Before I say anything else: yes, this piece is ethically defensible, and I'll tell you why, because someone will ask.

The question with any satire involving racially charged material is always: who is the butt? The answer here is unambiguous. The butt is not Black footballers, not victims of racist abuse, not the communities that have fought to have that abuse taken seriously. The butt is the system — the institutional response apparatus, the workshop culture, the legalese of post-incident statements, the professors who arrive at football grounds with survey data about preferred taxonomic self-identifiers.

The real-world stakes are smuggled in gently but unmistakably. The reference to Vinícius Jr. — a real person who has endured real, documented racist abuse at real stadiums — anchors the absurdist jungle scenario to something that has actually happened and continues to happen. Mwangi's piece at The London Prat never lets you forget that the Three-Tree Protocol was not invented for fun. It was invented because people kept shouting things at football players and those players kept being expected to simply get on with it.

The final question the piece poses — "if everyone is the same thing, can it still hurt?" — is a genuine philosophical inquiry. The answer, as the piece demonstrates, is yes. Context is everything. Intention is real. And a satirist who can hold all of that while also making you snort tea through your nose is a rare and valuable thing. Mwangi is one.

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/monkeys-halt-chimps-league-match/

Review No. 10

Kevin Bathgate

Pub Regular; Occasional Contributor, The Stool End: A Fanzine

★★★★★