hooliganism

The original Hooligans were a street gang of the late 1890s in London. They were the equivalent of the Push in Sydney and were essentially a gang who were a law unto themselves and were not averse to a bit of violence.  They called themselves the Hooligans but in all the indignant reporting on their activities there is no explanation of how they chose this name.  One theory is that it is a corruption of Hooley’s gang. Another is that it is a reference to a music-hall song describing the antics of a rowdy Irish family called the Hooligans. But no one really knows. 

Hooligan dropped its capital letter as it ceased to refer to a member of a specific gang and became a generic term for anyone involved in anti-social behaviour, that is, fighting between street gangs, accosting honest citizens in the street, and all forms of juvenile crime ranging from incivility and insolence to violence.  

Hooliganism was defined in 1898 by the Daily Telegraph as ‘youthful ruffianism’. It later became associated with football because of the behaviour of some of the spectators who seemed to regard the game as a backdrop for their own brawling. We now think of hooliganism mostly in this context.

I was therefore surprised to read that a Russian journalist, Marina Ovsyannikova, who had interrupted a live bulletin on TV to stage her own protest against the war in Ukraine, was then charged with hooliganism.

It turns out that the word hooligan was borrowed into Russia at the start of the 20th century for any crimes committed randomly by peasants against the aristocracy and the Church.  Hooliganism was crime with attitude. It demonstrated resistance to authority.  This attitude is still part of contemporary Russian criminal hooliganism, behaviour that can be punished by up to seven years in prison.  It is politically, racially or idealogically motivated and involves the use of weapons or objects used as weapons. There is a lesser hooliganism, petty hooliganism that is more like disorderly conduct and incurs a fine or a brief imprisonment.

Pussy Riot got two years for standing up in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral and singing their Punk Prayer which included ideas such as ‘the Lord is shit’. 

This journalist has so far been fined 30,000 roubles ($390) but it remains to be seen if any there are any more severe consequences.