 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Hooliganism" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(May 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Hooliganism is the act of disruptive, obnoxious, violent or unlawful behavior such asrioting,bullying andvandalism, in connection withcrowded events, such asspeeches orsporting events. Ahooligan is a person who engages in illicit reckless behaviors and is apublic nuisance.
There are several theories regarding the origin of the wordhooliganism, which is a derivative of the wordhooligan.The Compact Oxford English Dictionary states that the word may have originated from the surname of a rowdyIrish family in amusic hall song of the 1890s.[1][2]Clarence Rook, in his 1899 bookHooligan Nights, wrote that the word came from Patrick Hoolihan (or Hooligan), an Irishbouncer and thief who lived inLondon. In 2015, the BBC Scotland TV programmeThe Secret Life of Midges[3] noted that the English commander-in-chief during theJacobite rising of 1745,General Wade, misheard the local Scots Gaelic word formidge—meanbh-chuileag—and coined the wordhooligan to describe his fury and frustration at the way the tiny biting creatures made the lives of him and his soldiers a misery; this derivation may be apocryphal.
.jpg)
The word first appeared in print in Londonpolice court reports in 1894 referring to the name of a gang of youths in theLambeth area of London—theHooligan Boys,[4] and later—theO'Hooligan Boys.[5]
In August 1898 the murder of Henry Mappin in Lambeth committed by a member of the gang drew further attention to the word which was immediately popularised by the press.[6] The London newspaperThe Daily Graphic wrote in an article on 22 August 1898, "The avalanche of brutality which, under the name of 'Hooliganism' ... has cast such a dire slur on the social records ofSouth London."[2][7]
The inquest was carried out byMr Braxton Hicks who "remarked that the activity of the gang he referred to was not confined to Lambeth, but extended to numerous other districts. It was composed of young fellows who scorned to do a stroke of work, and obtained a living by blackmailing. It was a common practice for three or four of these men to walk into a shop and offer the shopman the alternative of giving them a dollar for drink or having his shop wrecked. In connection with the Oakley-street tragedy intimidation had reached an unexampled case. Witnesses had been warned that it would be as much as their life was worth to give evidence against John Darcy. On Wednesday plain-clothes men escorted the witnesses from the court singly. He himself had been warned — not by anonymous letter but through a mysterious personal medium — that if seen in a certain neighbourhood he would be done for. A magistrate had also told him that he had been the recipient of a like indignity."[8][9]
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his 1904 short story "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons", "It seemed to be one of those senseless acts of Hooliganism which occur from time to time, and it was reported to the constable on the beat as such."H. G. Wells wrote in his 1909 semi-autobiographical novelTono-Bungay, "Three energetic young men of the hooligan type, in neck-wraps and caps, were packing wooden cases with papered-up bottles, amidst much straw and confusion."[7]
According toLife magazine (30 July 1951), the comic strip artist and political cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper introduced a character calledHappy Hooligan in 1900;[10] "hapless Happy appeared regularly in U.S. newspapers for more than 30 years", a "naive, skinny, baboon-faced tramp who invariably wore a tomato can for a hat."Life brought this up by way of criticizing the Soviet U.N. delegate Yakov A. Malik for misusing the word. Malik had indignantly referred to anti-Soviet demonstrators in New York as "hooligans". Happy Hooligan,Life reminded its readers, "became a national hero, not by making trouble, which Mr. Malik understands is the function of a hooligan, but by getting himself help."
Later, as the meaning of the word shifted slightly, none of the possible alternatives had precisely the same undertones of a person, usually young, who belongs to an informal group and commits acts of vandalism or criminal damage, starts fights, and who causes disturbances but is not a thief.[7] Hooliganism is nowpredominantly[failed verification] related to sport.[11]
The wordshooliganism andhooligan began to be associated withviolence in sports, in particular from the 1970s in the UK withfootball hooliganism. The phenomenon, however, long preceded the modern term; for example, one of the earliest known instances of crowd violence at a sporting event took place in ancientConstantinople. Twochariot racing factions, theBlues and theGreens, were involved in theNika riots which lasted around a week in 532 CE; nearly half the city was burned or destroyed, in addition to tens of thousands of deaths.[12]
Sports crowd violence continues to be a worldwide concerning phenomenon exacting at times a large number of injuries, damage to property and casualties. Individual, contextual, social and environmental factors interact and influence one another through a dynamic process occurring at different levels.[13] Macro-sociological accounts suggest that structural strains, experiences of deprivation or a low socio-economic background can at times be instrumental to the acceptance and reproduction of norms that tolerate great levels of violence and territoriality, which is a common feature of football hooliganism.[14] Furthermore, social cleavages within societies facilitate the development of strong in-groups bonds and intense feelings of antagonism towards outsiders which in turn can facilitate group identification and affect the likelihood of fan violence.[14]
 | This sectionshould include a summary ofFootball hooliganism in the United Kingdom. SeeWikipedia:Summary style for information on how to incorporate it into this article's main text.(August 2019) |
Beginning in at least the 1960s, the United Kingdom gained a reputation worldwide forfootball hooliganism; the phenomenon was often dubbed theBritish orEnglish Disease.[15][16][17][18][19][20][excessive citations] However, since the 1980s and well into the 1990s the UK government has led a widescale crackdown on football related violence. While football hooliganism has been a growing concern in some continental European countries in recent years, British football fans now tend to have a better reputation abroad. Although reports of British football hooliganism still surface, the instances now tend to occur at pre-arranged locations rather than at the matches themselves.
Football (soccer) and other sports hooliganism overall is rare in the United States in part because of stricter legal penalties forvandalism and physical violence, club markets having their own territory of fans, venues banning weapons, stricter security during games, and a strongertaboo on politics, class, race, and religion into the American sporting culture.[citation needed] Although isolated drunken fights at games do occur, they rarely escalate to major brawling comparable toEurope andLatin America.[21]
In theSoviet Union the wordkhuligan (Russian:хулиган – transliteration of the English word) was used to refer to those perpetrating public misconduct. Hooliganism (Russian:хулиганство,khuliganstvo) was listed as a criminal offense, similar todisorderly conduct in some other jurisdictions, and used as a catch-all charge for prosecuting unapproved behavior.[2][22]
Since thefall of the Soviet Union, hooliganism is defined generally in theCriminal Code of Russia as a medium gravity crime.[23]
Olympic medalistVasiliy Khmelevskiy was convicted of hooliganism for setting a costumed person on fire during a celebration inMinsk in 1979 and sentenced to five years of imprisonment.[24]Mathias Rust was convicted of hooliganism, among other things, for his 1987 Cessna landing onBolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge next toRed Square.
More recently, the same charge has been leveled against members of the feminist punk groupPussy Riot for which three members each received a two-year sentence on 17 August 2012. Hooliganism charges were also levelled against theGreenpeace protesters in October 2013.[25] In March 2022,Marina Ovsyannikova, a Russian journalist who held up a banner protesting theRussian invasion of Ukraine during a national news broadcast, was convicted of floutingRussian anti-protest laws and fined₽30,000 for her actions.The Kremlin called her actions an act of hooliganism.[26]
