The News
France is set to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris later this month, against the backdrop of recent snap elections that have left the country facing a political impasse.
The International Olympic Committee says the Games are politically neutral, and that Russia has been excluded from this year’s events for violating that principle. But some analysts argue the Olympics are subsumed by politics all the way down: “Olympians represent nations, in nationalist competitions, which raises the eminently political question of what those nations are,” a columnist wrote in the Financial Times.
SIGNALS
The Olympics may have always been political
The Olympics have been “bubbling with politics” since they began in ancient Greece, a columnist argued in Politico: The first modern games were also held in Greece to mark independence from Ottoman rule, while various authoritarian leaders — Adolf Hitler, but more recently Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping — have sought to use them for nationalist ends. But a turning point in the Games’ explicit politicization may have come in the 1960s, when Asian countries formed the Games of the New Emerging Forces to challenge the IOC, described by the then-president of Indonesia as a “tool of imperialists and colonialists,” a historian wrote in The Conversation.
...But this year, perhaps especially so
The upcoming Games may be the most politically charged in decades amid wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Time wrote. While calls for Israel to be excluded have been summarily dismissed by the IOC, there is likely to be “pushback at every level” in the form of street protests and athletes refusing to compete against their Israeli counterparts, a sports journalist told the outlet. It’s a good thing that athletes will use their platforms for activism, a columnist argued in the Financial Times: Palestinians and Ukrainians in particular, some of whom have colleagues who “can’t be at the Games because they are dead,” can draw attention to conflicts that many viewers are getting tired of hearing about, he added.
...Especially in France
Having suffered poor personal approval ratings and a recent electoral setback, French President Emmanuel Macron may be hoping that the Olympics will allow him to “reclaim some political momentum,” though any boost is likely to be shallow and short-lived, Foreign Policy argued. And there may be a darker side to his using the Games to showcase Paris: Thousands of homeless people, many of whom are immigrants, have been evicted from the poor suburbs where the Olympic Village is located, to be deposited in unfamiliar cities or flagged for deportation, The New York Times reported. The Games spotlight France’s “deteriorating human rights record,” which includes a hijab ban for Muslim athletes and the controversial use of mass surveillance technologies, Human Rights Watch argued in a recent report.
Russia may have given up on using the Olympics as a tool of soft power
The IOC has stopped short of banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from Paris by allowing them to compete as neutrals. This may avoid collective punishment, but comes at the cost of allowing the Kremlin to use the Games as another front in its “propaganda offensive,” a columnist argued in The Washington Post. However, Russia seems to have given up trying to use global sport as a tool of soft power, and has instead set its sights on reviving the Soviet-era Friendship Games, The Economist noted. There’s little evidence that Russians care about being largely shut out from the Olympics, though athletes might find the Friendship Games in September a poor substitute, The Christian Science Monitor reported.