What the Olympic Games really celebrate

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What the Olympics really celebrate

BY ZANNY BEGG

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has spent $230 million on a
series of advertisements around the theme “celebrate humanity”. This
exercise in “global branding” is supposed to encourage us to see the
Olympic Games as a celebration of the best that humanity can offer:
health, internationalism and sport. The IOC wants us to believe that
the Olympic movement is above politics, that it's a happy carnival for
the “global family”.

More realistically, George Orwell once described “serious sport” --
for its promotion of violence, national hatred and jealousy -- as “war
minus the shooting”.

The Olympics are really about serious politics. Whilst pushing the
world's best athletes “higher, faster, stronger”, the IOC also pushes
the political agenda of the world's richest countries and companies.
The Olympics form part of the war machine of the corporate sector.

The modern Olympic Games were founded by a French aristocrat, the
Baron de Coubertin. His goals were both domestic (to bolster the
morale of French young people after France's defeat in the
Franco-Prussian War) and international (to develop links between the
ruling elites of Europe and the United States).

The IOC was set up in 1894, and the first games were held in Athens in
1896. The IOC was formed on the principle that members would be
recruited by cooption and that membership was for life. Coubertin
collected around him a group of generals, aristocrats and political
figureheads. It was 86 years before the first woman was able to join
this exclusive “Olympic family”.

To this day, the IOC has maintained an undemocratic and unassailable
role as the ruling body of the Olympics. In the IOC's 106 years, there
has been only one minor reform process -- conceded in the wake of the
Salt Lake City bribery scandal in 1999. This limited the terms of IOC
members to eight years and established a retirement age of 75 (neither
change applies to current members).

Politics and sport

The IOC has always claimed not to mix sport and politics, but in
reality it has often stirred up a deadly mix of the two.

In 1936, Berlin was the host city for the 11th Olympic Games. Because
of the character of Hitler's regime, there was widespread pressure on
the IOC to move the games. But the president of the IOC, Count Henri
de Baillet-Latour, with support from US Olympic Committee president
Avery Brundage, decided to appease Hitler. This is a position which
the IOC has clung to ever since: no matter what the human rights
record of a host government, the games must go on.

The Berlin games were a propaganda coup for the Nazis. Hitler
personally oversaw the whole project and used it to maximise support
for his regime.

One of the Nazis' contributions to the spectacle was the torch relay.
The torch was lit in Greece and then run across Europe to Berlin.
Along the way the Nazis used it to drum up support for fascism. In
Austria, Hitler's Brown Shirts organised a massive demonstration which
burst into chants of “Hitler, Hitler” when the flame drew into view.
Fifty thousand people gathered on the border of Czechoslovakia to
watch the flame pass over into Germany, where it was greeted by gangs
of Hitler Youth.

One of the star athletes of the 1936 games was the black US runner
Jesse Owens. After Owens' victory in the 100 metres race, Hitler
refused to congratulate him, saying, “The Americans should be ashamed
of themselves, letting Negroes win their medals for them. I shall not
shake hands with this Negro.”

A Jewish footballer, Edmund Baumgartner, was beaten to death for
scoring a winning goal against the German team in Upper Silesia the
year before the games began. Two of the best German athletes, Helene
Meyer and Gretel Bergmann, were barred from Germany because of their
Jewish heritage. A desperate flurry of diplomatic pressure had these
athletes admitted just before the games began.

By the time the games opened a concentration camp was operating just
half an hour's journey from the Olympic site.

The IOC claimed publicly that the Berlin games were a “success” that
contributed to a spirit of “reconciliation”. But privately they were
not so naive. When congratulated on the peaceful nature of the games
by the wife of one of the Olympic dignitaries, Billet-Latour replied,
“May God preserve you from your illusions, Madame! We shall have war
in three years.” Those members who dared to oppose the Berlin games
were quietly dropped from the IOC.

The IOC's links with fascism did not end with Berlin. The current head
of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch, was a member of fascist
organisations for 40 years and a supporter of the brutal Franco regime
in Spain. There are pictures of Samaranch in full military uniform
giving the fascist salute -- though these have not been chosen to
illustrate the Olympic advertising campaign

In 1964 international outrage finally forced the IOC to suspend South
Africa from participating in the Olympics after it refused to nominate
any black athletes. The IOC president at the time, Avery Brundage, saw
this as a personal defeat. In 1968 he attempted to overturn this
decision but was forced to back down after 40 countries, led by
African nations and the Soviet bloc, threatened a boycott.

The 1968 games were further steeped in controversy when the Mexican
government killed up to 300 peaceful protesters in Mexico City a few
weeks before the Olympic Games opened there. Despite the carnage, the
IOC declared, “The games must go on”.

The games went on in 1988 hosted by the brutal South Korean
dictatorship, in 1992 when the Spanish government cracked down on
Basque separatists and in 1996 when the US government cleared the
streets of homeless people in Atlanta. The Sydney games will go on
despite the racism of the Howard government.

Corporate rule

 From their inception, the Olympics have been closely associated with
corporate interests. The games in 1900 and 1904 were both attached to
trade fairs: the participating governments saw sport as an avenue for
commercial gain. This tradition has continued to the present, the
World Economic Forum meeting in Melbourne having been scheduled to
immediately precede the Sydney Olympics.

Today the IOC is a powerful multinational in its own right and
attracts millions of dollars in sponsorship from the world's largest
corporations. The television rights for coverage of the Sydney games
alone are worth $815 million. In the interests of television coverage,
the NSW government has accommodated the IOC by bringing on daylight
saving time a few months early.

The Olympic Security Command Centre has issued NSW Police with a
handbook which details what will be acceptable behaviour inside the
Olympic stadium.

The list of “restricted items” includes “signs and items with
corporate branding”. This is not to make the Olympics a corporate-free
zone, but to ensure that the corporate sponsors are not “injured” by
any competing logos. Inside the stadium, you will be bombarded with
images from Holden, Coca-Cola, IBM, Westpac and the other Olympic
sponsors. Any clothing or signs which prominently display competing
logos can be removed. A team of 50 student lawyers, jokingly referred
to as the “T-shirt police”, have been specifically hired for this purpose.

SOCOG has assembled an impressive security apparatus to prevent
protesters using the games to highlight Australia's real record on
human rights. Thirty thousand private security guards, tens of
thousands of Olympic Coordination Authority authorised personnel, 4000
military and thousands of state police will surround Sydney to ensure
“peaceful” games.

Despite this intimidation, indigenous protesters and their supporters
have joined together to ensure the games will be remembered not just
for sport but also for drawing to the world's attention the struggle
for justice for indigenous Australia.

The real history of the Olympics shows it has done little to
“celebrate humanity”. It is headed by a corrupt and undemocratic
organising committee which has used people's passion and enthusiasm
for sport to make millions of dollars for the already wealthy and to
cover up human rights atrocities in the host cities.


From: Archives, Green Left Weekly issue #417 23 August 2000.

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