Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 56

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Popular Culture Review

Another concern is that sports that attract disaffected white youths often serve
as a vehicle for extremist right wing viewpoints and political violence. For in
stance, over the last twenty years, many European soccer fan clubs have served as
niches for extremist right wing groups. This linkage between lower middle class
dissatisfaction and xenophobia have proven to be a toxic scourge on that sport.
Both European soccer and American professional wrestling are popular among
nearly identical audiences, primarily lower middle class white teens. Paradoxi
cally, in contrast to their European counterparts, American wrestling fans are un
usually well behaved. One primary explanation for this paradox is psychological.
In the psychological literature of antisocial behavior, investigators have drawn a
distinction between primary and secondary sociopaths (Fagan & Lira 1980; Cleckley
1955; Hare, 1970). In this binary construction, primary sociopaths are identified
by emotional unresponsiveness resulting from their stimulation-seeking behavior.
However, Fagan and Lira (1980) characterized secondary sociopaths as individu
als whose antisocial behavior is “symptomatic of anxiety associated with frustra
tion or inner conflict” (493).
The antisocial behavior of secondary sociopaths is closely tied to age group,
fluctuating income levels and changing environmental contingencies (Mealey 1995).
These symptoms are specially pronounced among youths from lower socioeco
nomic status groups (Magid and McKelvey 1987; Moffitt 1996; Dunning 1994).
The link between secondary sociopathic disposition and sociopathic behavior in
sports has been adduced to the degree of crumbling identity combined with high
competitiveness in its audience.
Disenchanted European youths have grown up in an atmosphere of crumbling
national identity combined with rapid immigration patterns. Soccer has been the
last bastion in which to safely cling to ultranationalism and rabid local identity.
However, even this bastion of ultranationalism is under threat as ͽ