News of a US ban on a referee with alleged terror links has sent the British FA scurrying to review World Cup security protocols. Am I the only one who finds this less about genuine alarm and more about performative panic? We are witnessing the bureaucratisation of fear.
The American move is predictable: a nation that mistakes security theatre for safety. But the British FA's dutiful review is what truly grates. It is like watching a Victorian governess clutch her pearls after a chimney sweep sneezes.
The referee in question is, at best, a fringe figure. Yet the machinery of institutional anxiety grinds into action. We have become a society that treats every incident, however minor, as a preamble to catastrophe.
This is the mark of decadence. The Romans had their augurs reading entrails. We have security consultants reading threat matrices.
The World Cup is a festival of human joy, not a military operation. By over-policing it, we strip it of its soul. The British FA should show spine, not reflex.
But spine requires a sense of proportion, a quality in short supply. We are in the late stages of an empire that has forgotten how to laugh at itself. Perhaps the greatest terror threat is our own institutionalised hysteria.
