Boycott or abolition? The politics behind the Beijing Olympiad

Public housing was, as David Zirin has pointed out in Counterpunch, demolished in Atlanta. Sydney, being no exception, saw the homeless removed from within a certain radius of the city environs. Four years later, Athens bore witness to a similar program of exile and eradication. The toiling poor and the aesthetic of sporting prowess tend to be incompatible.

The games are certainly not for the peaceful. In recent memory, the Olympiads of Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984) come to mind, both taking place in the shadow of proxy wars. But the Cold War was but one era of sporting hypocrisies, where ideological titans used athletes as cultural and political muscle. The 1904 games in St Louis were resonant with the imperial tones of Manifest Destiny. A particularly brutal war was being waged in the Philippines while “primitives” were shown in sporting events as markedly inferior to their Caucasian counterparts. Four years later, France crushed Vietnamese protests even as the London Olympics were taking place.

The Olympics is invariably tainted. Holding it is usually a bad omen, much like Miss Marple’s presence in a quiet English village. Viewers and readers of the sleuth’s exploits know that a crime has taken place, or is about to take place. Far from being an occasion for uplift, the games provide an occasion for mourning.

With all this in mind, it is perhaps time to consider a terminal boycott, and one that is equally discriminating. A sporting event so riddled by loathsome intrigues, so steadfastly saturnalian in its outlook (its children, peace, internationalism, all consumed), ought to be scuttled. That way, everyone might be so disgusted there will be no choice but to talk.