Jordan Henderson: The Rainbow Grifter
Liverpool and England player Jordan Henderson has said for years he stands in solidarity with the LGBT community. Now he's off to Saudi Arabia to earn £350,000 per week. Life sure is complicated.
It’s November 2021. England international and Liverpool FC captain Jordan Henderson has broke new ground by writing an impassioned support of the Rainbow Laces campaign. Created in 2013 by the LGBT rights group Stonewall, Rainbow Laces was designed to make the typically macho and closeted space of men’s football more welcoming to gay participants and fans alike. Over time it would it tackle bigger targets, openly speaking out about bullying within clubs and political regimes around the world that persecute LGBT people. It’s the most successful campaign of its kind, having been at the forefront of a drastic shift in attitudes in sports so we can now say as of 2020 data that two-thirds of sports fans believe they have a responsibility to support LGBT fans of the teams and sports they follow.
Few English footballers have been as outspoken on this topic as Henderson. His status as an activist for LGBT rights was cemented in a 2020 viral tweet, an interaction with a gay Liverpool fan where Henderson echoed the club’s famous motto of solidarity “you’ll never walk alone” after he wore a rainbow captain’s armband.
By April 2021 he’d been nominated for “football ally” of the year by the British LGBT Awards. And so, in his newfound role of official LGBT spokesperson for English football, he wanted to make absolutely sure the world knew where he stood on the issue. “Before I’m a footballer,” he wrote “I’m a parent, a husband, a son, a brother and a friend to the people in my life who matter so much to me. The idea that any of them would feel excluded from playing or attending a football match, simply for being and identifying as who they are, blows my mind. The idea they’d have to hide from it to be accepted? But that’s exactly how too many members of the LGBT+ community feel. We know this because they tell us. So we should listen, support them and work to make it better.” He would later add that “change comes about when people make brave decisions.”
Fast forward to July 2023. There’s a photo of Jordan Henderson grinning as he points to the badge of his new club as a Summer move away from Liverpool likely signals the last major transfer of his impressive career. The problem? The club he’s joining is Al-Ettifaq, a Saudi Arabian team who are the latest to splash their vast oil wealth around in this off season’s transfer window. Saudi Arabia is a country which, among other things, doesn’t recognise LGBT rights, something you can’t help but feel is a bit of a stumbling block for someone who has happily accepted fawning adoration for their public championing of gay and trans rights. Worse yet, in a complete and utter betrayal of the values he has paid lip service to so vocally these past few years, the video announcement from the club clumsily edited out the fact that he had ever wore the rainbow, a grey square in place of the symbol he pledged to support.
You shouldn’t really think of this as a football transfer. Rather it is another entry in the ever growing data set of shills and grifters who will happily accept the cultural capital of faux support for causes the public approves of where it is safe and lucrative to express it but will surrender those values for a pre-determined amount of money that they can only know when exposed to it. Indeed, almost everyone is doing it and why not? The internet has burned out our attention spans to such a startling degree we can’t even sustain outrage for more than 48 hours. There’s no downside to the hypocrisy. A few awkward days of negative headlines and finger pointing but by the time the first cheque clears everyone’s complaining about something else and you’re free to count your money. In a few years we’ll be able to take all this data and work out what the average amount to expose unprincipled grifters actually amounts to. For Henderson it’s £350,000 per week tax free for three years. High or low? You can make up your own mind.
After Qatar though the about turn shouldn’t surprise anybody. The England squad had talked a good game about all the things they were going to stand for at the World Cup. Oh yes, they were going to take that knee to protest racial inequality in stadiums built by ethnic slave labour and of course the captain would be wearing the “one love” rainbow armband in solidarity with the LGBT community. Despite Qatari assurances this would be a typical world cup experience with all made welcome, they had broken the terms of $75 million sponsorship deal with Budweiser just days before the tournament began and were refusing entry to anyone with an item of clothing with a rainbow on it including prominent sports journalists. FIFA, happy to play the part of wealthy cuckolds on the world stage, naturally sided with the regime that had violated promises it had made to secure the bid in the first place and then went further, warning players that if the captains wore the pre-approved rainbow armband they would face a yellow card and further disciplinary action if they continued.
You’d have thought that at least one player on one team would have took a symbolic yellow card on principle but they all capitulated and then started giving out interviews to the media along the lines of “we’re just players, we’re here to win football matches first and foremost.” That’d be something I could stomach had it not been for the fact that Southgate’s England had been insufferable in the build up to the tournament, endless coverage not about the team’s prospects of victory but how they wouldn’t be cowed into submission when it came to talking about human rights. When all was said and done the England camp fell in line like all the other moral grandstanders.
Even more unfortunately for the England players their moral cowardice was brought into sharp focus when compared to the protests of their Iranian counterparts. As they participated in the world’s premier sporting tournament, in a fellow Muslim nation, violent and bloody protests took place in their home over the murder of 22 year old Mahsa Amini, beaten to death by police after being arrested for an improper hijab. To show their solidarity they refused to sing the Iranian national anthem while their fans chanted “women, life and freedom.” The state sent a message by arresting a footballer who did not travel with the national squad and threatening the families of the players with imprisonment and torture should their protest continue. The players returned home after their loss to the US amid reports a fan had been shot dead for honking his horn in support of America’s victory. The pampered millionaires with three lions on their chest wouldn’t even take a yellow card for their cause.
Henderson’s response at that time was telling. Suddenly it wasn’t a big deal that FIFA were actively threatening to penalise players for showing support for the LGBT communities around the world. He didn’t seem interested in taking up the mantle as Kane pathetically wilted on command. Instead, in an interview with the BBC, he accused the fans of being too demanding saying “"When you do things as a team or as players, I'm always conscious that no matter what we do that it will never be enough. You've got to be satisfied in your own mind and know what you're doing you think is right and go with that."
How dare you people demand that these players who use your lives as a means for praise and commercial endorsements remain morally consistent on the issues they themselves voluntarily chose to speak about? Will you baboons never be satisfied? Don’t you know how difficult it is to temporarily adopt the trappings of your identity for clout and then you want these brave culture warriors to wear that costume in a hostile environment? You forget yourself…
After the World Cup all the controversy and hypocrisy was largely forgotten and FIFA instead started feeding the sports media the claim that Qatar was the “best ever” World Cup and a few op-eds aside we just eased back into the business of football. The premier League resumed its campaign and the England players slotted right back in to a world of now provably empty gestures.
Still, I suspect part of the problem is the reductive way of thinking it is when you refer to someone as an “ally.” The stupidity of the allyship concept, like a lot of the concepts fostered on the pages of tedious American sociology, is that itself creates a divide between people. Allies are typically individuals or groups that align temporarily for common interest, a shared strength fending off common foes. But when you label someone as just an ally you’re really saying they can never be your friend, your lover, your family… It’s a self defeating reminder of our differences instead of our human commonalities. One has to wonder if that is why so many see implicit permission to bail at the first opportunity for the much more seductive cause of self-interest.
It was always strange Henderson was placed on a pedestal in the first place. He had done the absolute bare minimum in service of LGBT rights as his commitment was only verbal. He’s on record as saying he could never be part of a system that made LGBT people hide their identity just to participate in it. Now he will play football in a venue where if any attending fan admitted they were gay they would be beaten, arrested and maybe worse. The funny part is he’ll do so thinking that the criticism aimed at him is unfair. After all, he spoke up, right? Why is it never enough? How much must he sacrifice for a cause that ultimately, no matter what he claims publicly, he doesn’t consider his own. You see wealth will always be the ultimate test of loyalty to both individuals and causes. It’s a lot easier to fail if you never cared that much to begin with.
Well done Richard
Man grifters have to be the slimiest people around. Truly despicable