Like Pigs in a Blanket
In 1936, the African-American athlete Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Olympics held in Berlin, which was an outstanding achievement by any account. His success was also poignant because of Leni Riefenstahl’s movie Olympia, which shed a glorifying light on the Nazi regime that was hosting the Olympic games back then. Adolf Hitler refused to shake hands with Owens and promptly left the ceremony. After ravaging Europe with unthinkable atrocities he met his end in his bunker with Eva Braun whom he had married just a day before their melodramatic suicide pact.
Their marriage lasted even shorter than Liz Truss in Downing Street. On the other hand, Leni Riefenstahl’s reputation never truly recovered after her misjudged alliance with Nazis in spite of her unquestionable talent. Nowadays we have a word for something like that: sportswashing. Basically it means wrapping an oppresive regime into a blanket stuffed with tons of money to throw on a globally popular show that’s supposed to silence breaches of human rights in Qatar, persecution of gays and treatment of women.
It’s a small, immensely wealthy country run by a family that doesn’t take no for an answer. Since money makes the world go round that especially applies to football. From a game that connected people and promoted healthy competition, first it turned into a circus for hooligans and violent racists, then into a playground for foreign billionaires where players were pawns with pricetags and market value. The whole thing reached its peak when a plan for creating a Super League surfaced causing an eruption of protests from both fans and players.
Gary Neville delivered a scathing condemnation of the idea that would turn the people’s game into a supper club for the super-privileged. Owners of clubs like Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal quickly reached out to the infuriated public with a string of rather unconvincing mea culpas and the whole affair fired back in the shape of a self-inflicted wound. Because without fans, it’s just two groups of people kicking a ball on a football field. And that robs it of an allure that’s rooted in passion and relatability. The reason why people call it the second most important thing in the world. I’m not a fan of the people’s game, I’m increasingly not even a fan of people as such in the first place. But I digress.
David Beckham started a revolution not just because of his successful and inspiring career. A very important part of his appeal was his public persona that turned into a well-oiled multimillion pound business. Endorsed by all sorts of luxury brands in sports, fashion and lifestyle, there were seemingly no boundaries to what he can do. A brush with him could give your own business enough exposure and turn it into a success.
He married Victoria Beckham of the pop supergroup Spice Girls, simultaneously a gesture of love and business acumen joining two lucrative brands that combined with Victoria’s eponymous fashion line, reached stratospheric hights and grew into a family empire worth more than 300 million pounds. I’m using the word “brand” so much here because that’s Beckham’s primary product. It’s less to do with something physical but attraction and ability to sell even protective face masks as high-end accessories. Everyone wants a piece of him and he knows it, so he decides to cash in even when it might cost him more than he thinks.
The most recent example is his collaboration with Qatar as the ambassador for the championship hosts. It’s no surprised that there were reactions from Three Lions Pride, a group of LGBTQ+ supporters of the national football team. Its co-founder Di Cunningham expressed disappointment because Beckham loudly expressed support and condemned all forms of discrimination.
Since you can’t have your cake and eat it too, Beckham now found himself in a position where he endorses a system in which homosexuality is punishable by prison or even death. It doesn’t quite add up, but that just my own two cents. In this pay-to-play stunt, Becks the humanitarian was unmasked as a hypocrite that doesn’t mind simultaneously associating with UNICEF and cavorting with the Emir of Qatar. It’s not just laughable, it’s morally mutually exclusive.
The Qatari doctor Nas Mohamed gained public recognition as the only openly gay man in his country. Due to the treatment of sexual minorities, Mohamed escaped and sought asylum in the USA. He since then spoke out against FIFA’s decision and expressed doubts regarding the safety of LGBTQ+ fans during the championship.
Hosts reasurred international media that everyone is welcome as long as they respect their culture. While this is perfectly plausible, that’s also the tricky part in conservative Islamic countries. There’s a list of specific places where reporters are allowed to work and rules that need to be respected if you don’t want to feel the consequences for which countries like Qatar are quite rightly notorious, like filming living conditions of immigrant workers.
I refuse to label concerns like these islamophobic because it’s a restrictive, oppresive and dangerous environment for people that publicly express an opinion not sanctioned by authorities. I wouldn’t be surprised if people like Blatter or Becks are too blinded by Arab money to care a tuppence for people like Nas Mohamed or Fahd Bohendi, an opposition leader that died in prison after allegedly been subjected to torture. They may also have overlooked the fine print in the competition rules that says Qatari women aren’t allowed to attend the venues.
But hey, maybe I’m the naive one, with my moral highground, looking down on all of it, while others cash in millions that provide a comfy future even for their grandkids. Sometimes I wish it were different and I could compromise my principles for benefits. Ocassionally I do, it’s a necessity of life because we live in a messed up world that requires turning a blind eye every now and then on things we can’t influence. But this is not that kind of a situation. It’s one thing to simply switch to Netflix when you get fed up by constant coverage of war crimes or futile environmental causes. But it’s a very different story if you are a very rich public personality that can choose what or who he lends his platform to.
The backlash he is facing right now is unsurprising and deserved because he doesn’t have the balls of Jesse Owens. Though the Emir did shake hands with the English superstar. Even dictatorships change over time. The lesson is that in the end, it all comes down to status. Tattoos are illegal in the country, but Becks will get away with it. After all, when it’s over and he cashes his fat paycheck he gets to go back home where women have freedoms many in Qatar can’t possibly comprehend. Like marrying on their own terms or studying abroad, it shows just how much we take for granted and how easy it is to lose things we were raised to be entitled to.
Which is why it might be a good idea to let his daughter tag along at the competition while dad does his photo-ops and gets showered with gift bags. Hopefully she’s old enough to see that it’s not an another carefree amusement park and everything has its price. Especially with people who don’t have to compromise and sell their soul to the highest bidder. I don’t know if there’ll be a Kanye effect and daddy looses valuable partnerships for doing it. Because integrity won’t put food on your table, but it will help you to look into the mirror without feeling let down by the reflection in it. Sometimes it’s all you could wish for.
I certainly don’t believe Beckham would endorse the 1936 Olympics. But sometimes there really is something like bad publicity. Those of us who don’t share the alleged excitement of team sports can remember the case of Peter Handke, the Austrian literary Nobel prize winner and supporter of Serbian warlord Slobodan Milošević who started the war in 1990’s Yugoslavia, culminating in a genocidal bloodbath. People with a powerful platform should be careful about their choices. Handke was repeatedly criticized for allowing his politics take center stage instead of his writing. But when you choose to write a eulogy for someone like Slobodan Milošević you might as well quit writing.
Not everyone is entitled to second chances. He might not even need one after being enshrined in Nobel’s literary canon. There are others who found their way into it in spite of their beliefs, like Knut Hamsun. People we celebrate mirror our own beliefs which is why their actions sometimes make us question them. Plinths we put them on should not be unshakeable. If they are, we’ve got a problem much bigger than supporting the unacceptable. Blatter’s has already collapsed: there’s even a Netflix program about it.
Becks is going to survive. But he may scratch his head if Harper Seven one day gets a marriage proposal from an Arab sheikh where covering everything but her eyeballs is treated as a small price to pay for what she could get in return. That might be one of the few things he’d be reluctant to endorse. You don’t have to be Julius Caesar to know your own Rubicon. Though Caesar would probably sympathise: both in Qatar and ancient Rome, you risk walking with a knife in your back if you put a foot wrong.
