The predictable racists of Ibrox

I have often remarked here when you authorise one type of racism; you open the door to other varieties.

It would be a brave stenographer who would contest the assertion that the Ibrox klanbase is defined by anti-Irish racism.

Moreover, this hate fest allows them to sample other flavours of this most atavistic of hatreds.

Even their own players have not been off-limits in the past.

In 2009 Maurice Edu was racially abused by some of his own supporters.

I revisited the situation 10 years after the event in 2019.

It was sad to relate that there had been very little discernible progress on the issue of racism at Ibrox.

Moreover, there seemed to be a general sense of denial that there was a problem there in the first place.

Of course, the major change at Ibrox in that decade was the death of the original Rangers in 2012  and the creation of  Sevco from the body parts from the liquidated club.

The racism of the Ibrox klanbase is definitely something that survived that historic summer.

In the same month that I looked back at the Maurice Edu incident in 2019, UEFA ordered a partial stadium closure at Ibrox for racist chanting.

When Glenn Kamara was racially abused last season, there was the strange sight of the klan suddenly discovering that racism was a bad thing.

At the time, I did not put much faith in the bona fides of this new trend amongst the home crowd at Ibrox.

Rangers player Conor Goldson can be seen here weighing in to back up his teammate.

The same chap had to take the Ibrox support to task about taking a knee.

I have been writing about the racism of the Ibrox klanbase for longer than Mr Goldson has been playing his football there.

Actually, “disgusting but not surprising”  encapsulates it rather well.

Today this appeared on my Twitter.

It refers to the featured image in this piece.

A perfectly innocent snap of ex-Celtic player Shunsuke Nakamura with his dog.

It did not take me long on Twitter to find some of the klan comments that the Footballers with animals account complained about.

Dear reader, they’re just too disgusting to post here; they really are.

All I can say is that the Everyone Anyone campaign has most of its work in front of them.

I find the news about racism and the Ibrox klanbase depressingly predictable.

One could almost say that their response to the most innocent of stimuli is Pavlovian…