Celtic Diary January 2: Fake News And False Claims

It’s been four days since the Celtic “rangers” game.

All sorts of stories have been flying around about who did what to who, who called who what, who is in hospital and who has sodded off to Colombia out of the way.

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence to support any of them, except for the threatening gesture made by Alfredo Morelos, and since we have seen how easy it is to manipulate opinion in the mainstream media, it’s not too big a leap to wonder if social media can be equally manipulated to form opinion.

Or to distract from the real issue.

Lets try to work our way through it all and see what we can ascertain as to what is truth and what is nonsense.

As anyone and everyone knows, there is a problem with racist and bigoted chanting and singing at Ibrox, home of the second Rangers entity, and they have been in trouble with the European governing body over it. In Scotland, of course, the authorities not only accept it but are happy to market the hatred that oozes down from the stands, and it would certainly be more marketable if the hatred was reciprocated at Celtic Park.

It would also be helpful if racism could be shown to have eminated from the stands at a point when one of the “rangers ” players made a gesture to supporters that yet again shows that the man is somewhat lacking in the maturity to perform professional sports at this level, and therefore his market value would markedly decrease, at a time when his club could really use the money from his sale.

So what better than to have an organisation also claiming that there was racism at Celtic Park…

The Associated Press, remember , was the source of the report about the abuse John Beaton received after a Celtic “rangers ” game, which grew into death threats and meant that Beaton needed police protection, when it would transpire later that someone had merely called him a cheating bastard by text.

Now watch the story grow…

Two reports that say “rangers ” claim he was abused…and then, from the easily influenced BBC, where it is known that having a blue nose will help one with one’s career prospects… check their “expert  ” panels if you’re not convinced by this…

Now it’s accepted that there were racist chants, and the police are looking into them..

See how it works ?

There is no evidence of any racist chants, we can be sure of this because its been four days now, and nothing has surfaced.

There is, however, video evidence of Alfredo Morelos drawing his finger across his throat in a such a way that the gesture  can only be interpreted as meaning he wants to cut someones throat, presumably the fans of Celtic he made the gesture at.

Anything else on this matter is a deflection, as this gesture is one that will get a player banned.

As for that claim that in south america it means something else, let’s see what North america thinks…

That is that, then.

It depicts an unacceptable act of violence.

For which Morelas could and should be banned.

So anything other than discussion of his act is merely deflection, especially as there is no evidence to suggest otherwise, despite what some outlets are claiming.

Outlets who are clearly under instruction not to discuss the Morelas gesture whatsoever.

This is -again-a major failure on the part of the PR machine at Celtic. Whilst they may have opted not to get involved, for whatever reason, that decision has now led to Celtic having their brand tarnished with claims of racism, that will elevate to an instance of racism, presumably on the same balance of probabilities that saw Aleksandr Tonev punished.

Celtic have not commented on the actions of a player who clearly made an unacceptable gesture at their support, and in doing so may have committed an action likely to cause a breach of the peace, which was what the charge was against Frank McAvennie and three Rangers players some years ago.

A failure to comment may be because they don;t want to inflame an already inflammable situation, but when the image of the club is at stake, they should really try to steer discussion back the real events, and not thise that are perceived by a PR machine acting for another club.

As for the mainstream media, they have form for not reporting anything that will damage the “rangers ” brand, and they are too afraid of litigation to print anything about the other stories which are flying around, which might well mean theres nothing in them either, but they do serve as a distraction.

Lets suppose that a PR machine planted all of those rumours about fights, emergency surgery and other nonsense, because after four days of trying, all I can definitely ascertain is that Christie has had surgery, and is in a bad way.

There are plenty of whatsapps doing the rounds, but anyone with any sense has held back and tried to find out what actually has happened.

There is no reason to believe anything on social media any more than there is a reason to believe the mainstream media. 

At the moment, it seems that there is a lot of deflection around the only thing that we can say with any certainty has happened, and no one seems to want to talk about that in the media.

Could it be because there were clubs willing to take a gamble on the tortured soul that is Alfredo Morelos, and his actions on sunday are causing them to have second thoughts, at least at the price “rangers ” are asking ?

Time will tell.

All I can tell at this point is that Celtic really need to come out and clarify what exactly happened, of anything , regarding Ryan Christie, and also to comment on the allegations of racism, perhaps challenging someone to provide evidence.

Yesterday, we had this…