It’s that time already – four years have passed, and once again the eyes of the media have focused on the Olympic Games, this time in Beijing. The usual rhetoric of the nations of the earth coming together in peace to celebrate humanity through sport has been dusted off and wheeled out, and the host has set out to put on a show bigger and better than all the ones proceeding it. It’s as if some disease has swept across the earth and has infected people with a rose-tinted view of the problems of society and this civilisation, with the media and politicians working overtime to spread it and take advantage. Cynics like myself are brushed aside as everyone rushes to bask in the self-righteous glory of the games. So why should one be suspicious of the Olympics and not join in with the ‘Olympic Spirit’?
Far from bringing regeneration and prosperity to the people of the host city and country, all too often the poor are swept aside, their homes and livelihoods demolished in order to build the vast stadiums and ‘villages’ for athletes. To put salt in the wound, these facilities are used often for a grand total of two weeks before being abandoned and disused afterwards as the host becomes too impoverished from hosting the games to maintain them. Whole lives destroyed for two weeks of sport. Is it really in the ‘Olympic Spirit’ to evict so many from their homes, often violently? An aim of the games is to promote culture, however Beijing has illustrated how the old ways of life have been annihilated in order to illustrate China’s modernisation, with ancient neighbourhoods and building styles removed. In the UK, no new money is available for the 2012 Games from the government, so all the money must come from the existing budget for parks, museums and libraries, which will inevitably lead to many of them closing. As a result, the Games will succeed in eroding culture rather than enhancing it – hardly in the ‘Olympic Spirit’ either.
There have been repeated calls to “keep politics out of sport” in the run up to Beijing. It seems lost on the people who say this that the Olympics is one of the most politicised events in the world. How could an event in which individual nation-states aggressively compete with each other to outperform each other to try and show themselves as the best nation-state or ideology in the world NOT be political? The level of state-mania is almost palatable, with the athletes so closely identifying themselves as mere extensions of their inherited nation-state, all performing with patriotism at the heart of their exertions. This is especially notable at the Beijing Olympics, with the ‘communist’ Chinese government trying to show the supremacy of their ideology, and with the United States trying to in turn prove them wrong. The whole Games has become a vehicle for nation-states to try and justify themselves and establish a hierarchy in the world.
This comes closer to the underlying, subconscious aim of the Games. The ‘Olympic Spirit’ does not stand up to scrutiny for the reasons above, it is a smokescreen that stops people questioning the real aim of he Games. It is not to achieve ones best in athletic pursuits, nor is it too spread the ‘Olympic Spirit’ so popularised. It is to no less than to illustrate the ‘Victory’ of this civilisation over primitive societies. It is to exhibit this civilisation’s assumed monopoly of high culture, to deepen the perception that humans can only achieve their best in civilised society and that more primitive societies cannot allow us to fulfil our true potential. It is to further establish the model of hierarchy, with nation-states competing for the top spot, and in turn the idea of classes of people and finally humans above nature. It may not seem obvious, but the underlying feeling and ideas of the Olympic Games is to allow civilisation to celebrate itself and assert its dominance.
Every four years the standard-bearers of civilisation come together to whitewash its crimes with statements of peace and goodwill to all humanity, and after two weeks return home to continue waging genocide on people and planet. This self-congratulating penance encourages people to keep turning their eyes away from the madness of our way of life. We watch in awe of athletes leaping hurdles whilst the world burns.
So what can we do? Seeing through the lies of the ‘Olympic Spirit’ and not buying into it is necessary on a large scale. The people whose homes and livelihoods are to be destroyed to build the structures must see it and resist, and the rest of us who watch whilst our culture is swept away must see it and resist. We cannot stand by whilst civilisation celebrates itself. We may not be able to do anything in Beijing, but when the Games come to London in 2012 people have to be reminded that there are those of us who aren’t taken in by the lies, who instead are building a new way of doing things without this civilisation. This year’s motto is “One World, One Dream” – let’s show them there’s more than one dream of how we should live together on this planet.
