Football fans are being silenced – again. Scottish Premiership club Rangers FC has disowned some of its supporters after a banner was displayed at Ibrox, the club’s home stadium, during a recent Europa League match. It read: ‘Keep woke foreign ideologies out. Defend Europe.’
The banner appeared in the section of the Copland Road Stand where the Union Bears ultras – possibly Rangers’ most passionate fans – tend to gather. They were there for the second leg of a round-of-16 clash with Turkish club Fenerbahçe. This was a match played under UEFA’s jurisdiction, making the message even more pointed. This wasn’t just a domestic fixture, but one taking place on an international stage and overseen by a governing body increasingly intolerant of ideological dissent.
In a statement released earlier this month, Rangers revealed that UEFA had launched disciplinary proceedings over the banner, describing it as ‘racist and / or discriminatory’. The club also made clear its own righteous disapproval. It publicly disowned the dissenting fans, telling them that ‘Rangers is not the club for you’ and vowing to ‘identify those responsible’ so that ‘they also face consequences’.
At the culmination of UEFA’s investigation this week, Rangers have now been fined €30,000 (£25,000). UEFA also imposed a suspended one-match closure of the Copland Road Stand if there is any repeat of similar behaviour over the next two years. In response, the club has launched an internal investigation and says it is ‘in the process of issuing lifetime bans’ to the fans responsible.
This is way out of proportion, to say the least. What are these fans even being punished for, exactly? Daring to dissent from divisive ideas they believe to have been imported from US universities? In any case, how does opposing an ideology like woke amount to racism? The banner clearly targets ideas, not people.
This stifling of free speech isn’t just affecting Rangers, either. Across Europe, elite football clubs and governing bodies are demanding players and fans endorse the latest fashionable beliefs. They must affirm the right values, and when they don’t, the consequences are swift.
Consider the ritual of ‘taking the knee’, which began in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Players were expected to kneel before kick-off in a symbolic protest against racism, and fans were expected to applaud them. Though this was initially voluntary, those who demurred quickly found themselves under pressure.
In 2022, a crowd in Hungary consisting mainly of schoolchildren booed England players for taking the knee at a UEFA Nations League match. The British media and football establishment framed it as a terrible moral failure. Then England manager Gareth Southgate justified his players continuing to kneel, insisting it was important to ‘educate people around the world’. One former player watching the game called the booing ‘horrible to hear’, while anti-discrimination group Fare declared it another sad example of ‘racism perpetrated in European games by children’.
This reaction sent a clear message across the airwaves, and into training grounds and dressing rooms across the country: refusing to conform was not an option.
It’s been the same with campaigns for LGBT+ inclusion, which usually involve players decking out their kit with messages or rainbows. Players who don’t endorse them face disciplinary action and political pressure. The German Football Association (DFB) fined Bayer Leverkusen €18,000 after supporters held up a banner reading ‘There are many genres of music, but only two genders’ at a match against Werder Bremen in 2023. The DFB ruled this ‘discriminatory unsportsmanlike behaviour’ and decreed that a third of the fine must be spent on ‘preventive measures against discrimination’. This was, to all intents and purposes, ideological re-education.
This intolerance even extends to behaviour outside stadiums. Newcastle United supporter and Free Speech Union member Linzi Smith was banned from attending home matches for the rest of this season and the next two. Her ‘crime’ was to express gender-critical views online. In 2023, Smith wrote on X that ‘it’s like they’re trying to trans the gay away’. An anonymous complaint made to Northumbria Police said trans people would ‘not feel safe sitting next to her’ as a result of the post. Newcastle excommunicated Smith as soon as they found out about the police investigation.
Football, a historically working-class sport, has been turned into a glossy corporate commodity. The game’s institutions claim to be ‘inclusive’, yet they enforce a strict monoculture, where only certain political and cultural narratives are permitted.
With the Rangers incident, we’re starting to see something new. The ‘great unwashed’ are finally finding their voice. This isn’t just quiet noncompliance. This is fans in the stands articulating their opposition to football’s ideological leaning in clear political terms. No wonder the authorities are worried.
Today, it’s banners at Ibrox that could lead to lifetime bans. Tomorrow, it will be another stadium, another club, another group of fans whose politics is deemed unacceptable. If you’re a Rangers fan under investigation – or know someone who is – email the Free Speech Union at [email protected].
Freddie Attenborough is the digital communications director of the Free Speech Union.
