Combat 18. Hooligans, Nazis and Britain's History of Fascism

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2.0, Technical University of Braunschweig, language: English, abstract: This essay will be on the phenomenon of hooliganism in England and its development from the day it has been discovered by the media. When one thinks of a violent hooligan and his behaviour one often tends to associate it immediately with the behaviour of a brutal skinhead. What do a hooligan and a racist skinhead really have in common? Is there an urgent connection between them or is that just a wrong association which has developed in one's mind during one's childhood when one was not able to distinguish between these two kinds of brutal groups? In order to find out whether racism is involved in football hooliganism I initially will try to spot what role National Socialism or Fascism played in the history of Britain but also in the last few years. It is interesting to investigate whether Nazi-Germany's archenemy England has National Socialist roots as well and if so, what impact such a phenomenon could have on everyday life and how successful it was. Were they pro or anti-German? If there is still a far-right-wing I will analyze its structures and try to make out a possible relation between their organisations and hooligan firms. Furthermore I will comment on the heavy riots in Oldham in the year 2001, which made the media call that part of the year 'the summer of violence'. In this context I will try to analyze to what extent these violent excesses are to be related to football hooliganism or even to racism. Were these riots pure coincidence or had they been planned well in advance? To answer this question it is quite interesting to parse the reaction of the public authorities and to analyze how cooperative they were when it came to spotting the culprits. Is there really a relation between hooligans and Nazis, who sometimes seem to be totally different?