Hardly any development in the sports world has been discussed as frequently in recent years as the progressive politicization of sport. Sporting competitions and results sometimes take a back seat. Instead, we're debating kneeling football players, purchased world championships, rainbow bandages, and photos with presidents from other countries.
Many people long to finally watch a soccer game in peace and quiet in a sold-out stadium without immediately worrying about the major social issues and problems of our time. You often have the feeling that sport is being stripped of its innocence and purity; it is becoming a mere plaything of media, commerce and politics.
At least at one point, however, we are subject to a fundamental miscalculation: Sport is not suddenly politicized or instrumentalized for the first time in its history. Sport has always been political and a platform for social and political representation.
Where does this stereotype of non-political sport actually come from? Why should sport be apolitical at all? The second question is a bit easier to answer than the first. It is based on the narrative that politicization of sport is a bad thing. We should therefore keep politics away from sport.
And in fact, the story provides us with enough relevant examples to support this narrative. The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, for example. A perfect starting point to argue: “You see, sport should simply remain apolitical. Otherwise, something like that comes out. ”
What needs to be questioned...
But do we really want that? We, society? And is it always just politics themselves that get involved in sport? The miracle of Bern is the perfect counterexample. It is not for nothing that people also speak of the “actual birth of the Federal Republic of Germany.”
The reestablishment of a collective sense of togetherness imposed from society and not “from above.” But that is also politicization. Even if it comes not only from politics, but from society itself.
But couldn't we still try (again) to separate sport and politics more? Because these are now two great examples of a symbiosis of sport and politics, but originally it was definitely different, since sport was simply sport and completely apolitical! Not really.
According to our Western understanding, we can trace the origins of modern sport back to ancient Greece. Of course, there were also games and competitions in other civilizations on other continents, but their influence on our current understanding of sport is rather marginal.
Start point Olympia
Sport and ancient Greece: we associate this primarily with the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games were part of the Panhellenic Games, a series of competitions with different venues — the respective cultural centers of Ancient Greece — and in honor of various deities.
Before, during and after the competitions, there was a kind of cease-fire throughout Greece — Ekecheiria — to ensure that competitions are held safely, including arrival and departure. Today, we derive the principle of Olympic peace from this.
Not a particularly apolitical start then...
Ancient Rome: “Panem et Circenses”
The second major cultural milestone in our sporting history is also in ancient times, a few years and nautical miles away. The ancient Romans perfected one of the basic ideas of the modern entertainment industry over 2,000 years ago: to amuse and distract society from central problems through “global” mega events.
Fortunately, the martial lethality of some competitions has not persisted to this day, but the terminology “panem et circenses” — bread and games — does, as does the instrumentalization of sport by the government to satisfy and pacify the people.
Karl Marx once said that religion was the opium of the masses. Then sport would be at least a strong gin and tonic.
However, religion is actually a suitable transition to the next few centuries. By the 19th century, the concept of sport and sports competitions almost completely disappeared from the scene. There were various competitions — such as the Tjost — but very few have institutionalized themselves sustainably, including archery and the so-called “Calcio Storico” in Florence.
A plausible reason for explanation: Estates, i.e. lack of civil liberties and time to play sports, as well as the omnipresent role of religion in controlling the country and society.
The renaissance of sport in England
It is therefore hardly surprising that sport is increasingly returning to social life in the 19th century, at the same time as the outbreak of class society and absolutism: a belated renaissance of sport based on political and social change, so to speak.
Where which sport was played was, of course — you guessed it — completely apolitical. That is why it is pure coincidence that the typical working-class and mass sport of the modern era (soccer) first took root in the land of industrialization (England).
Sport is (betting) fight
Seriously though, its expansion into Germany and increasing tolerance among political authorities had a great deal to do with its usefulness for implementing joint physical exercises.
Back then, even less “youth trained for the Olympics” than “youth trained for war games.” Too far-fetched? Just remember the terminologies in soccer: attack, defense, tactics, flanks, shooting, storming, slaughterers, etc. Any more questions?
After sport had established itself in the respective societies across continents, it was institutionalized at the turn of the century. The two most prominent products: FIFA the international soccer association and, of course, the IOC, the international Olympic Committee, today something like the global governing body of sport.
While it took FIFA until 1930 for the first World Cup, the IOC held the first modern Olympic Games in Athens as early as 1896 and faced the first political affront in Stockholm in 1912.
Even then, the teams moved into the Olympic Stadium under their respective national flag. For the Finns — then part of the Russian Empire — an occasion for a small protest action: Immediately after entering the stadium, they let themselves fall back a few meters from the rest of the Russian team, a Finnish flag was handed out from the audience and they marched past the Swedish king “independently” under their own flag. The Russian ambassador was not very enthusiastic.
24 years later, we are already at the first peak of the political instrumentalization of sport — and at the beginning of the first attempts at depoliticization. There is probably no better and sadder example of the political instrumentalization of a sporting event than the already mentioned Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin.
The propaganda machine of the Nazi state was running at full speed; the Olympic Games had never been better organized and a country presented better. The Polish Ambassador in Berlin, Jozef Lipski, commented: “We must be on guard against a people who know how to organize in this way. Mobilization in this country will work just as smoothly. ”
What the entire world public, who turned a blind eye to these games in Berlin as well as the German civilian population: Construction of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp began 30 kilometers from the city gates at the same time as the games. The most prominent “understanding” of the NS regime: Avery Brundage, biggest boycott opponent within the American delegation, anti-Semite and later IOC president. He will be with us for a few decades, as a person and an exemplary depoliticizer.
His most important agenda item: Sport is sport, politics and commerce have no place here. This primarily illustrates his handling of the next incidents. The construction of the Berlin Wall was of course no reason for Brundage to admit two German teams to the Olympic Games; in 1964, another all-German team represented the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR in Tokyo.
Four years later, one of the most famous pictures in sports history was taken. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists during the award ceremony for the 200-meter run in protest against the ongoing oppression of African Americans in the USA and against the assassination attempt on Martin Luther King. Avery Brundage describes the event as an “evil demonstration against the American flag by Negroes” and is putting pressure on the American NOK. The result: Smith and Carlos leave the Olympic Village the next day and will never represent the USA in a competition again.
Another four years later, eleven Israeli hostages die in the Munich Olympic attack. The games are only briefly interrupted after protests from participants and spectators, but — as Brundage commented — “the Games must go on! “Sport does not bow to politics and society nor to terrorism.
Despite personalities such as Brundage, who promoted the depoliticization of sport sometimes for honest and sometimes for less decent reasons, sport always remained political. The next three Olympic Games in Montreal, Moscow and Los Angeles will go down in the history books as major boycott games.
First South Africa is excluded as an apartheid state, then the Cold War finally reaches sport, East and West boycott each other's games. In the meantime, the Argentinean military junta ensures that Diego Armando Maradona does not take part in the 1978 World Cup (not loyal enough to the regime) and that Argentina reaches the final under all circumstances, at any cost (in grain).
In 1994, Colombian Andres Escobar was shot dead after an own goal, and in 2012 political opponents of the Egyptian government in Port Said were deliberately attacked and killed after the whistle of a soccer game. In the meantime, we are regaining our national pride through the summer fairy tale. However, please all German players should sing the anthem dutifully. And only be photographed with our politicians. Topless in the cabin. It's much better and more inclusive than my shirt and sweater vest next to an autocrat anyway.
The real question should therefore not be “should sport be political,” because regardless of our personal preferences, we simply have to admit to ourselves that we can never completely depoliticize sport. Instead, we must ask ourselves “How should sport be politicized.” Which actors, which topics and in which way? The answers to this question are most likely just as pluralistic and diverse as our society.
But fleeing into a sub-complex illusion of the sports world without politics and social responsibility is neither timely nor the path of B42. Instead, we see ourselves as one of many players in sport with a social responsibility.
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