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A Depressing Denouement

I find it very depressing that the only thing everybody is talking about when it comes to yesterday's Euro 2020 final is, as always, racism.

Millions of people all over the world watched and enjoyed the match. It was tough, tense and exciting. Somebody has to win, somebody has to lose. It's always painful to be on the losing side, particularly at the end of a very closely fought contest. Deciding tournament finals by penalty kicks seems particularly egregious. I am not sure why the football authorities decided on this remedy. Why can't competitors go on playing until there is a clear winner? It's what happens in other sports--baseball and tennis immediately spring to mind.

Be that as it may, that's what the football authorities decreed. Yesterday's final, like many other finals, was decided by the dreaded penalty kicks. What happened is what always happens: The team with nerves of steel prevailed. England, as is often its wont, failed at the crucial penalty stage--and Italy won out. Still, Italy failed on penalty kicks in the 1994 World Cup Final, with its star player Roberto Baggio missing the crucial final kick. It happened also to Chelsea captain John Terry in the 2008 UEFA Champions League final. So, everybody has had his share of disappointments. That's the way it goes in sport. You accept it, and start planning for the next tournament.

But that's not the way England has taken it. National hysteria has today taken hold of the country, but a hysteria of a peculiar sort. What's happening in England now is repugnant. Politicians and media and Internet worthies are demanding that the nation undergo self-laceration over its racism. Why? Well, we are told that black England players--particularly the three who missed their kicks--have been subjected to racist abuse since last night.

That may well be true. I haven't looked on social media, and don't particularly want to. I try to avoid reading stupid abusive comments. However, stupid abusive comments are part-and-parcel of the Internet. People hide, and have always hidden, behind anonymity. It enables them to be as insulting, as nasty and as threatening as they like without facing any consequences. There is no reason to pay any attention to people too cowardly to use their own names when hurling insults at others.

The proper response to the racist abuse would have been to dismiss it as too pathetic and worthless to merit serious attention. Instead, through the intervention of Boris Johnson, Prince William and the rest of Britain's buffoonish Tory government, stupid comments made by stupid people (many probably children or teenagers), something idiotic has been elevated into a national and even international crisis. Instead of celebrating a great sporting contest and a fine England footballing performance (the best in more than 50 years), the country and the world is talking, once again, about racism.

Twitter, according to this story in "The Hill" has taken down 1000 racist tweets. 1000! Let's see. Tens of millions of people around the world watched the match. 1000 tweets is a statistically insignificant number. Yet the story, as far as the media and the politicians are concerned, is these 1000 tweets. Our media-political class is truly pathetic.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/562527-world-disgusted-by-racist-abuse-toward-players

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October 01, 2025
TG 1978: E.U.'s Plan To Override Hungary's Objections In Order To Get Ukraine In

George Szamuely discusses the latest European Union ruse to ignore its own rules, not to mention the strong objections of Hungary, in order to get Ukraine in as a member.

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Live Chat
September 29, 2025
Monday Night At The Movies: "The Wicker Man" (1973)

Join Gagglers for "The Wicker Man"!
The screening starts at 3 p.m. ET sharp.
Share all of your thoughts, comments and criticisms on the Live Chat.

01:33:08
September 28, 2025
The Gaggle Music Club: Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements. Completed in 1945, the symphony is one Stravinsky's most important late works. Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Symphony Society, the symphony premiered on Jan. 24, 1946 at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Stravinsky himself.

Often called Stravinsky's “first American symphony,” the composition shows his neoclassical language at its most taut: sharp orchestration, motor-like rhythms, lean textures.

Although Stravinsky often denied overt programmatic meaning in his music, he later admitted that the Symphony in Three Movements was a “war symphony.” The first movement, for example, was inspired by newsreel footage of wartime scorched earth tactics. Its violent rhythms and jagged piano writing reflect mechanized destruction. The final movement was inspired by Allied military advances, including the crossing of the Rhine in 1945. The march rhythms and the relentless drive exude a sense of military ...

00:23:14
Monday Night At The Movies

Please choose which one of the following 8 movies you would like to have screened next Monday, Oct. 6.

The theme is "memory, time and discontinuity."

Please continue to vote after Oct. 6, so that we can determine the runner-up. The runner-up will be screened on Oct.13.

9 hours ago

Dear George

I've seen you get quite a lot of heat in YouTube comments about your, nuanced unemotional.. political soliloquies / essays especially if you talk about Russia or Trump , I think most of these people tend to be TDS types or fanboys/NPCs / bots , , I'm open minded, and prefer value free analysis, not ra ra ..dogma .. and I'm not a big fan of trump(at all) but I'm not interested in hearing frothing at the mouth slop , or Russia is bestest ever bs , " Ukraine Collapse" (, every episode for months , I will mention no names) .. , I think you're doing a great job . Keep it up

January 21, 2023
More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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