NFL
By: Zach Draves
It is not just a select few in high political office that are absent from reality (i.e. the insurrectionist caucus) it is also the International Olympic Committee.
The news that the IOC was upholding Rule 50, which explicitly prohibits athletes from engaging in political protest and expression, should come as no surprise because of how grossly out of touch the IOC is with the present day.
Time after time, they continue to project a facade of neutrality under the guise of “sportsmanship”, “goodwill”, and “peace” when what lies beneath the surface is something that should be blatantly obvious.
The truth is the modern Olympic games are innately political and have been so since their official inception in 1896 in Athens, Greece.
Everything from the bidding process to the development of venues and villages to the opening/closing ceremonies is intermixed with politics.
A politics of greed, exploitation, human rights abuses, nationalism, and attempts at using sport to exacerbate geopolitical tensions that the IOC constantly tolerates.
After all, it was infamous IOC head Avery Brundidge, a notorious racist, and anti-semite, that brokered a deal to reward Berlin the 1936 Olympics while under Hitler’s rule and Hitler used the games as a propaganda tool for the Nazi regime.
When a German athlete won a medal and took the victory stand in those games, they were allowed to raise their arms in the Nazi salute with no consequences.
Politics also found its place in the games during the Cold War era where the USA and USSR routinely used the athletic field to duke it out over whose system of government was superior.
At the 1972 Munich Olympics, 11 Israeli athletes were slaughtered by terrorists in the village and in the immediate aftermath Brundidge didn’t even grant a period of remembrance or healing but decided to continue the games as if nothing happened and as if those 11 lives didn’t matter. So politics has always been associated with the Olympics.
However, when it comes to athletes embracing a politics rooted in liberation and justice they are overtly and severely punished.
The most famous example was Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics when they stood tall and raised their black-gloved fists into the night air in a powerful call for racial justice during one of the most turbulent and tragic years in American history.
(Courtesy: History.Com)
They were on the receiving end of vicious threats from anonymous letters, were spied on by the government, and were denied opportunities to make a living.
It was only a half-century later where these men were inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame and being praised by the hierarchs in the Olympic establishment, a classic case of whitewashing.
In 1972, in a much lesser-known protest, two American sprinters Vincent Matthews and Wayne Collett did a similar protest of racial injustice.
(Courtesy: The Olympians)
They earned a gold and silver in the 400m and during the medal ceremony both men refused to stand at attention during the playing of the national anthem and were twirling their medals around as they exited the stadium.
The German crowd booed them and the IOC banned them for life.
However, it is worth mentioning that at these same Olympics, the IOC allowed for the then apartheid regime of Rhodeisha to compete which compelled many black athletes from African nations as well as black American athletes to potentially boycott the games.
So the IOC didn’t have a problem with allowing an apartheid regime to be legitimized through the supposed brotherly and non-discriminatory spectacle of Olympic sport but they watered down a mass atrocity in the village and then they cast out two courageous black athletes for a peaceful protest.
All these years later and the IOC cannot get it together.
Famed Olympic Historian Dr. Jules Boykoff concurs.
“The IOC’s move to ban political speech is not only out of tune with basic human rights but out of touch when it comes to understanding our current political moment when principled dissent against oppression and for social justice is as needed as ever. The move shows that while the rest of the sports world, walks toward the future, Olympic honchos remained mired in the groggy past.”
Even as the United States Olympic/Paralympic Committee (USOPC) has stated that they will not punish athletes for protesting during the Olympic trials or the Pan American Games, the questions persist.
Will athletes still protest and are willing to take the consequences that the IOC hasn’t specified?
What exactly constitutes punishment for protest?
What kind of pressure will it take for the IOC to bend?
These are the questions we must wrestle with before, during, and after the Tokyo games.
But regardless of what the IOC proclaims, anyone with common sense and critical thinking can see right through this charade.
Among those is famed U.S. Olympic hammer thrower and activist Gwen Berry, who at the 2019 Pan American games did Smith and Carlos a solid and raised her fist in the air during the national anthem while on the medal stand.
(Courtesy: ESPN)
She along with American fencer Race Imboden, who took a knee during the anthem, were punished by the USOPC.
(Courtesy: New York Times)
Their courage compelled U.S. Olympic athletes to organize and put pressure on the USOPC to change their rules and they were successful in doing so.
In response to the IOC ruling, Gwen put out a powerful video in which she made it abundantly clear that is not compromising her values and remains unwavering in her pursuit for justice.
(Courtesy: Youtube)
Going from here, we can only continue to turn up the heat on the IOC to live in reality and with enough capacity and manpower, we can one day eventually overturn Rule 50.
They call it strength in numbers for a reason.
