The beautiful game. The people’s game. The world game. There is a small but significant number of people seeking to challenge these epithets.

Racism has reared its ugly head once again in connection with football, in the form of a gang of Chelsea fans who shoved a black man out of the carriage on the Paris Metro prior to their away leg at the Parc de Princes against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday night, chanting: “We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it.” It is rare to hear such acknowledgment and pride in something so abhorrent. But here we are.

Despite the recent bloating of football clubs’ coffers, especially since the start of the Premier League era in February 1992, the game itself has often been referred to as “the people’s game,” in reference to its working-class roots. For example, my stepdad’s granddad once played for Nottingham Forest in the 1930s and quit the game to “go down the mines” because the money was better.

However, a similarly strong and deeply British working-class movement is fascism. Not working class in origin, but leaders such as Oswald Mosley of the blackshirts and more recently Nick Griffin of the BNP have exploited working-class fears of unemployment and dwindling public services to stir up racial hatred and gain a most vulgar form of populism.

The “14 words” of white nationalism — we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children — demonstrate a severe victim complex.

Nobody, bar fascists, has ever even suggested that the “future of the white race” is under threat, despite being a global minority. The point here being that the movements of fascism and white nationalism are built on fundamental lies, and yet people believe them out of a conjured sense of fear of the “other” and their own ignorance to the real reasons of their impoverishment — government cuts to public services, bosses who pay poverty wages, harsh welfare sanctions, tax-dodging chief executives and so on leaving the average working-class Brit in near destitution.

This mindset, generally well out of the public eye and mainstream press, has been allowed to fester, mutate and permeate like sewage throughout Europe.

And it has always had a home in football. The football terraces have always been a place where likeminded people can come together

in unison, buoyed by their passion and adrenaline, and chant like working-class warriors under the banner of their particular club.

But there has always been a small yet vocal group of racists, arguably having dwindled since the ’70s after the relative collapse of the National Front, who abused this soapbox.

Terrace chants and banners have never solely pertained to wholly footballing issues, either. Liverpool fans often remember the tragedy of Hillsborough, where 96 of their fans were killed through poor police planning and negligence after the collapse of stands. There were expressions of solidarity and support from Bolton Wanderers fans for Fabrice Muamba and his family, following his on-pitch cardiac arrest in 2012.

Alas, as with most things, a few bad apples always spoil the bunch and this incident involving Chelsea fans in Paris is just the latest.

As an Arsenal fan it brings me terrible shame to hear that some fans have been reported singing about Auschwitz and “gassing the Jews” in relation to Tottenham Hotspur (with a great Jewish fanbase and history in north London).

It seems that football is the excuse, not the reason, for such vile behaviour. A great majority of fans would never even consider something so hateful, but it is difficult and ultimately fruitless to pat these fans on the back simply for being decent human beings. How, then, can this sickness be dealt with?

To start, a swift and unwavering example must be set. The police in France and Britain are looking for the Paris culprits and the video evidence should help with this.

Once found, these thugs should be slapped with blanket lifetime bans from all football, strong criminal penalties for racial violence

and inciting racial hatred and, while it is understood that Chelsea have made a full and unmitigated apology on behalf of these few, I feel that punishing the club might well help.

In modern football, as with much else, money talks.

A large financial penalty placed on the club would make clear: Stamp this out of your club, by whatever means, or things will get worse for you.” This would serve as a tremendous precedent to other teams, especially those as prominently in the spotlight as Chelsea to deal with this blight once and for all.

But how would clubs do this? An absolute intolerance for intolerance would be a start. Any racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, well, any and all oppressive language, banners or behaviours should instantly result in lifetime bans, financial penalties and criminal charges. There is no place in football for these actions.

But we also need an open, frank discussion about racism. Nationwide. For too long Britain has swept the problem under the carpet. The shameful killings of unarmed black teenagers Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice — and sadly many more — by US police was often met in Britain with the feeling that it was just a problem for the US, and relief that “at least our cops aren’t that bad” — ignoring the killing of Mark Duggan by armed Metropolitan Police officers and and Jimmy Mubenga while being deported by G4S private security guards.

The liberals and the weak-willed left in Britain have for too long preached a kind of colour-blindness which, truthfully, does nothing. To ignore a problem does nothing to solve it. It helps the oppressors, allowing them to devalue the experiences and histories of people of colour as these are ignored by those who purport to stand for equality.

Regarding the Paris attack, I have seen talk of football being as close to a “true meritocracy” as one can get, where it is one’s skill on the pitch that gets players to the top, not the colour of their skin.

But football does not exist within a vacuum around around it in society there still exists an insidious and systematic hatred of people of colour, borne of colonialism, capitalism and unchallenged ignorant beliefs.

Unless and until we can talk frankly about racism in general — a discussion led by those people of colour who actually face it every day — we can never stamp racism out of football.

Not only is there no place for racism in football, but neither is there a place for it in society as a whole.