In his latest book, our contributor Frédéric Magellan shows that sports have become the favorite place for political protests and religious infiltration.
And if, despite what history textbooks claim, the Cold War started on November 21, 1945 on an English football field? On this day, at White Hart Lane stadium in the outskirts of London, the local club Arsenal faced Moscow Dynamo. In front of 100,000 spectators, the match was the highlight of the visit of the most famous Soviet team to the UK, invited to celebrate the Allies’ victory over Nazism and seal the friendship between Stalinist Russia and the British Empire.
Feared a humiliating defeat, the House of Commons had, a few days earlier, requested the government to allow the country’s two star footballers, Stanley Matthews from Stoke City and Stanley Mortensen from Blackpool, to temporarily join Arsenal. A lack of fair play that only matched the cheating by the Russians during the game, playing with twelve players for about twenty minutes, taking advantage of the thick fog. Final score: 3-3. The following month, George Orwell wrote in the daily Tribune: “At a certain level, sports is a war without bullets.”
Since ancient times, sports have maintained close ties with politics. Conceived as a symbolic staging of conflict between citizens, the Olympic Games are supposed to allow the pacification of relations between peoples. Then two millennia later, starting from Mussolini (during the 1934 World Cup in Italy) and Hitler (during the 1936 Berlin Olympics), powers have used competitions as ideological showcases.
Frédéric Magellan notes that we have entered a new era, filled with examples and vivid stories dedicated to the subject. We are now in an era where politicization is no longer only orchestrated by states, but also by protest movements, especially religious and progressive ones. The founding moment of this phenomenon probably dates back to the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, when American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fist on the podium in support of the civil rights movement.
Only recently has this protest politicization become a system. In 2016, racial issues emerged in stadiums with the gesture of American football player Colin Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem to denounce police violence against African Americans, a gesture that set a trend.
Thus, for the past decade, sports have become a permanent battleground for different forms of activism, starting with anti-racism, but also including Islamism and the fight for LGBT rights. These dynamics mirror our societies where individual identities are expressed more spectacularly in public spaces. As a result, new tensions arise on the fields, especially when some athletes, supported by states like Qatar, openly display their faith while campaigns against homophobia are organized by Western organizations. The most recent example in France was on May 16th, when FC Nantes striker Mostafa Mohamed boycotted the last day of Ligue 1 to avoid wearing the colors of the gay pride on his jersey.
Meanwhile, sports continue to be a bastion of resistance where the principles of the past world are celebrated. National flags, anthems, and rivalries between countries remain obligatory. Elitism and capitalism are glorified in a way that even Donald Trump seems humble in comparison to some star athletes. Furthermore, a form of sexism still structures most disciplines, with strict separation between male and female categories, as well as disparities in media coverage and remuneration demonstrating a persistent gendered organization.
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