Vol. 26 No. 279 (2021)
All Games are political
In one of the most relevant moments of Tokyo 2021, the North American athlete Raven Saunders, came down from the podium with her silver medal and raised her arms above her head forming an "X" with her wrists, as she herself commented, representing the intersection where all oppressed people meet: the LGTBI+ collective, people with mental illness and Afro-American minorities.
Faced with this peaceful expression in favor of Human Rights, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is considering withdrawing the medal from Saunders, just as it sanctioned Tommie Smith and John Carlos for raising their fists in Mexico '68. They are the members of the same organization as during the Berlin Olympics in 1936, they were distracted by the Nazi salute - a symbol of discrimination and oppression - by leaders, athletes and spectators. They are the same ones that ensure hegemony to the most powerful countries by allowing them to incorporate athletes from peripheral countries, instead of collaborating so that these athletes develop and represent their countries of origin. This supremacy is confirmed at the time of granting the venues that only take into account a tiny percentage of cities, to the point that by 2028, London, Paris and Los Angeles are going to organize it three times, leaving without any chance to locations with reasonable resources to carry out the event. At the same time, they vindicate the laws of the most conservative countries, affirming gender binarism, and applying distinctive biopolitical criteria on the bodies of athletes.
Rather than preventing the interference of politics in the stadiums, the IOC tries to maintain its own interests, which, far from being the product of any expression of representative democracy, are associated with the corporate business of brands, sponsoring companies and the media that make it possible the media reproduction of this controversial show.
Tulio Guterman, Director - August 2021
Videos Abstracts: access to the abstract videos page of this issue
Published:
2021-08-16
