Sport and Politics

B42

24.11.2022 Reading time: 3 min

A seperation that never existed...

Hardly any development has been discussed as frequently in the sports world in recent years as the advancing politicization of sport. Sporting competitions and results are sometimes relegated to the background. Instead, we debate about kneeling American Football players, bought world championships, rainbow bandages and photos with presidents of other countries. Many just want to watch a football game again, in peace in a sold-out stadium without immediately worrying about the big social issues and problems of our time. One often has the feeling that sport is being robbed of its innocence and purity, that it is becoming a mere playing field of the media, commerce and politics.

At least on one point, however, we are subject to a fundamental misconception: sport is not suddenly becoming politicized or instrumentalized for the first time in its history. Sport has always been political and a platform of social and political representation.

The false stereotype of apolitical sport

Where does this stereotype of apolitical sport actually come from? Why should sport be apolitical at all? The second question is somewhat easier to answer than the first. It is based on the narrative that the politicization of sport is a bad thing. We should therefore keep politics away from sport.

And indeed, history provides us with enough examples to support this narrative. The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, for example. A perfect starting point to argue: "you see, sport should simply remain apolitical. Otherwise, this is what you get."

What needs to be questioned...

But do we really want that? We, as society? And is it always just politics itself that interferes with sports? The Miracle of Bern is the perfect counterexample. It is not for nothing that people refer to it as the "actual birth of the Federal Republic of Germany". The re-establishment of a collective sense of "we", out of society and not imposed "from above". But that, too, is politicization. Even if it is not only from politics, but from society itself.

But couldn't we still try to separate sport and politics more (again)? Because these are two great examples of a symbiosis of sport and politics, but it was certainly different originally, when sport was simply sport and completely apolitical!

Well, not really...

How it all began...

According to our Western understanding, we can trace the origins of modern sports back to ancient Greece. Of course, other civilizations on other continents also had games and competitions, but their influence on our current understanding of sport is rather marginal.

Starting point Olympia

Sport and ancient Greece: we associate this primarily with the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games were part of the Panhellenic Games, a series of competitions with different venues - the respective cultural centers of Ancient Greece - and in honor of different deities. Before, during and after the competitions, a kind of truce - Ekecheiria - prevailed throughout Greece to ensure the safe conduct of the competitions, including arrival and departure. Nowadays we derive from it the principle of the Olympic Truce.

Not a particularly apolitical start, then....

Ancient Rome: „panem et circenses“

The second major cultural milestone in our sports history is also in antiquity, a few years and nautical miles away. The ancient Romans perfected one of the basic ideas of the modern entertainment industry already more than 2.000 years ago: amusement and distraction of society from central problems by "global" mega-events. Fortunately, the martial lethality of some competitions has not survived to this day, but the terminology "panem et circenses" - bread and games - has, as has the instrumentalization of sport by those in power to pacify and immobilize the people.

Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Then sport would be at least a strong gin and tonic.

On the way to modern times...

However, religion is actually a fitting segue into the next few centuries. For until the 19th century, the concept of sport or athletic competition almost completely disappeared from the scene. There were various competitions - e.g. the joust - but very few became institutionalized in the long term, including archery and the so-called "Calcio Storico" in Florence. A plausible explanation: estates society, i.e. lack of civil liberties and time to do sports, and the omnipresent role of religion to control country and society.

The renaissance of sport in England

It is therefore hardly surprising that sport returned to social life in the 19th century, at the same time as it broke out of the society of estates and abolitionism: a belated renaissance of sport on the basis of political and social change, so to speak.

Where which sport was played was of course - you guessed it - completely non-political. That is why it is pure coincidence that the typical worker and mass sport of modern times (football) first gained a foothold in the country of industrialization (England).

Sport is combat

But seriously, its spread to Germany and an increasing tolerance among political authorities had in the end a lot to do with its usefulness for the implementation of common physical exercises. At that time, it was less "Youth trains for the Olympics" and much more "Youth trains for war". Too far-fetched? Just think about the terminology in soccer: attack, defense, tactics, cross, shoot, storm, etc.. Any questions?

The contradictory depoliticization of sport

After sport had established itself across continents in their respective societies, it became institutionalized at the turn of the century. The two most prominent producers-se: FIFA the international football federation and of course the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, nowadays something like the global governing body of sport. While it took FIFA until 1930 to hold the first World Cup, the IOC hosted the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 and faced its first political affront in Stockholm in 1912.

Casual Declaration of Independence in Stockholm

Even then, the teams entered the Olympic stadium at the start under their respective national flags. For the Finns - at that time belonging to the Russian tsarist empire - reason for a small protest action: Immediately after entering the stadium they dropped back a few meters from the rest of the Russian team, a Finnish flag was handed from the audience and they marched "independently" under their own flag past the Swedish king. The Russian ambassador was not very enthusiastic.

Berlin 36...

24 years later, we are already at the first peak of the political instrumentalization of sport - and at the beginning of the first attempts at depoliticization. There is probably no better and sadder example of the political instrumentalization of a sporting event than the aforementioned 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. The propaganda machinery of the Nazi state was running at full speed; never before had the Olympic Games been better organized and a country better presented. The Polish ambassador in Berlin, Jozef Lipski commented: "We must be on our guard against a people that knows how to organize like this. A mobilization in this country will work just as smoothly." What the entire world public, which saw these games in Berlin, turned a blind eye to as much as the German civilian population: 30 kilometers from the gates of the city, construction of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp began at the same time as the games. The most prominent "understander" of the Nazi regime: Avery Brundage, the biggest opponent of the boycott within the American delegation, anti-Semite and later IOC president. He will accompany us for a few decades, as a person and exemplary depoliticizer.

Games are games – and they must go on...

His most important agenda: sport is sport, politics and commerce have no place here. This is illustrated first and foremost by his handling of the next incidents. The construction of the Berlin Wall was, of course, no reason for Brundage to allow two German teams to compete in the Olympic Games. In 1964, an all-German team represented the FRG and the GDR in Tokyo.

Four years later, one of the most famous pictures in sports history was taken. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists during the victory ceremony of the 200-meter dash as a protest against the ongoing oppression of African-Americans in the U.S. and against the assassination of Martin Luther King. Avery Brundage calls the event an "evil demonstration against the American flag by N*****" and puts pressure on the American NOC. As a result, Smith and Carlos leave the Olympic Village the next day and will never represent the U.S. in competition again.

Again four years later, eleven Israeli hostages die in the Munich massacre. Only after protests by participants and spectators are the Games briefly interrupted, but – as Brundage commented – "the Games must go on!" Sport does not bow to politics and society, nor to terrorism.

And today?

Despite personalities like Brundage, who sometimes pushed for a depoliticization of sport out of honest and sometimes not so honest motives, sport always remained political. The next three Olympic Games in Montreal, Moscow and Los Angeles will go down in the history books as major boycotts.

Boycott is nothing new!

First South Africa is excluded as an apartheid state, then the Cold War finally reaches sports, East and West boycott each other's games. In the meantime, the Argentine military junta ensures that Diego Armando Maradona does not take part in the 1978 World Cup (not true enough to the regime) and that Argentina reaches the finals at all costs (also in terms of grapevine).

In 1994, the Colombian Andres Escobar is shot dead after scoring an own goal, and in 2012, political opponents of the Egyptian government are targeted and killed in Port Said after the final whistle of a football match. In the meantime, we are regaining our national pride through the summer fairy tale. However, all German players should please sing the anthem. And only let themselves be photographed with our politicians. Topless, in the locker room. That's much better and more integrative than wearing a shirt and a sweater next to a Authoritarian.

It's a matter of "how," not "if"

So the real question shouldn't be "should sports be political?" because regardless of our personal preferences, we just have to admit that we can never completely depoliticize sports. Instead, we need to ask "how should sport be politicized?" Which players, which issues, and in what ways? The answers to this question are most likely as pluralistic and diverse as our society.

But escaping into an under-complex illusion of the sports world without politics and social responsibility is neither contemporary nor the way of B42. Instead, we see ourselves as one of many players in sports with a social responsibility.