The International Olympic Committee’s Selective Morality

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/18-6


Gay activist arrested, August 2, 2013 (Valya V/Flickr Commons)

The International Olympic Committee is mired in a political morass, thanks to the regressive anti-gay legislation signed into law this summer by Russian President Vladimir Putin that outlaws “propaganda of non-traditional relationships to minors.” Violators of the law are subject to sharp fines—$1500 for individuals and $30,000 for organizations—while foreigners are deported under duress. The law has sparked calls to boycott of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, a petition to relocate the Games to Vancouver, and pleas to ban Russia from participating in its own Olympics.

The IOC has met the crescendoing challenge with a preposterous lack of action. The sports behemoth is floundering because it was built on a bedrock of contradiction: the quixotic idea that the Olympic Games transcend politics. In reality, the IOC is a political organization, marinating in politics, on a politicized global terrain.

For two decades IOC President Avery Brundage trumpeted the official line that “we actively combat the introduction of politics into the Olympic movement and are adamant against the use of the Olympic Games as a tool or as a weapon by any organization.” But the brand of apoliticism peddled by the IOC has long been eminently political.South Africa’s apartheid system led the IOC to withdraw the country’s invitation to the 1964 Tokyo Games and to ultimately expel South Africa from the Olympic Movement. In the 1990s the IOC began working with the United Nations to institute an “Olympic Truce” before each Games—whereby countries agree to cease fire during the actual Olympics—an intervention into geopolitics that is unanimously supported and routinely ignored. The IOC awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics to Beijing in the hope it would give China a democratic jumpstart. The supranational hegemon has even hosted meetings between the National Olympic Committees from Israel and Palestine in order to further cooperation in sport. Clearly, the convenient crutch of apoliticism is anachronistic, part of a formulaic charade designed to dodge controversy.

Firecracker sportswriter Dave Zirin recently called the IOC “a corporate piranha masquerading as Nemo the Clown Fish, tearing countries to pieces under a miasma of soft-headed hooey.” By “soft-headed hooey” he means the lofty principles enshrined in the Olympic Charter, including the declaration that one of the “fundamental principles of Olympism” is the promotion of “a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” The Charter explicitly states “Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.” The IOC’s self-appointed role is “to act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement.”

[DonCoquixote]

1. Of course

Has no one ever wondered why anytime a city gets the Olympics, there is a wholesale kicking out of the poor, as well as heavy debt incurred by the host nation? It was no less than that in Vancouver, where many low income peoplewere evicted so they could build all this nice Olympic infrastructure. The Olympics has become a RACKET! It is all about giving the megacorps of the world a chance to look good and sell their products, nothing less.

Worse yet, under the guise of people being "amateurs", most of the games are played by a bunch of young kids, some of whom have been in training since early childhood, so that they can be paraded about like show horses. You get a bunch of people that feel their life is over before 20, and have no skills other than be a coach.