[BRIEF NOTE] Stupidity has precedents
Nov. 14th, 2005 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI was caught aback when I read, via ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
danthered, about Vladimir Zhirinovsky's offer to send football hooligans to France to deal with the rioters.
As Franklin Foer noted in his recent How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, in the former Yugoslavia soccer hooligans not only played a leading role in the nationalist polarization of the country, they even formed the nuclei of militias devoted to ethnic cleansing, of which not the least prominent were Arkan's Tigers, responsible in whole or in part for a variety of crimes against humanity including the massacre of a couple hundred Croats in the fallen city of Vukovar and the Srebrenica massacres. It seems that some stupidities do have precdents after all.
danthered, about Vladimir Zhirinovsky's offer to send football hooligans to France to deal with the rioters.A Russian politician has offered to send the country's violent soccer thugs to France in order to sort out the rioters.
Far right politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky says he already has hundreds of volunteers, many of whom have special forces training.
In a telegram sent to France, Zhirinovsky, who is also the Duma's deputy speaker, said: "We are ready with volunteer units of football fans and activists who have served in military combat hot spots.
"I am convinced that our initiative would restore total order and calm the rioting within 48 hours."
As Franklin Foer noted in his recent How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, in the former Yugoslavia soccer hooligans not only played a leading role in the nationalist polarization of the country, they even formed the nuclei of militias devoted to ethnic cleansing, of which not the least prominent were Arkan's Tigers, responsible in whole or in part for a variety of crimes against humanity including the massacre of a couple hundred Croats in the fallen city of Vukovar and the Srebrenica massacres. It seems that some stupidities do have precdents after all.
