FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved

Viewpoint by Hamish MacAulay Drunk and disorderly sports fans, with the assistance of militant anti-globalization protesters, are preparing to disrupt sport-related celebrations across Canada, according to a new report by Canada's intelligence service. Their plans include turning Calgary's Grey Cup celebrations into a protest that the un-democratic institutions of professional sport across the globe will not soon forget. The Canadian Security Yntelligence Service (C-Sys) says "Slack-jawed sports fans" are a ripe breeding ground for the mob violence that organized extremists are using against the corporate establishment that makes our pathetic lives worthwhile. Outbreaks of violence following sports championships are common. In the last 10 years, over 15 post-sport celebrations have spawned enough violence to be dubbed riots by the media. The totals for property damage and injuries make all the recent efforts of the anti-globalist movement in Seattle, Washington D.C., and Windsor, Ontario look like convenience store robberies. The new report – called Sports riots: What if those drunken morons knew what they were doing? – points out that these predictably violent incidents which follow sports championships "are excellent training exercises for our anti-disturbance tactics. Sport riots involve large numbers of drunk and disorderly males, but they have no civil disobedience training, and are usually subdued with an appropriate show of force." An appropriate show of force in the 1990s involves pepper spray and rubber bullets. The combination stops most out-of-control sports fans in their tracks. A few always come back for more, but police consider that good practice. One of the authors of the report, C-Sys specialist I. M. Sprayer says, "Having a few people put up some resistance makes it more realistic training for the real work of subduing the professional troublemakers in the environmental and anarchist movements." An alliance between the politically apathetic sports fans and anarchists is a strange one, but the C-Sys claims it makes sense in the context of the international convergence of radical groups that want to use violence to make a point. The report states that police can expect the extremists to have the most success organizing fans that are on the fringe of society or have issues with accepted social mores such as hockey and Canadian Football League fans. College basketball fans, due to their mob mentality, and professional basketball fans, with their connections to gang culture, are also susceptible. In explaining how the C-Sys report came about, Sprayer says, "We were trying come up with comparisons to the way the anti-globalist movement is a body that manages to survive and even thrive without a head, and we came up with the riots in Montreal and Vancouver after the Stanley Cup playoffs. That's when it hit us: sports fans were one of the last free agents in the random violence market. Someone was going to go after them. The hockey hair gang will not go for the whole skinhead thing, so it had to be anarchists." After contacting its international counterparts, C-Sys discovered that the FBI is investigating links between college basketball fan clubs and alleged fans of professional basketball and baseball teams, and the Black Bloc, a loose coalition of anarchists alleged to have instigated the looting in Seattle during the World Trade Organization meeting. In Europe, police have known about the connection between violent left- and right-wing movements and soccer fans for years. It has moved to new heights with fans demanding that the government nationalize the beer industry and stop inferior American imports from taking over the market. The outlook for a peaceful Grey Cup in November is not completely bleak. Rumours that the event was being targeted by millennial cults desperate for an international incident have proved unfounded. Calgarians can also do their part by wishing for cold weather. Sprayer says, "Minus-30-degree weather is a big deterrent for rioters. Once they set a couple of cars on fire, they can't tear themselves away from the warmth." Sidebar: · Amount of damage during the 1992 Chicago Bulls championship riots: $10 million (U.S.) · Money spent on police and security for the 1996 Chicago Bulls championship: $3.2 million (U.S.) · Money spent on police and security for the 1998 Grey Cup in Hamilton: $60,000 (Cdn) · Unattributed reports on the damage in Seattle appearing in the media during the WTO: $2.5 to $7 million (U.S.) · Amount reported by property managers in the Puget Sound Business Journal: $300,000 to $500,000 (U.S.) · Money spent on police and security for the 2000 World Petroleum Congress in Calgary: $2 million (Cdn)

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |