Sport has nothing to do with politics! Does it? Sport neutrality is a myth. This faith in a so-called autonomy dies hard. Its exalters defend the concept of a pure sport, conveyor of friendship between peoples, an entity that would be above States, disputes, and hates. About this, Fréderic Baillette notices: "very often, sport is presented by its laudators and its advocates like a universal fact, a cultural invariant (1)". The naïve optimism of considering sports a timeless data denies its origins. "The philosophy stating that sports and politics don’t mix is specious and hypocritical. Today, sporting achievements are used as a measure of the grandeur of a country. " H. Adefope, Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister BEGINNING OF SPORT As early as Antiquity, maybe even earlier, games and physical activities existed. The most famous ones were the Olympic Games, invented by Greeks, and gladiators’ fights in the Roman Empire. But basis and objectives of these activities were different from those of sports. In Europe, before the 19th century, there also were entertaining practices (traditional games) like “Soule” and “Jeu de paume” in France (2). But the birth of sport is historically dated, it is the first half of the 19th century in England. Sport, as we define it here, is "an institutionalised system of competitive, standardised, physical practices whose claimed aim is to determine the best competitor (the champion) or to record the best performance (the record), based on the comparison of performance (3)". It is developing rapidly with the advent of the industrial, capitalist society. So it is not, like stated in the magazine “Quel corps ?” "a transcendent entity travelling down the ages and production modes (4)". It appears at a given period of time, the one when capitalism and industrial era appeared in England. In “Les enjeux du sport” (2), Stefano Pivato develops this idea: "Generally, sports established as a set of rules, of rigid standardisation of pre-existing games and disciplines to abide by. It became a finished ideology that historians defined as one of the most characteristic of the Victorian period: athleticism. Speed, perfection, consistent setting of new targets for oneself, aspiration for success, and, above all, competitive spirit - the same spirit that gave life to the laws of economic liberalism – made of track and field a conveyor of educational and moral values of the industrial culture of Britain". DEVELOPING OF SPORT Developing of sport accompanies that of capitalism and its production mode. During the second half of the 19th century, sports spread across the main European harbours thanks to the presence of British ships (for instance, Le Havre [a French harbour near England] is the first French soccer club). Sports also spread because of foreigners studying in famous British Universities. Then, many of the countries who have been subjected to colonisation by the big European nations (mainly France and Great Britain) will be affected by this phenomenon. Imperialism, which aims at establishing Western conception of the world, will contribute to the massive development of sports. BEGINNING OF POLITICAL EXPLOITATION As of the end of the 19th century, some people, political parties or States start using sport to establish or develop their political or ideological views. The baron Pierre de Coubertin saw in the reinstatement of the Olympic Games in 1896 a way to implement his very aristocratic views on society and his nationalist positions (5). Year after year, the Olympic games became increasingly important. In the European society, between the two world wars, sports were of the utmost importance. As Stefano Pivato says: "very early, political parties, trends of opinions saw in sports a tool enabling mainly the adherence of youth". From 1919 on, sports plays an important part in diplomatic relations. It is more and more rooted in political strategies of States. Pierre and Lionel Arnaud write in “Les premiers boycottages de l’histoire du sport” (The first Boycotts of Sporting History) (6): "For the first time, after WWI, States and governments are tempted to utilise sport for non-sporting ends. Sports become the representative of the vitality and grandeur of the nations and, because of this, is promoted by politicians as a propaganda tool". So, in 1919, the Inter-Allied Games (not the Olympics) tool place. In the early 1920s, nations victorious of the Great War confront each other in sporting events. Germans, their allies, neutral states as well as USSR are excluded from these games. In France, the Foreign Affairs Department is in charge of sporting policy. SPORTS AND FASCISM This exploitation of sports will reach a climax with the coming of totalitarian States. Italian fascism inaugurated this practice by politically over-exploiting soccer. As Ignacio Ramonet reminds us, fascists thought soccer allowed to gather "in a space favourable to event staging, important crowds; to exert on these crowds a strong pressure and to maintain the nationalist impulses of these crowds (7)". The fascist system enabled Italian sportspeople to become famous on the international scene. In the 1920s and 1930, stadiums grew like mushrooms all over Italy, like the one in Turin named Benito Mussolini, with a capacity of 50,000 seats. The climax will be reached in 1934 when Italy organises the second soccer world cup, whose official poster features a soccer player with his arm raised. General Vaccaro, President of the Italian Football League (8) declares that "the ultimate goal of the event will be to show the universe what the fascist ideal of sport is". Italy wins this cup. The day after this victory, it was written in the newspaper Il Messaggero: "At the rise of the tricoloured flag on the highest pole of the stadium, the crowd feels the aesthetic emotion of winning the world-wide primacy in the most fascinating sport. In addition, at the time this great victory – the results of so many efforts - is consecrated, the crowd offers the Duce their gratitude. Our team fought in the name of Mussolini in Florence, in Milan and in Rome yesterday to conquer the World Title (9)". Nazism will copy the Mussolini government. Very early, Hitler had already understood the advantages of sports; he wrote in “Mein Kampf”: "millions of bodies trained to sports, soaked up with love for homeland, and filled with fighting spirit could become, in two years, an army". In 1936, Germany organises the Olympic Games (decision made before Hitler took power). Nazis take advantage of this unexpected occasion (in a context of isolation of Germany on the international scene) to show the power of their ideology. Funk, one of Goebbels assistant, declared: "The Olympics are a unique occasion for propaganda without any equivalent in the History of the World (10)". The Olympic Games in Berlin were an international success enabling Nazis to show their strength, by means of colossal ceremonies et numerous victories of German athletes, prelude to what their military victories will be a few years later. SPORT AS A TOOL After WWII, the defeat of fascism and nazism doesn’t validate the end of the use of sport for political end. As early as 1948, Eric Honecker, then secretary-general of the Communist Party of GDR, declared: "sport isn't an end, it’s a mean to reach other ends". Sport will be used as a resonance chamber for the great powers and help many states to access international recognition. The increasing media coverage of sport promoted its politicisation. The Soviet block countries had already grabbed the stakes of sports victories. They did all that was in their powers to succeed and a part of the youth was indoctrinated, forming battalions of athletes who helped in the spreading the propaganda. As Ignacio Ramonet stresses, Stalinian regimes won’t hesitate to "indulge in the worst practices of selection, taming, conditioning et doping to manufacture champions and make them the standard-bearers of their policies (11)". After the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, Pravda declared: "The great victories of the Soviet Union and its brother countries are the conspicuous proof that socialism is the best fitted system to the physical and spiritual accomplishment of Man (12)". In this context of Cold War, USSR and the USA were at "war" through their athletes. In 1974, Gerard Ford, President of the USA, expressed the American objectives in these terms: "Do we realise how it is important to victoriously compete against other nations? [...] As a leader, the USA have to maintain their rank. [...] Given what sport represents, un sports success can serve a nation as mush as a military victory (13)". The small island of Cuba ceased the political and ideological interest of sport. Against the American blockade, the Cuban victories in various sport events act as a front for Fidel Castro’s regime. A MEAN OF RECOGNITION Participation to and, to a greater scale, the organisation of an international sport event (Olympic Games or World Soccer Cup) help authoritarian and dictatorial regimes to find legitimacy. Argentina of the General Videla junta gained recognition of the international community by organising and winning the Mundial in 1978. The Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 helped Willy Brandt and social democrats make forget about Berlin’s Olympics and put forward a democratic Germany, away from its old demons. Another example, among so many others: South Africa organised for the first time the African Nations Soccer Cup in 1996. The aim was to demonstrate its integration into the African community. Hassan II desperately tries to organise a World Soccer Cup. Morocco, in its will to establish itself as the leader of the Arab world, organised important events such as the Mediterranean Games or the Pan Arab Games. Numerous countries, mainly great powers or states trying to establish themselves as such, apply to the organisation of each main sport event et fight fiercely over it. BOYCOT In his article entitled Au service de la raison d’Etat (At the service of the reason of State) (14), Xavier Delavoix notes that "The most symptomatic, and now the most widespread, use of sport in the international, political scene is the direct protest organised by a State, the boycott". The history of main sport events throughout the second half of the 20th century is punctuated with political and diplomatic boycotts. Six countries boycotted the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games as a sign of protest. Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland refused to meet the invaders of Hungary. Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon denounce the British and French intervention in Suez. In 1980, the USA boycotted the Olympics organised in Moscow. Soviet countries will reciprocate during the 1984 Los Angeles Les Olympic Games. Both resounding absences can be explained by the Cold War context. The use of boycott shows the sport is not the great party that gets people together. It is indeed a tool at the service of States, and sometimes even a weapon. THE REFLEXION OF POLICY Sport quite often reflects the social situation of a city, a region, or a country; it translates the political circumstances and the state of diplomatic situation. Ignacio Ramonet notices that "In areas of endemic conflicts or at war, soccer faithfully reflects the violence of antagonisms, because it mobilises crowds and intensifies passions (15)". Examples of these tensions concentrated and symbolised by a sport event are numerous, as much on a local scale as on an international scale. In 1964, a goal that had been refused during a game opposing Argentina to Peru caused the rivalries between the two countries to explode and left three hundred and twenty people dead, and more the a thousand wounded. In 1969, a game between El Salvador and Honduras caused a diplomatic clash followed by a declaration of war and the invasion of Honduras by El Salvador. More recently, we witnessed the raise of nationalisms between the different regions of the former Yugoslavia (16); soccer games ended in extremely violent confrontations between supporters of the different teams. NATIONALISM Theses examples are the direct consequence of the part sport plays in most nations. Soccer, the king of all sports all over the planet (or almost) is the most extreme case. Concerning this issue, Ignacio Ramonet writes: "Because each game is a confrontation that takes the form of a ritualised war, soccer facilitates all the imaginary projections and patriotic fanaticism (17)". National passions are intensified by the sport that dramatizes them. In a report on "Vandalism et violence in sport", writers stress the stakes of a competition: "The title of champion is not just won by a team, but by the whole society whence it comes from. The community projects itself in the team and puts on the team’s shoulder all of its hopes of conquest, its energy of winning, and also its personal frustrations and aggressiveness (18)". Sport can also be used as a federative sentiment for a community when collective projects are lacking. “The national team is not the simple result of the creation of a State. It often helps forging the nation. (19)", Pascal Boniface writes. Young nation-states resort to the imaginative world created by sport in order to forge a national consciousness and affirm its existence. In the 60’s, when African countries became independent, they put the implementation of sport federations as a priority. In the beginning of the 60’s, Senegal, for instance, used sport as a mean to consolidate its burgeoning nation (20). Stirring up sport nationalism and its strong symbolic charge makes the whole nation appear and exist, to itself on one hand, but also to the eye of the international community. Therefore, Estonia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Latvia, as soon as they became independent, created their own national teams. Nowadays, the independence of a nation-state goes through the process of creating a nation-team, "guardian of a huge symbolic investment and summary of the great patriotic virtues". In "Géopolitique du football (Geopolitics of soccer)", Pascal Boniface notices that "amongst the first demonstrations of willingness of the new independent states stood the lodging of an application to the FIFA (International Soccer Federation Association). As if it was as natural and necessary as UN; as if the definition of a State was no longer limited to the three traditional element, a territory, a population, a government, but that we had to add a fourth as essential: a national soccer team (19)". This willingness sometimes appears before political independence is acquired. Before 1962, the FLN had created its own soccer team, composed of players claiming they were Algerians and proud of it. A tour in several countries led to the symbolic recognition of an Algeria independent of France. Still in Algeria, Berber nationalism is incarnated in a soccer team: the former Kabyle sporting Youth. In Spain, different nationalisms are expressed through soccer teams such as the Athletic of Bilbao, considered the Basque national team. As Philippe Liotard puts it, sport "contributes to the establishment of a specifically national legendary world with its heroes, its epics, its Austerlitzes and its Waterloos (21)". In assuring the function of identity, it maintains the idea of what is sometimes just a fiction: the nation. THE RULE OF PROFIT Today, another phenomenon occurs, as a consequence to the political and economical changes: the globalisation of sport. The number of people who watched the soccer world cup in 1998 is estimated to 37 billions (in cumulative viewing figures). The crowds of sport lovers keep increasing and standardising. The stakes of sport events become huge, both on a political level (as we tried to demonstrate) and on an economical level. Amounts invested in these events are astronomical, multinational companies and major financial groups not only use sport to increase their profits, but also to see their ideology triumph: "crowds conditioned by the competition spirit and the cult of unlimited performance, convinced of the legitimacy of endless fight, of the legitimate domination of the winner awarded with gold and glory, of the submission of the weak to the strong, of achievement and individual success (22)". The part of media in sport is also increasing. Now, important industrial groups, media and sport clubs find themselves in an aggregate where only performance and the rule of the market rule. The merchandisation of events is strengthened with the objectification of athletes who are asked to achieve better and better results. In Aimez-vous les stades ? (Do you like stadiums?) Christian Bromberger sums up this idea: "Competitive sport is not just the religion of globalisation, with its temples, its ceremonies, its liturgy, its clergy and its faithfuls, its evangelists, its inquisition and its martyrs, it is also an window opened on the bright future of global capitalism, the one of show business and universal merchandisation (22)". Sport followed the political and economical evolutions. As Jean-Marie Brohm says, sport is "a powerful vehicle for spreading the established ideology". Sport is part of social, economical, political, ideological, and symbolic interrelations. It goes even further, it contributes to perpetuate the current system, diverting minds towards symbolic constructions, which serves the interests of certain dominant social classes. Cdric References (1) Frédéric BAILLETTE, "Les arrières-pensées réactionnaires du sport", Quasimodo, Octobre 1996. (2) About this, read: Stefano PIVATO, Les enjeux du sport, Casterman/Giunti, 1994. (3) Jean-Marie BROHM et Bernard YANEZ, "Les fonctions sociales du sport de compétition", L’opium sportif, L’Harmattan, 1996. (4) Quel corps ?, "Vingt thèses sur le sport", Quel corps ?, April-May 1975. (5) About this, read: Bernard YANEZ, "Deux visages du fascisme : Coubertin et Hitler", Quel corps, Maspero, 1978. (6) Pierre et Lionel ARNAUD, "Les premiers boycottages de l’histoire du sport", Nationalismes sportifs, Quasimodo, Spring 1997. (7) Ignacio RAMONET, "Le football c’est la guerre", Football et passions politiques, Manière de voir, May-June 1998. (8) Quoted by Christian HUBERT, 50 ans de coupe du monde, Arts et voyages, 1978. (9) Il Messaggero, journal romain, excerpt of an article published after the Italiant victory. (10) Quoted by Andrew Strenk, The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, Orbis, 1978. (11) Ignacio Ramonet, "la mort en direct", Le sport, c’est la guerre, Manière de voir, May 1996. (12) Pravda, Octobre 17, 1971. (13) Quoted by Andrew Strenk, "What price victory ?", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 1979. (14) Xavier DELACROIX, "Au service de la raison d’Etat", see (11) (15) Ignacio Ramonet, see (7). (16) About this, read: Ivan COLOVIC, "Nationalismes dans les stades en Yougoslavie", see (7). (17) Ignacio RAMONET, "Passions nationales", see (1). (18) Report on "Le vandalisme et la violence dans le sport", by Jessica Larive, European Parliament, session document. (19) Pascal BONIFACE, "Géopolitique du football", see (7). (20) About this, read: Bernadette DEVILLE-DANTHU, "Le sport support de l’idée de nation", see (6). (21) Philippe LIOTARD, "Questions pour les champions", see (1). (22) Christian BROMBERGER, "Aimez-vous les stades", see (11).

Fushichô

November 4, 2007