It is now sadly clear that the practice of taking the knee before a football match in the U.K., just like face masks, will be here forever. I had hoped that it would end at the end of last season. But that was of course ridiculously naive of me. Just as I was ridiculously naive to believe that lockdowns would end after two weeks. Or that mass vaccination would end the Covid hysteria. No, face masks and social distancing are here to stay. And who knows? Lockdowns may be here to stay as well.

In much the same way, the practice of taking the knee before the start of every match, adopted in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, is now here to stay. Football fans, who at first expressed their displeasure at this ritual, have now grown to accept it, much as a resentful public has grown to accept the permanence of massive incursions on personal freedom, all in the name of combating a disease from which 99.5 percent of those who succumb to it survive.

Initially, the practice of taking the knee was an homage to Black Lives Matter movement. However, when confronted by the dubious politics of the BLM organization, the football authorities (which of course all eagerly support this ritual) and the football players insist that all they are doing is protesting racism in football. Apparently, this is the only form of political protest allowed in sport. If a player were to protest Boris Johnson's policy on Brexit and Northern Ireland, say, or the treatment of Julian Assange, or the sanctions policy against Syria, or growing poverty and inequality, or the privatization of the National Health Service, he would very swiftly be marched off the field, hit with a hefty fine and warned that he will be banned from the Premier League forever if he keeps this up.

Protesting racism however is sanctioned, indeed mandated, by the football authorities. Every single player takes part in this ritual of taking the knee. Since it is impossible to believe that there isn't one player in the country who doesn't want to take the knee, that there isn't one player who doesn't believe that this is a meaningless, empty ritual that serves no purpose other than to make people feel good about themselves, one has to accept that an enormous amount of coercion is involved to get everyone in unison to drop to one knee.

This is coercion exercised by the football authorities to protest racism. Fine. Racism is reprehensible. But who are the racists? Who is practicing racism? The Football Association? UEFA? FIFA? The club owners? The club managers? The club coaches? The players? The club ancillary staff? Hard to believe it. If ever there were an activity in which there is a high level of participation from people of color, then it is professional sport, and particularly football. If ever there were an activity in which members of minorities make huge amounts of money, then it is professional sport, and particularly football. If players of color were earning less than their white counterparts, we would have heard about it long ago.

So, clearly, the "racist" sobriquet applies to someone other than the people who administer, and make giant dollops of money off, football. So to whom does it apply? Why, to the fans of course. To the dirty, stupid, ignorant, uneducated masses who show up week after week to pay inordinate sums of money that they don't have to watch their beloved teams play. They are the racists. The very people who ensure that overrated players are grotesquely overpaid, the very people who impoverish themselves in order to be able to follow their teams, they are the racists.

So the players, the managers, the owners all protest against the people who keep them in clover. In this, this overpaid, overprivileged bunch of people are very much like all elites throughout the West. They define themselves by whom they feel superior to, by whom they get to despise daily. And every day--because there is some kind of a football match every day--they seize the opportunity to make their feelings of contempt known.