abuse. Likewise, the hissing which some fans have indulged in to evoke the gas chambers does play upon Spurs fans’ self-identification as Yiddos. Like Liverpool fans singing and gesturing about the Munich air disaster to Manchester Utd fans, hissing at Spurs fans is meant to be offensive. It is meant to taunt and wind up the Yids. But here’s the thing - when opposition fans use the Y-word and its various associations, they do so in the context of a footballing rivalry, not the context of a social conflict - it is 90-minute bigotry, not actual bigotry.