In Part 1 of this series we saw how modern sportswashing had its roots in Roman times with the idea of bread and circuses to distract the masses from the cruelty and debauchery of the political elites at the time. We also saw the first real example of modern sportswashing when the 1936 Olympic Games were cynically used to distract attention away from Nazi policies and how Nazi Germany was portrayed as a harmonious and peace-loving country.
So, how has sportswashing developed in the 90 or so years since the Berlin Olympics of 1936?
Finland, 1952
Boycotts of sporting events have become quite common and arguably started in 1952, when Taiwan staged what is seen as the first confirmed Olympic boycott of the games held in Helsinki in Finland that year. Interestingly, the boycott was nothing to do with Helsinki or Finland specifically, but rather was because China had sent a team to the Olympics for the first time, following the Chinese Communist revolution of 1949.
Spain, 1964
Meanwhile in Spain, Franco held a tight grip on the people, resulting in perhaps as many as 200,000 Spaniards being executed or disappeared by his regime. However, this did not stop the 1964 football European Nations Cup football tournament being held in Spain, while Franco was dictator.
Franco was already using football and in particular the great success of Real Madrid, in the early years of the European Cup, to bolster his position, by associating with it and being seen to be linked to it.
Zaire, 1974
By 1974 Muhammad Ali had been firstly stripped of the world heavyweight boxing crown and secondly had failed to regain it since 1970, for seven long years. However, in the autumn of that year, an opportunity presented itself in the heavyweight title match between Ali and George Foreman which became known as the Rumble in the Jungle. This took place in Kinshasa in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo despite the fact that the country was at the time under the brutal dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Soko.
Canada, 1976
The Montreal Olympics in 1976 saw another major boycott as boycotts of the Olympics were becoming relatively common forms of protest. As in 1952, the protest had nothing to do specifically with the host country Canada, but was a protest by 25 African nations engaged in a boycott relating to apartheid system in South Africa.
Argentina, 1978
Another attempt at a boycott of a major sporting festival took place two years later as Argentina hosted the 1978 World Cup. The military had seized power two years earlier and was at the time systematically engaged in committing human rights abuses, which included killing between 10,000 on 30,000 people in a campaign known as the ‘Guerra Sucia’ or dirty war which went on from 1976 to 1983.
One of the leaders of the military junta in Argentina, Admiral Emilio Massera is reported as saying on the eve of the World Cup that ”holding the tournament will show the Argentina is a trustworthy country capable of carrying out huge projects. Andy will help push back against the criticism that is raining on us from around the world”.
The opening ceremony for the 1978 World Cup saw organisers release hundreds of doves and President Jorge Rafael Videla declared: “we hope these games will continue the strength and peace which we desire for all the world and among all men”.
Argentina won the 1978 World Cup with a 3-1victory over Holland in the final and it has been argued that this invigorated the nationalistic spirit that had fed into the’ Guerra Sucia’. This only ended when the junta’s hold on the government began to wane in the early 1980s, after the unsuccessful attempt at taking over the Falkland Islands.
Soviet Union, 1980
Back to the Olympics in 1980, and the arguments around boycotting the games continued. In December of the previous year, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan and US President, Jimmy Carter didn’t want them to use the Olympics as a distraction from their aggression. Consequently, the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics, although other western countries, such as Great Britain, did send teams to Moscow.
USA, 1984
Purely by chance the next Olympics was to be in Los Angeles in 1984 and so the USSR and the eastern bloc countries had their opportunity to take revenge by boycotting the 1984 Olympics.
China, 2008
It would be 24 years before another controversial Olympic Games was to take place and during that time China had undertaken a huge economic expansion. However, there was also one event that would be a huge and enormous stain on China’s reputation during that time. This was the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989.
Consequently the leader the time, Deng Xiaoping, made it clear to the hierarchy in China that they would host the Olympics as soon as possible in the future as a way of reintegrating with the world and making China seem a more humane country.
Two purposes
Sportswashing in events such as the Olympics of the World Cup actually can be said to serve two different distinct purposes with two distinct audiences. The first is domestic audience keeping people in a country on side in a nation where free and fair elections simply don’t take place.
Secondly they can be used to help countries reintegrate into the world system without having to change their regime.
Causing abuses
Through these two ideas we can see the playbook tactics that dictatorships such as the Saudi regime use when they take part in sportswashing. There is also another aspect to sportswashing, which can perhaps be traced back to the imprisonment of Roma and Sinti in Germany in 1936, but certainly back to the Beijing Olympics of 2008. As many as 10,000 people were forcibly evicted to make way for new stadiums, Human Rights Watch documented abuse shows migrant labour who worked on the stadiums and increasing repression of the LGBTQ community, women, journalists, and activists.
Summary
We can see that in the 80 years between the Berlin Olympics and the mid 2010s, sportswashing evolved. It became common practice for oppressive regimes and pariah states to use sportswashing to help them to control their populations and also to present a human, if very false, face to the world so facilitating their reintegration into the world community. What sportswashing did not seem to be about was helping oppressive regimes to change their ways and actually live up to the ideals that they seemed to be espousing during the sporting festivals they were hosting.
The scene was set for Gulf states to take sportswashing to another level…
