This is Jacobin Radio, I'm Suzy Weisman. On today's program, we welcome back

Melissa Figaro and Alan Minsky from the People's Game for a deeper look into the history and politics of some of the nationalist

enmities on display during this World Cup beyond the football.

Racist chance and fascist slogans erupted from the Serbian side toward ethnic Albanians on the Swiss team creating high stakes tension as

Serbian players nearly came to blows with Switzerland's star players who happened to be Albanian Kosovars.

Where was FIFA? Was there discriminatory handling of the fans by the police who seemed uninterested in the offensive gestures, chance and banners?

Who knew that this World Cup would take us back to the Balkan Wars of the 90s following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the fall of Yugoslavia?

I joined Melissa and Alan for some political, economic and historical background while Melissa and Alan put this in broader perspective in the long history of football as politics

and history. All this won our program returns in just a moment.

This is Jacobin Radio, I'm Suzy Weisman and today again we're going to do something completely different and that is

Melissa Figueroa who is my director, producer, engineer and many other things as well is also the co-host and creator of the people's game and we're right in the middle of the

2022 Katari World Cup and it's an astonishing World Cup because it is we always say that the World Cup is a political tool and that's

you know as they have shown a political tool for spectacle but what's even more so now is that this World Cup through its matches has dredged up a lot of sentiment, fear, violence and other

memories of the recent past and not so recent past and we're going to talk a little bit about that but I'm going to turn it over to Melissa who is not only all of those things that I said

but also it already does so many things and Melissa is going to turn this around and we're going to try to get a little bit beneath the surface and some of these nationalist displays that we're seeing now in the World Cup.

Melissa it's all yours. Thank you Suzy. Yeah so I'm Melissa Figueroa I'm producer of this show and also co-host of the people's game podcast with Alan Minsky who was also a producer of this show.

We've been doing this show now for 12 years every four years since 2010 and every single World Cup and you know we do watch the euros in between as well so you know on the two years it's like the midterms is like the

euros is the midterms of the soccer world and almost every single time something comes up when it comes to a Balkan team the Serbian

Croatians Bosnia Kosovo who joined you away from 2016 Albania you know something comes up it that either violence erupts or there is racist fascists slogans being thrown around

and yesterday's match between Serbia and Switzerland was no different and the world became really obvious to the world in yesterday's match

in two parts one where there was an announcement over the stadium PA in the middle of the match that reminded the Serbian fans in particular that racist and discriminatory gestures were not allowed.

And this was in reference to two of Switzerland star players granite shaka and jordan shakiri who are of Albanian kosovar descent so this has always been this political you know powder keg with in global football that I've always wanted to unpack I was a teenager during the 90s I have to admit I didn't pay a lot of attention to world politics at the end of the year.

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