Gary Lineker - he really had to go and a warning t against virtue signalling

[mids2019]

Maybe Gary Lineker's departure acts as a warning for this not acquainted with history to go around randomly reposting pro Palestinian links though I suspect he is not the only one. In a way it is a sad demise to a career but an absolutely necessary one and a timely warning that a proportion of P Palestinian supporters are anti semites.

for to say I didn't like the Gaurdian 's take that the BBC were looking to sack Gary anyway and he just have them an excuse.

What?

I would agree with this. It's easy to post something in this simplistic way. A meme, a slogan, a line from a chant. It's just to position himself, without debate or nuance. A rat is particularly vile, but he went there.

Are you saying I'm Gary Lineker? ⚽️

So no one should listen to an ‘aged’ woman? Got it

Sadly, you'll be disappointed. I'd have more respect for him without these views as well. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/05/16/gary-lineker-views-on-transgender-row-navratilova/?msockid=25bbee08e51e6a511d2afe62e47d6b6d

Edit: Sorry I thought I could share the link but I can't

Careful, you'll be accused of being a Gary sock puppet!

@confusedaboutetiquette - now I’m confused! You said you’d be disappointed if he wasn’t on the side of ‘excellent women like Sharon Davies’. He isn’t - hence my comment!

Hadley Freeman wrote an excellent column on ‘centrist dad’ Linekar in the Sunday Times (18 May) - I don’t have a link but highly recommend!

For someone who made a very good living being skilful with his feet, they do tend to end up in his mouth a lot. I prefer Ian wright, he doesn't seem so preachy.

As I said, the more people with a public profile
who protest against this appalling genocide the better.

He’s 100% anti-Semitic, using the rat trope & then pleading ignorance. Fortunately that’s the end of his career. Good riddance.

It's not a protest if you just re-post memes or slogans with no understanding.

No - not unless you identify as him, of course?

I personally had no knowledge that rats were antisemitic. Is this common knowledge? Like many people my family lost loved ones and was forever changed by WW2. So I don’t think it’s unlikely that you could post such a thing in error.
I think what Israel is doing in Gaza is unspeakable evil and that they should be stopped from continuing their barbaric treatment of the Palestinians. There is nothing that could justify this and anyone who tries to is complicit in the death and misery. So my feeling is that Lineker was right to speak out. I think it’s important we all do.

Then why his need to constantly delete his posts and to apologise etc?

How odd, if he truly believed what he posted.

Calling out genocide is perfectly acceptable, however, calling a mass slaughter of over a 1000 Jewish people "a thing" is not acceptable by someone paid by the license payer.

Personally I don’t think being paid by the bbc should be synonymous with being gagged. It’s just not a very British vibe. Here free speech is fairly central to our lives.

There's a difference from being gagged to calling the death of over 1000 "a Hamas thing".

It’s extremely disingenuous to say you ‘didn’t know the rat trope was antisemitic’. Even if it’s true that you don’t know the history, it’s pretty clear that comparing people to rats is likely to be problematic.

Most pro Palestinians claim to care about justice, racism etc so you would think they would take the trouble to understand the history of how Jews are portrayed. Middle Eastern media is full of old school anti-Semitic imagery but it’s almost as if no one cares to give five seconds to think more broadly about what they are aligning themselves with/re-posting. Again, strange for an anti-racist movement.

If GL thinks that people at the BBC should be allowed to express political opinions, that’s absolutely fine, but he should campaign for the rules to be changed rather than just doing what he wants. Personally I think that the BBC being impartial is hugely important.

This. I agree that Israel’s behaviour in Gaza is appalling and illegal and it was also doing terrible, unacceptable things before this war and being let off, for various political reasons. But thinking that is not the same as antisemitism, and someone with a big audience and public profile should know to be clear about that and not blunderingly associate himself with antisemitic tropes.

And when GL posted about women’s sports it became clear he doesn’t think about what he’s saying at all or bother looking into what’s really happening or weigh up evidence. He’s just posting what he thinks is the woke thing to post at any given moment to virtue-signal in a very tired and basic way. And he’s not bright enough to ask himself whether what he “thinks” makes any sense or is actually offensive before chucking it out there.

Yes, this makes me think that he sees a slogan or a meme and thinks, "oh, yeah!" Without reflection.
A bit like when those people chanting "from the river to the sea" were asked, "what river, what sea?" and they couldn't say.
I think it just reduces a very serious, and tragic situation to social media posturing.

Me too. Critical, in fact.

Well tbf we have seen a lot of those kind of 'protests'.....from the river to the sea is one that springs to mind.