Is football a religion?

[tom1992]

Do you consider football a "drug" similar to religion?
Many people are really put to sleep with football, they only worry about their team and just get violent with other teams (that at the end have similar backrounds).
The way people speak about football, they would die for it.

At least in my country, football consumes people...Where I live, people get killed every time there is a football match.

[Sam_b]

I hope not because I am not religious.

COME ON YOU REDS!

[citizen of industry]

Are the teams based on region and class?

[DDR]

Are the teams based on region and class?

Some, in the case of religion you have Celtic vs. Rangers. In case of class Betis vs. Sevilla. In cuestion of politics Real Madrid vs. Athletic de Bilbao. And so on.

[ColonelCossack]

All hail Arsene Wenger that art in heaven.

[GatesofLenin]

I know a few NFL fans that treat it as life or death. Remember the Raiders vs 49ers game a few months ago, 49er fan got beat to death for crying out loud!

[Franz Fanonipants]

Tim Tebow is the messiah

[Red Noob]

Do you consider football a "drug" similar to religion?

In the sense it acts as a detractor, and keeps people from focusing on what really matters, and makes them loose their grip on reality, then yes.



Many people are really put to sleep with football, they only worry about their team and just get violent with other teams (that at the end have similar backrounds).
The way people speak about football, they would die for it.

At least in my country, football consumes people...Where I live, people get killed every time there is a football match.

It's not only with football and religion, this kind of obsessive behavior takes over people in all different labels, from the 'Red/Blue' team in competitive video games like Call of Duty or Halo, to 'my country over your country' nationalism.]

[Kitty_Paine]

I wouldn't argue that "Football" and other sports don't have behavior "modifying" properties similar to that of some drugs. And obviously religion does, people live and die, suffer and prosper all because of its opiate and psychotic like properties. But a lot of things in this world share the same affects, consumerism in general does - People being trampled to death on "Black Friday"; gangs of masked men robbing trucks full of "to be released" games (modern warfare 3 I believe it was in germany?) and numerous other sources of people being shot, pepper sprayed and beated over material goods.

It all follows a trend, putting one's own well being and good fortune ahead of everyone elses. It's disgusting and it's a trend that capitalism reinforces.

I think it also has to do with people lacking real meaning in their lives; having little purpose. When your life is "empty" so to speak or you have little purpose except for a mundane life going to work from 9 to 5 you absorb yourself in materialistic things and get overly involved in entertainment for the masses. Basically if your life is empty and unfufilling, why not consume yourself with football and fill the void with this entertaining property and trick yuorself into thinking that your life has meaning through your involvement in football. All of you know someone like this, I promise. And not necessarily though football, but through other mediums as well. And I'm not saying that all people who love football or other forms or entertainment or material goods are like this, so don't freak on me, lol.

So in short, an unfulfilling life (which I believe is caused my Marx's theory of alienation of the labourer, as explaned in some of his earlier manuscripts) and a society that reinforces individuality and consumerism (which communism would change) often times leads people to obsess over things such as sports, shopping and various other forms of distraction that we use to fill ourselves with meaning and become better than the man next to you. Sickening...

[workersadvocate]

How many hardcore sports fans do you know that aren't reactionary assholes? Turn on sports on the TV, and reactionary shit just oozes out of them. It's even worse when alcohol is added to the sport spectating event. Sexist, homophobic, national chauvinist and "fuck off I'm okay" individualist crap, explicitly and implicitly promoted by the corporatist sports culture and its celebrities.
Wanna see the backbone of future American reactionary shock troops? Just walk into any middle class areas' sports bars and look around.

[Veovis]

Tim Tebow is the messiah

He certainly makes of big show of praying to him anyway. :rolleyes:

[Misanthrope]

Is football a religion?

See: Holligans.
See: FIFA's role in Serbia with NATO

Futbol is followed by so many people. FIFA is a political force and should be dealt with just as any other capitalist force.

[F9]

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."-William 'Bill' Shankly

I rest my case, i have nothing more to add than, HELL YEAH!:cool:

[workersadvocate]

There is not a chance that sports culture as-is in imperialist countries could be permitted in a workers' state.
Question: has anyone here ever in their life encountered an integrated (ethnically diverse) sports bar in America?

[Sputnik_1]

It's unfortunately often an excuse for violence. If it becomes obsessive then yeah, it looks kinda suspiciously dogmatic and cult-like to me. Some of my friends like watching football as innocently as I like for example, watching cartoons. It depends on a person, but it can get pretty nasty.

[bricolage]

How many hardcore sports fans do you know that aren't reactionary assholes?
So so so so many.

The whole view here that sports is a 'drug' or a 'religion' is really just a regurgitation of all these kind of 'drug' arguments, namely that the common person is so passive and malleable that they are turned into automatons just by watching the TV or controlled and pacified just by going to a football match. It's all completely patronising.

In the UK football was always the sport of the working class, the introduction of all seater stadiums, the hyper-commercialisation of the game (and before anyone comments yes it was always a business, just not a very profitable one beforehand) and thus the jacking up of ticket prices has served to diminish this slightly and turn it over in parts to the 'prawn sandwich' brigade. However in many ways football fans are still perceived as they always were, as a working class/underclass rabble, too stupid to think of anything but Saturdays match and too dangerous to be allowed to either. On the contrary 'hardcore sports fans' are normal human beings like all you who think you are so superior, yes there have been football fans that go 'paki-bashing', but there have been football fans on strike, football fans in riots, football fans in unions, communist parties, pseudo-councils and so forth. There were West Ham fans that travelled to France taking on the National Front, there were Yorkshire mining teams that smashed up scab team grounds in Nottingham, there are Celtic fans that are involved in more refugee solidarity than you can ever imagine, there were football grounds across the country raising money for the miners strike... and this is just the UK.

Look, I see a lot of people here are commenting from the US and I don't know much about sports there cos I'm not really a big fan of most of them. Based on what little I've seen on shit TV shows it's always presented as American football and stuff having its base in college jock culture, maybe that affects something I dunno. On the other hand I really find it hard to believe that the majority of the American working class aren't some way into some sports. Are they all 'reactionary assholes'?

[bricolage]

Futbol is followed by so many people. FIFA is a political force and should be dealt with just as any other capitalist force.
Music is listened to by many more people, and the record labels that produce it are massive corporations often with political influence. They should be dealt with as any other capitalist force...
But does this mean we get rid of music or say it's a religion?
Because like all football fans all music fans act in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons?

[Misanthrope]

Music is listened to by many more people, and the record labels that produce it are massive corporations often with political influence. They should be dealt with as any other capitalist force...
But does this mean we get rid of music or say it's a religion?
Because like all football fans all music fans act in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons?

No. I wasn't implying that.

The bureaucracy in professional sports really does ruin the purity though

[workersadvocate]

Music is listened to by many more people, and the record labels that produce it are massive corporations often with political influence. They should be dealt with as any other capitalist force...
But does this mean we get rid of music or say it's a religion?
Because like all football fans all music fans act in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons?

Of course, the self-emancipated working class would still have sports and music, but I can:t imagine either being anything like what is pushed as 'popular' sports culture or 'popular' music culture today. I think there wil necessarily be a cultural revolution, likely initiated by the most oppressed, to completely root out all remaining vestiges and bastions of reaction in society, to attack and destroy every last source from which class distinctions and oppressive social antagonisms emerge. Consider what that will mean as far as changes in sports and music. In order to acheive communism, we have to break ALL our chains. Once we do, because we have to for genuine human liberation and because the alternative is more exploitation, barbarism,destruction even on a scale that human extinction is threatened...we won't want to go back.

That future begins with us, in the here and now. Communists and communist politics have to exemplify the tommorrow we are pointing to with our fellow proletarians. We must consistently develop, promote and practice a proletarian culture of liberation.

[Commissar Rykov]

Look, I see a lot of people here are commenting from the US and I don't know much about sports there cos I'm not really a big fan of most of them. Based on what little I've seen on shit TV shows it's always presented as American football and stuff having its base in college jock culture, maybe that affects something I dunno. On the other hand I really find it hard to believe that the majority of the American working class aren't some way into some sports. Are they all 'reactionary assholes'?
A lot of the Working Class is into sports though they usually divide on what sports they like. You have your Baseball Fans, Basketball Fans, and Football Fans. Though you are seeing an increase in Combat Sports Fans. I wouldn't say the majority of fans are reactionary by any stretch the only sport I can think of that gets close is NASCAR due to prayers before races and other garbage. Though when you look at the roots of NASCAR that is specifically got a lot of its start in the South during Prohibition it kind of makes sense it would be more reactionary.