Kmflett's Blog

Taking the Knee: a statement against injustice

No doubt there were some boos(lots of applause) and myriad racists making political statement about how they don’t think there should be politics in sport but both the England and Italians team took the knee against racism and injustice at Wembley on Sunday.

It is not something they have invented.

Players in the US NFL have done it for some years and  ex-President Trump regularly engaged in racist rants against them for doing so.

The matter became refocused after the murder of George Floyd a year ago but the modern tradition can be traced back to Martin Luther King who in 1965 with others took the knee after he was arrested for protesting on voting rights. This remains an issue in the US and Johnson is trying to make it one in the UK.

The connection between taking the knee and the Black Lives Matter movement and indeed political currents around exists in the sense that they are about fighting injustice. Some of them may be Marxists and Marxists certainly fight against oppression.

Does that mean England’s football players are Marxists? None have declared themselves but since Marx himself noted that material being determines consciousness and they are all at least reasonably well-off it seems somewhat unlikely.

I spoke to Emma Smith of the Goal website at greater length on the matter:

https://www.goal.com/en/news/southgate-is-right-to-say-they-will-keep-doing-it-why-taking-the-/1slnuikkvttjz1v7ghdpj9z2fo