The persistent politics of the Olympic Games
Living in the glow of Lake Placid’s Olympic history, it’s been interesting the last few months watching Mitt Romney nudge the Olympics into the political spotlight.
His roll in salvaging the Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 has emerged as one of his major hall-marks, a sign that he can turn around big, complicated enterprises.
Of course, Romney waded into the muddle of Olympic-scale politics this week when he said that he was “disconcerted” by some of the preparations for the London Summer Olympics this year. The comment triggered a firestorm in Britain.
We know, of course, that the Olympics have always had a political dimension. The Miracle On Ice in our backyard was a sporting event, but it was also a pivot point in the Cold War, one of those freeze frames in geopolitical history.
I found a great chronology put together by The Guardian newspaper that captures some of the other political flare-ups, often ones that burned brighter than the Olympic flame itself.
In 1936, African American athlete Jesse Owens thwarted Adolph Hitler’s effort to use the Berlin games as Nazi propaganda, winning four gold medals.
Over the decades that followed, countries boycotted the games again and again (China, the Soviet Union, the US) or were tossed out (South Africa).
In 1964, the final torchbearer chosen for the Tokyo winter games was Yoshinori Sakai, who was born on the day Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb.
The 1972 Munich Games, of course, were marred by violence as Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli delegation, killing nine.
This year, the politics are — so far at least — less stark and dramatic, but still significant. Romney’s gaffe is only one manifestation.
Four years after China’s breathtaking games, this is an opportunity for Europe to show that it still has vibrancy and vitality, in the wake of a recession and a financial meltdown that continue to threaten the world economy.
That may be one reason the Brits took Romney’s comments to heart. They know they have a lot to prove and don’t want anyone sniping from the sidelines.
Tags: election12, olympics
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“I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates good will between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn’t know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.”
George Orwell (The Sporting Spirit, 1945)
Love the Orwell. I think the Jesse Owens story (“He defied Hitler!”) is a fairy tale we like to tell ourselves. By participating in the Games, we and the other countries were giving the Nazis the propaganda victory they sought. Owens’ prominence could be seen as helping this effort, strenghthening the Nazis’ claims to be open and tolerant. At the same time (1936), and even later, Henry Ford was collaborating with the Nazi war machine in Germany.
Hitler’s 1936 effort to use the Olympics as Nazi propaganda was ably assisted by Avery Brundage, then President of the American Olympic Committee and later, President of the IOC. Brundige was an anti-semite and crytpo-fascist who opposed and overcame an American boycott of the Games that was motivated by Hitler’s racial policies. Brundige then went Hitler one better, prohibiting the only two Jews on the American team from competing (one German competitor with Jewish ancestry was allowed to compete to demonstrate Nazi “fairness”). The IOC has long had a pronounced fascist orientation. One of the most beloved Olympic rituals, the torch relay, was devised for and introduced at the Berlin Olympics.
Will,
Right or wrong, the prevailing attitude in the black press and among black atheletes was that black participation and, hopefully, victory in the 1936 Olympics would undermine Nazi racial theories. Owens was comparatively well treated in Germany and complained that he was snubbed by FDR after his Olympic victories.
Avery Brundage was also instrumental in stripping Tommy Smith and John Carlos of their medals in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. He was a nasty man, and remained head of the IOC until after the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Here is a typical Brundage quote (to Babe Didrikson) “You know, the ancient Greeks kept women out of their athletic games. They wouldn’t even let them on the sidelines. I’m not so sure but they were right.”
Agree with what others have said about Owens and 1936. What Brian said is a huuuuuge oversimplification, bordering on fiction. In the Leni Riefenstahl film, “Olympia,” the official Nazi film of the Games, Owens was a star, and his heroics played up, to show that the Nazis were “open” and not as hateful as some in the press were portraying them. That, indeed was the purpose of the 36 Olympics–to show that the Nazis were people you could watch a ballgame with, and weren’t so bad after all. The stated purpose was NOT to show Aryan superiority–though Hitler definitely paraded it when a German won.
My sense of Romney’s comment is that he thought he was playing to his strengths as a former Olympic leader and business organizer in making his comment.
What he didn’t realize is that nobody wanted his rational assessment, because he has no role in organizing these games; they wanted him to be a cheerleader. It just emphasized his seeming cluelessness. Even George Bush knows how to be a cheerleader.
Remember the 1980 Moscow Olympics that we (at least the US readers here) didn’t attend because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Seems like so long ago and yet so here and now.
Brainstorm! Why not use the Olympics as a development tool? We could alternate the Olympics among the half dozen most downtrodden nations in order to create some sort of economy in Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, etc.
Let’s get Mitt working on that one!
Romney is surely clueless, and as a Republican I am somewhat dismayed to see him as the nominee. This guy couldn’t find water if he fell out of a boat. That said, I think he is essentially a decent guy with good intentions. His opponent, on the other hand, I see as a caculating opportunist who is all about getting elected. Having achieved that, he did nothing as a follow-up. He’s likely to do the same this fall.
I thought the opening ceremony was great except for all the ads and the talking heads.
Mr. Bean, the Queen and James Bond were great.
Loved the brief history lesson.
Romney? Was he one of the guys wearing a top hat and feeling so proud to make money on the backs of the poor and the middle class?
Speaking of politics, what is up with this?
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/17/opinion/ghitis-munich-olympics/index.html
Why won’t they allow a simple moment of silence to recognize the mass murders of the Jewish team?
I mean I can come up with several likely reasons, none of them very good.
The IOC has always been an anti-semitic, fascist organization willing to politicize sport. Nothing new here.
The IOC has always seemed pretty sleazy.
I thought it was the Israeli team, Mervel.
It is hard not to fall into that trap but everyone should remember that Israeli and Jewish are not interchangeable. Nor are American interests and Israeli interests interchangeable. And I’m getting pretty far off topic here but shouldn’t American citizens who move to illegal West Bank settlements lose their American citizenship?
Of course the IOC wouldn’t want to offend the murderers and the many people who still today support them in the Middle East, who killed those Jewish individuals because they were JEWISH, not because the were from Israel. I do think you bring up the problem, it is offensive on the 40th anniversary of this mass murder, to talk about the fact that these horrible people, evil people, killed all of those athletes in Munich, it would be politically incorrect to talk about that.
The IOC are cowards, the article was correct. I don’t think they are overtly anti Semitic, they are just basically kind of sleazy.
Of the 105 current members of the IOC, approximately 15% are from muslim countries. There is one member from Israel.
The IOC has been a bunch of elitist jerks from the beginning. So what. I wouldn’t mind if the Olympics didn’t continue at all. The jingoism, propaganda, and excessive commercialization of the whole thing got out of hand a long time ago. Time to end the whole thing .
Oh, and you’re upset about not having a memorial for some people getting killed?
There are people getting killed all the time. I’d rather focus more on resolving issues that lead to innocent people getting killed than on whether we have memorials 40 years later.
Case in point, we have a Presidential candidate in Israel advocating for ideas that are sure to get people killed. Then 40 years later will everybody be upset when there is no memorial?
If they were Americans you would be screaming for a memorial. The Palestinians who killed the Israelis at the Olympics in ’72 politicized the Olympics in a way that not even Hitler dared to do. Think about that for a minute and then tell me what you think about the IOC’s shameful actions.
It’s a given that you can’t stand Romney, I understand that, but his trip to Israel has nothing to do with the Olympics. By the way, what’s Obama’s plan to deal with a nuclear armed Iran? Israel (and we should be glad they are willing to do the dirty work) won’t stand for it and it is as well that we have a plan to deal with the consequences when they take action.
Mervel, I completely agree with you that there should have been a tribute at these games. But what you wrote below is factually incorrect, at least the clause that begins “not because…”
“…who killed those Jewish individuals because they were JEWISH, not because the were from Israel….”
The Munich tragedy was all about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And there have are Israelis who are not Jewish. The author of the piece you quote pointedly uses the term Israeli, not Jewish. It is an important distinction in this context.
But again, it’s a disgrace that there’s no acknowledgment from the IOC.
Larry, I would not be screaming for a memorial if they were Americans. I am oh-so over memorials. A fitting memorial to the dead Israelis would be a real and concerted effort to resolve the issues between Israel and the Palestinians.
As for Romney, I don’t dislike him. I think he is a decent person, but as a candidate he seems a lot like John Kerry. Only clumsier and less well informed.
I don’t know what Obama’s plans for a nuclear armed Iran is but I can tell you ( and you’re not going to like this ) that George Bush is responsible for Iran pushing so hard to develop nukes. If you will remember, Iran helped us to overthrow the Taliban. They were expecting that they might be rewarde with attempts at renewing diplomatic relations. Instead Bush gave his Axis of Evil speech and then promptly invaded Iraq. With American forces on their eastern and western borders and also in the Persian Gulf Iran decided that if they didn’t want to be the next to be invaded they had better get a nuclear deterrent.
Hey for those of you who believe that corporations are people, check out the photos of empty seats at the Olympic games. Sponsoring corporations got lots of tickets but corporations don’t have butts to put in seats.
Knucklehead,
Time to stop blaming Bush for everything and do some serious fact checking instead. Also, you seem to endorse Iran’s nuclear weapons program. I find that strange, given they are our sworn enemy.
I thought you’d like that.
“What he didn’t realize is that nobody wanted his rational assessment, because he has no role in organizing these games; they wanted him to be a cheerleader. It just emphasized his seeming cluelessness. Even George Bush knows how to be a cheerleader.”
Maybe we don’t need another cheerleader?
The thing is, I’m pretty well informed on Middle Eastern affairs ( for an amateur )
and I’m not afraid of McCarthy-like attacks from you or anyone else. I try not to be influenced by jingoism or propaganda in my understanding of world affairs and if you did a little research you would find that I am essentially correct in my statements, though obviously I simplified what could be a Phd thesis into a couple of sentences.
As for “sworn enemies”, that kind of talk is used to manipulate the masses. Libya was once our ally, then our sworn enemy, now our new ally – for now. Germany, Japan, Italy, the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, Great Britain (and in that case we were traitors, friends, enemies, then allies). Pakistan is our ally – funny, huh? And yet India was an enemy when they were non-aligned – not because they didn’t like us, but because we wanted them to take sides in a Cold War they didn’t want anything to do with. Cuba -there’s a good one. Can anyone tell me one good reason why we are still mad at Cuba? Because they took their own stuff back?
And don’t blame me that Bush was such a bad President.
Paul, maybe the British didn’t need Mitt Romney hanging about.
You’d think he had a little bit of shame. After all he’s the guy always bragging about how he did such a great job with the Olympics in Salt Lake when in the real world it was only his ability to get enormous amounts of taxpayer money, both state and federal, that saved the Games. You wont hear Mitt bragging about how his Socialist tactics made the SLC Olympics a success.
“And don’t blame me that Bush was such a bad President.”
There’s some real scholarship for you! Care to explain the history of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, including proof that it was motivated by Bush’s presidency? How about how Iran helped us defeat the Taliban? Was that during the Bush presidency when they were building nuclear weapons in response to his policies or was it during the Obama presidency?
Larry, you need to do two things. First, read what I write and not what you think I write. Second, spend more time getting news from a variety of sources, particularly from some that are based outside the USA. The Economist is a good one to start with.
I never said that Iran’s nuke program was motivated by the Bush presidency, so you have that fact wrong.
A brief and very shallow bit from Wikipedia on Iran and the Taliban. If you want to read more do your own homework:
“U.S. and British officials have accused Iran of giving weapons and support to the Taliban insurgency (which is considered by the U.S. as a terrorist organization) in Afghanistan.[25][26] Chris Alexander, the deputy United Nations representative to Kabul, has stated that the UN has seen no evidence of this, and that weapons and arms are principally smuggled across the porous Pakistani border.[27] Afghan President Hamid Karzai has praised Iran, saying “we have had, very good, very close relations… so far, Iran has been a helper and a solution”.[27]
Mohsen Rezai, former head of the Revolutionary Guards, has claimed that Iran helped to overthrow the Taliban, with Revolutionary Guard troops fighting alongside the Northern Alliance in the months following the September 11, 2001 attacks.[28]”
The pretense of the Olympics is just beyond silly. First, there’s the pomposity of it calling itself a “movement.” But trying to pretend that politics is separated from the games is defied by the simple fact that athletes and teams are solely defined by what nation they come from… nations being inherently political entities.
Knuckleheadedliberal said:
“I can tell you ( and you’re not going to like this ) that George Bush is responsible for Iran pushing so hard to develop nukes.”
and
“I never said that Iran’s nuke program was motivated by the Bush presidency, so you have that fact wrong.”
I must be crazy! First, for continuing to read this nonsense and second, for even trying to respond to it. I did like the accusation of McCarthyism, though
Larry, Iran already had a nuke program before Bush was in office but the actions by Bush caused them to try to speed up work on weapons development and to harden their nuke sites.
The motivation for Iran to develop nukes in the first place goes back several decades and includes many factors.
Not McCarthyism, McCarthy-like tactics. Two different, though tangentially related, things.
Finally, Republicans have a strange attitude towards Bush. I mean, the guy was President for 8 years but when anyone suggests that something happened during his administration Republicans just say (to quote Reagan) “there you go again.” Like it or not, Bush was President and he started 2 wars and the economy began to collapse on his watch and while cries of “wag the dog” were still ringing in our ears after Clinton tried to cruise missile bin Laden, Bush ignored the threat of al Qaeda.