Militarism and Sports – Part II (A Response)

Militarism and Sports – Part II (A Response)

Tyler Shipley

A couple of years ago, I wrote a short article expressing my discontent at the unveiling of a new logo for the Winnipeg Jets that was designed in collaboration with the Canadian Air Force.  I was quickly called “a fool” in an op-ed in the Winnipeg Sun newspaper, which included me in its list of “dishonourable mentions” for 2011, claiming that criticizing the Jets logo for supporting the military was “idiotic.”

I probably owe the Winnipeg Sun some gratitude for demonstrating precisely the point I was making.  As the NHL and its associated clubs, institutions and broadcasting partners have integrated themselves deeper and deeper in the apparatus of pro-military propaganda, they have effectively shut off any space for a critical perspective within the hockey world, with regard to North American militarism and the ever-expanding presence of North American armies all over the globe.

Indeed, even my small article in an independent publication was enough to unleash the fury and discipline of a mainstream media outlet.  Breaking from the pro-military line, then, comes with consequences, even for a relatively minor infraction.  The Jets franchise, for its part, chose to become legally obligated to give the military (and the Queen) good press.  All of this is a clear indication that the space is being closed off for any discussion of whether it is appropriate to celebrate the new militarism; for instance, should we really be applauding soldiers who are returning from a violent occupation in Afghanistan?  Are we safer for having our soldiers drop bombs on children on the other side of the globe?  Can we even ask the question, without being out-shouted by a chorus of “support the troops?”

What Are We Appreciating?

On Saturday, March 16, the military fanfare was on prominent display in CBC’s nationally televised game between the Jets and the Toronto Maple Leafs, on what was designed as “Canadian Armed Forces Appreciation Night” at the Air Canada Centre.  Before the puck was dropped, audiences across the country in one of Canada’s highest-rated TV programs were subjected to the spectacle of soldiers rappelling from the rafters, a decked out Tiger Williams on a humvee delivering the game puck to a Canadian General, and the announcement that tickets to the game had been specially set aside for members of the Canadian Forces.

A captive nationwide audience tunes in to watch a game on the ice and, instead, get treated to the spectacle of military gymnastics. It looks so cool in a hockey arena but, then again, they aren’t shooting at us.

This was just one small piece of the increasing collaboration between the institutions of professional sports and the new militarism.  While this kind of fist-pumping, aggressive nationalism may be old hat south of the border, it is still jarring in Canada, where up until recently we still considered ourselves an international peacekeeper.

This may have been more myth than reality, but it spoke – at the very least – to the idea that Canadians did not want to be Americans.  We watched Uncle Sam dropping napalm on Vietnamese villages and decided that if young Americans didn’t want to participate in that war, we would take them in, because we didn’t want anything to do with it either.  We lobbied our government to take a principled stand against U.S.-led death squads and terrorism in Nicaragua in the 1980s.  We shook our heads at the notion that America was a beacon of freedom even as it systematically bombed Iraq throughout the “peaceful” Clinton years.  We distinguished ourselves from the jingoism and blind obedience to the patriotic line, which led our southern neighbours into accepting the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan or the total destruction of the once-great city of Baghdad, on pretexts long known to be false.

Of course, we were naïve if we thought that Canada was so much better than all that.  After all, we submitted our own prisoners to torture in Afghanistan and participated in both wars against Iraq, too.  But something has shifted in the mainstream Canadian discourse about war, militarism, patriotism and Canada’s role in the world and it was summed up poignantly last Saturday.

The Times They Are A-Changin’

It was almost exactly a decade ago that Hockey Night in Canada’s Ron MacLean and Don Cherry famously got into an argument, in the prime time “Coach’s Corner” segment, about whether Canada should participate in the invasion in Iraq.  (The video is curiously absent from the internet, despite causing major controversy.  Only a sanitized reflection on the incident can be found.)

MacLean may not have been a very convincing advocate for peace, but the fact that he at least expressed disagreement is significant in light of the silence that has fallen over the Canadian mainstream.  Suffice it to say, MacLean had nothing but gushing praise for the Canadian Armed Forces, a decade later, despite the fact that they did participate in the war he opposed and have been implicated in torture and terror across the globe in the past ten years.  Indeed, MacLean should have infinitely more reason to be uncomfortable with the military fanfare today than he did in 2003.

And yet, to watch the CBC’s most popular program on Saturday night, you would think that everyone in Canada was united in support for the Canadian military wherever it went and whatever it did.  The argument – hurled at me every time I criticize the military celebrations – that we should “support the troops” even if we don’t support their particular mobilizations has become the mantra of Hockey Night in Canada, the Winnipeg Jets, and the rest of the pro sports world.  Never mind that this is an absurd exercise in abstraction; as if we are to somehow say “what matters is not who our soldiers kill, but simply the fact that they are willing to kill whomever a General asks them to kill.”

Military appreciation nights are not the exception, anymore, they are a league-wide standard and they cut across all of the professional North American sports leagues.

What about those of us who don’t think our soldiers should be killing anyone?  What about those who think that Canada’s armed aggression in Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Mali – or Canada’s support for violent regimes in Honduras, Israel or Colombia – is actually making Canadians less safe in the world, not to mention implicating us in a whole variety of crimes against peace, security and humanity?

It’s Our Game Too

In Part I of this call-and-response, Guelph students Peter Miller and Daniel Lyder offered a powerful sketch of the overwhelming collusion between professional sports and the new militarism and called for community mobilizations against it.  In this response, I would like to insist that we rise to this challenge and build the capacity to reclaim sports as a space that – at the very least – honestly reflects the diversity of opinions and perspectives towards Canada’s new militarism.

That is, while we may have a long term goal of actually reining in Canadian militarism itself or, indeed, even radically restructuring the Canadian polity such that capitalist imperialism and its attendant military aggression would no longer be part of the equation, a necessary first step will be to force open a dialogue within the primary cultural institutions of this country.  Professional sports is surely among the most important and wide-reaching cultural institutions and it is incumbent on those of us who engage in the world of sport to force an anti-war politics into the mix, giving space to the many athletes, organizations and fans who might support such a politics if not for the rapid and effective disciplining of dissent that currently pervades the sports world.

This is not, then, a call to push an unpopular opinion on people who disagree.  Rather, it is to insist that the sports world be less a propaganda campaign for one position and more representative of existing divisions on the matter of Canadian militarism.  By 2011, the Vancouver Sun reported that over 80% of Canadians wanted an end to the occupation of Afghanistan.  Indeed, different polls with different wordings have consistently come back demonstrating that a majority of Canadians do not support Canada’s most visible military adventure.

The illusion that Canadians, let alone Afghans, unanimously support the occupation is so patently false that one wonders how the CBC imagines it is fooling anyone.

Needless to say (or is it?) most Afghans never supported the occupation – or did so only very briefly in 2001 – of whom some 75-85% consider the occupation “bad for the Afghan people,” according to an ICSD survey in 2011.  In fact, the list of countries with grievances against Canadian aggression is growing; the victims of Canadian guns and bombs are, however, invisible in the celebrations of our soldiers’ bravery.

Bravery and Cowardice

This last point needs emphasis.  The discipline of the pro-military line constantly reminds us that Canadian soldiers are brave, and that their courage keeps us safe in an otherwise dangerous world.  To demonstrate against the Canadian military, then, is “cowardly,” because we only have the right to demonstrate thanks to the soldiers who “fight for our freedom” abroad.

There is no question that it takes a certain kind of courage to put oneself in a position that could lead to terrible pain or possible death.  But there are plenty of people who demonstrate that kind of courage – the tens of thousands of Afghans who have fought against Canadian occupation, for instance, who put their lives on the line everyday – whom we are not expected to support.  There are Guatemalans who work in Canadian-owned-mines who have given their lives trying to express their communities’ discontent with the mines.  Indeed, there are even activists in Canada who have shown the courage to face up against violence at the hands of police, and yet, we are not expected to “support the activists,” simply because they were brave enough to expose themselves to violence from police who are rarely held accountable.

So the particular circumstances under which people put their bodies on the line does matter.  We are not abstractly applauding “bravery” when we are told to “support the troops,” we are celebrating their particular actions.  So where does that leave those of us who do not support their actions?  Is it “cowardly” to insist that we examine the evidence of what has actually happened in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, in Haiti?

And what of this notion that the Canadian military is protecting our “freedom” when it invades, occupies or interferes in foreign countries?  Was Afghanistan planning to invade Canada and install a fundamentalist government?  If so, those plans still haven’t come to much.  Yes, Canadian soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan.  Because they are occupying Afghanistan.  My freedom of speech has very little to do with it.

And on the subject of my “freedom,” to the extent that it is protected, it has been fought for and won not by the Canadian military but over centuries of struggle against police and militaries.  Limited though they are, liberal democratic rights – freedoms of expression, assembly, suffrage, etc – were won and protected in the streets, in general strikes, in popular mobilizations, in defiance of the military and police that were often called in to break them.

Should we really thank the military for killing civilians in Afghanistan on the pretext that they threaten our freedom to protest against policies we don’t like? Here, police in Toronto “kettle” protestors, guilty of no crime, for demonstrating against the G20.

Indeed, if the Canadian military is protecting our freedom to protest in Afghanistan, something is going terribly wrong, because that freedom has been shrinking rapidly.  In 2006, the Canadian government ramped up its infiltration and undermining of Indigenous organizations protesting to protect land that is legally theirs.  In Toronto in 2010, protestors were arrested by the thousands based on secret fake laws.  In Montreal in 2013, students were arrested for simply planning to protest, with the police openly declaring that Canadians do not have the right to protest.

Facing the Facts

The reality is that Canada’s increasingly aggressive military posture has nothing to do with protecting our freedom or keeping the peace.  It is rooted in the broader shifts in Canadian political economy that have made an expansion of colonial adventures necessary for the continued growth of Canadian capital.  Canada’s growing military presence in the world allows it greater capacity to police those regions where Canadian capital is increasingly invested and where the greatest threat to profits comes from the communities who are organized in opposition to Canadian business.

The Canadian military funds, trains and assists officers in the Honduran armed forces in killing and terrorizing the people who protest against Canadian companies like Goldcorp, Gildan and Life Vision Properties.  Having known people who have been killed and tortured as a result of their opposition to Canadian companies, I’m not prepared to thank the Canadian military for its efforts.  And I am not the only one.

Resist Canada’s ongoing participation in the new colonial apparatus!

This is only the tiniest slice of the new Canadian militarism, and it is telling that it requires such intense ideological discipline to present its best face to a sceptical Canadian public.  Opposition exists, but it is being made invisible in the rigid presentation of patriotic militarism in professional sports.  As Miller and Lyder demanded last week, “progressive-minded and peace-loving people must not shy away from pushing back against the pro-military agenda on the sports field, arena, or court.”

In the spirit of that call, Left Hook responds by asking people to participate in an open discussion of the encroaching militarism in the Canadian sports world and how we can organize a response.  The first discussion will be held on Wednesday, April 24 at 7:00 pm, in Toronto, at OISE (Bloor and St. George, Room # TBA).  This will be an open forum with the long-term goal of developing a visible progressive, anti-military and anti-colonial presence in Canadian sports.  All interested in such a project are invited to participate.

Tyler Shipley teaches at York University and is the founder and editor of Left Hook.

Militarism and Sports – Part I (A Call)

Militarism and Sports – Part I (A Call)

Peter Miller and Daniel Lyder

An oft-repeated opinion in the sports media is that sports and politics should absolutely never mix. If an athlete chooses to use his or her spotlight to voice or display a social or political opinion sports journalists, sports owners, and sports executives will often voice their disapproval.

One of the most famous examples of this is Tommy Smith and John Carlos. The two African American athletes at the 1968 Olympic Games were stripped of their medals for their famous Black Power raised fist salute, wearing black-gloves in civil rights solidarity.

More recently, at the summer Olympics in London, Damien Hooper, an aboriginal boxer from Australia, was threatened with expulsion by the Australian Olympic Committee for wearing a black T-shirt with a picture of an Aboriginal flag, while warming up in the ring before a fight. Hooper had broken the Olympic games policy preventing athletes from representing flags unapproved by corporate sponsors.

Shut up and play

Yet there is an immense self-serving irony contained in the ‘shut up and play’ culture perpetuated by the media.  Sports are constantly used by right-wing corporate forces and the military to promote their own pro-war, aggressively nationalist and repressive agendas. Therefore, the truth is that sports journalists, owners, and sports executives actually believe that sports and progressive politics should absolutely never mix.

Iconic ESPN host “Big Game” Brent Musburger famously analyzed Smith and Carlos’ demonstration by saying at the time “Perhaps it’s time twenty year-old athletes quit passing themselves off as social philosophers.” Musburger has never apologized for his remarks.  And the attitude hasn’t changed much since then.

Consider the incredible backlash against Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen last year for simply admitting that he ‘liked’ Fidel Castro. Guillen was forced to recant at length or lose his job and was suspended for five games.

Military cheerleading

Yet anyone who’s watched an NFL game or the recent Super Bowl could easily attest to the open and unquestioned platform for pro-military viewpoints: from troop displays during the national anthem, to fighter jets buzzing over the stadium, to the bizarre statements and subsequent “USA” chants throughout stadiums announcing the killing of Osama Bin Laden and his family.  Their official website proclaims that “supporting the military is part of the fabric of the NFL.”

In fact, capitalist countries like Canada and the USA actively use the sports “business” to promote the military and imperialism.

Canadian professional sports franchises openly promote war in conjunction with the mass media and the government. While the old Winnipeg Jet’s logos (from 1972–1996) featured a civilian airliner, the True North Inc. new design explicitly pays “homage” to the Air Force with a fighter jet, and Left Hook editor Tyler Shipley was labelled a “fool” and awarded a “dishonourable mention” by the Winnipeg Sun for daring to criticize the military connection.

The federal and Manitoba provincial governments contributed over 11 million dollars to the construction of a new arena for the Jets to play in, amounting to a unique form of public funding for military advertising.

Don Cherry

Perhaps the most infamous hockey ‘analyst’ in Canada is Don Cherry who makes a $700 000 salary, paid from public money, and uses his airtime to promote xenophobia, anti-Quebec nationalism and war during Hockey Night in Canada on CBC. In 2010 Cherry signed bombs and went as far as actually firing a shell when he visited occupied Afghanistan.  He later received an honorary degree from the Royal Military college (although not without protest) for his work supporting the war.

Unlike what the Harper Conservative government and Don Cherry would have us believe, however, the war in Afghanistan is not about justice or women’s rights. As Yves Engler points out in his latest book, The Ugly Canadian, the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has supported decrees from religious leaders in the country stating that women must be subordinate to men, and cannot be in public without their male partner or family member by their side.

This war, like all wars undertaken by the military industrial complex, has generated enormous profits for ‘defence’ corporations in Canada from the public purse.

Case study: the war in Libya

Canada was ranked 6th in foreign military sales in 2009, according to the Federation of American Scientists Arms Sales Monitoring Project.

Perhaps then it is no surprise that the Winnipeg Jets’ new logo is a blue circle with a metallic grey silhouette of a McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet Fighter Jet above a red maple leaf. This is the same plane used by the Canadian Forces to bomb Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Libya. In fact, the Winnipeg Jets military logo was revealed during Canada’s war in Libya.

Despite claims of humanitarian intervention or “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) which is often heard during the military cheerleading at sports events, the Libyan War was pursued for the benefit of big corporations and oil wealth. NATO simply used the Arab Spring to intervene and interfere with another country’s sovereignty.

Libya had bigger than average royalties on oil corporations. Its nationalized oil company interfered with profits for companies like Suncor, Canada’s largest energy corporation.  And the Libyan regime was an inconsistent ally of imperialism.

The US-led NATO alliance thus saw an opportunity to influence Libya’s uprising and actively supported the “Transitional National Council” to further increase profits, secure a geo-strategic military foothold in Africa and the Mediterranean, and push-back against the inroads of Chinese capital into Africa.

Canadian Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, officially commanded the NATO campaign signing off on every pre-selected bombing target.  15 Canadian Aircraft went on 15,000 missions and dropped at least 700 bombs.  On one occasion, a strike from NATO is alleged to have killed 47 civilians, and the total civilian death toll is estimated to be much higher.

Doctors Without Borders ended up pulling out of Libya, refusing to be complicit in the NATO mission and noting that they were actually treating many captured pro-Gaddafi soldiers who were tortured by rebels. (Gaddafi repeatedly called for a ceasefire, yet the NATO-backed rebels refused.)

Meanwhile, Don Cherry was busy praising the new Winnipeg Jet’s logo.  ”How could you do better than to honour the people who lay their lives down for us?” he told Sun News.

Raptors Canadian Forces Night

Military cheerleading in Canada reaches beyond hockey and into sports like basketball as well.  On Saturday January 26, 2013, the Toronto Raptors held their 6th Canadian Forces Night at the Air Canada Centre. The Team and cheerleaders wore camouflage jerseys while pro-military programming aired during breaks throughout the game.

In case it wasn’t clear from the camo-decorated jerseys, the Toronto Raptors basketball club wants you to support the troops (and, presumably, not ask uncomfortable questions about civilian assassinations, supporting violent warlords, or prisoner torture.)

After the game, Raptors players, the coaching staff, and cheerleaders posed for a group picture with Canadian soldiers. Raptors and Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment described the camouflage jersey and Canadian Forces Night as a “natural extension of the Raptors and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment’s long-standing support of Canada’s military”.

The Canadian Forces Night was used by the Canadian Military to advertise it’s growing “brand.” The Canadian Government spent 353.6 million dollars on public relations for the military in 2010-2011.

Advertising the military targets Canadian youth with commercials on television, ads on campuses across Canada, as well as recruitment displays at sports and public events. When sports franchises further help promote the Canadian Military with nights like the Canadian Forces night, Canadian youth are pushed to fall into a trap, join the military and become cannon-fodder for imperialist wars.

Positively, groups like “Hockey Fans For Peace” are taking on commentators like Don Cherry and calling on the anti-war movement to become more active and visible on sports issues, and in general.

Maybe it is time to flyer future Raptors games that have Canadian Force Programming and tell sports fans of the working class why it is wrong to support war and militarism.

Canadian Imperialism Flexing its Military Muscle

The Raptors game and the militarization of sports is taking place at a time when the Harper Conservative government seems to be constantly flexing Canada’s military muscle. Canadian troops are still on the ground in Afghanistan. The Canadian government is also getting involved in the French-led and US-backed occupation of Mali.

Canadians are also faced with the threat of our country following NATO to go to war in Syria and Iran. While Canadian-based corporations do not officially have any direct investments in the country, Iran has a tremendous amount of oil wealth.

American and Canadian imperialist interests do not like that Iran provides oil for China. Canada’s government is basically lying about nuclear weapons in Iran to try to sway public opinion and start another war allied beside Israel, America, and NATO.

Despite claims of a ‘peace dividend’ after the overturn of the Soviet Union and socialist countries, military spending is 2.3 times higher in Canada now than during the peak of the Cold war. The Harper Conservatives ever-increasing military budget is being prioritized over public healthcare, public education, affordable housing, universal childcare, and other important social services like publicly funded recreation and, perhaps ironically, non-commercial sports, culture and physical activities.

Sports for a world at peace

While the Canadian Government is setting up military bases around the world, it’s the youth who are faced with a future that, for the first time in generations, is predicted to be worse materially than our parents.

Let us show fellow sports fans that the future does not have to be this way. Instead of joining the armed forces, let us convince the youth to join social movements. Together we can stop another greedy war by hitting the streets!

Progressive-minded and peace-loving people must not shy away from pushing back against the pro-military agenda on the sports field, arena, or court. Sports are part of popular culture and it is important to use this venue to get anti-war and socially positive messages across.

An important beginning is to recognize when anti-establishment political opinions are voiced by athletes, and to support those to the best of our ability. It doesn’t help that some of the most powerful examples of this is given no attention in the media or quickly drowned out.

Together, we can also promote a radically different sports culture.

Speaking at the United Nations on resolutions in support of sports for peace and development, socialist Cuba said that sports should “undoubtedly strengthen solidarity and friendship among peoples” and that for Cuba, after the Cuban Revolution, “sports ceased to be exclusive and became a right for all the people.”

Cuba has also condemned “athleticism that was purely motivated by financial gains,” and “the theft of sport talent from developing countries.”  ”Let us invest in projects for the sake of education, sport and health”, instead of on weapons, Cuba has said.

Officially, much of the past rhetoric of international sports and the Olympics also opposed war, like the “Olympic Truce.”  The World Festival of Youth and Students traditionally holds an anti-imperialist soccer match at each gathering.

It is time that sports in Canada promote fair play and cooperation, as well as friendship, internationalism, and solidarity — not militarism, elitism, or crude consumerism. Recreation, leisure time, and democratic culture like sports culture are rights and not privileges. Its time to stand up, together, for these rights and sports for peace!

Peter Miller is a third year History student at the University of Guelph.  He  writes for the cannon.ca – an online student newspaper – and also is involved with the Guelph Student Mobilization Committee organizing for accessible and fully public education. Daniel Lyder is a fourth year English and Art History student at the University of Guelph, and a sports fan.

Football v. Homophobia

Football v. Homophobia

Gareth Edwards

Just imagine for a moment, if you will, a sprawling mass of young men, their athletic, sweating bodies embracing in the throes of passion. Mouths contort in ecstasy; muscles tense with exhilaration; they collapse to the ground as yet more join the joyous congress. As public displays of homo-eroticism go there aren’t many finer examples than the obligatory man-love of a goal celebration. Which is somewhat ironic given that homophobia is still part-and-parcel of the football world.

Figures collected by the Football Association (FA) suggest that 64% of LGBT people are put off by football’s perceived homophobia, while 70% of football fans interviewed say that they have “heard homophobia in football in the past five years” – although it is unclear as to whether these are comments from individuals or chants from sections of fans (not that it matters, just interested in knowing).

Time and time again all the surveys carried out, whether by the FA, the NUS, or Stonewall, point to the fact that a majority of the LGBT community feels excluded from sport in general and football in particular. In this context the FA’s new Football v Homophobia campaign is most welcome. It was launched at the West Ham v Tottenham match on Monday night where both sides wore campaign t-shirts prior to kick-off. Hammers captain Kevin Nolan said:

“It’s important that we, as a club and as a squad, support the Football v Homophobia campaign. We’re role models and we’ve got to ensure that we respect all members of society and show that we’re open minded. If someone told me, or any of the lads, that they were gay, it wouldn’t change our view of them one iota and that’s the only way it can be, so it’s a vital message to push.”

I don’t doubt the sincerity of Nolan’s statement – even if it’s obviously been penned by the Upton Park PR department. But it is a sad indictment of the FA that this campaign has taken so long to materialise. Individual clubs have already made moves to combat homophobia and forge stronger links with the LGBT community – providing a framework for the FA’s own work. Indeed the FA cite the examples of Liverpool FC (who in August 2012 became the first Premier League club to be involved in a Pride event), Crystal Palace and good old Rushden and Diamonds, a club one assumes has far fewer resources at its disposal than football’s governing body.

As part of its initiative the FA have distributed a toolkit to all 92 clubs in the Premier and Football Leagues. Much of it will be standard fair, not to mention a little tame, for the seasoned campaigner. There is good advice on building relationships with local LGBT groups, sample statements and press releases, tips on how best to use social media, ideas for posters and wording suggestions for tannoy announcements. Also there is an appeal for clubs to reach out to LGBT youth groups alongside a timely reminder that young people continue to face the most terrible homophobic bullying. It is all run-of-the-mill sort of stuff, indeed it’s the kind of thing that a club’s Social Inclusion Officer (an Orwellian sounding job title if ever there was one) should be able to knock together in a few hours.

While it may be good to see anything even remotely promoting an antidote to homophobia, is “Football V Homophobia” really making for a real shift in the culture of the game and the society around it?

In fact the more you read the pack, the more baffled you become by its simplicity. After reading it part of me wondered whether the FA had churned out the material just to tick ‘diversity’ off its 2013 to-do list. Two parts made me think again; each suggesting that the toolkit’s intended audience - clubs’ boards of directors – need leading by the hand when it comes to tackling bigotry. The first is the inclusion of a glossary explaining such terms as “lesbian”, “gay”, and “homophobia”. Maybe the authors had a blank page of space to fill, or felt it was necessary for the sake of completeness. Or perhaps they had considered their readership and genuinely thought a glossary warranted inclusion so as to “clear up any ambiguity”. The second section which prompted me to reconsider my initial thoughts contained the following quote:

“Making football environments welcoming of LGB&T people therefore is not just a matter of doing the right thing. It’s also about increasing supporters, selling more tickets and more merchandise. Consumer research shows exceptional levels of brand loyalty amongst LGB&T consumers; so engaging LGB&T people in your club could prove beneficial in the long term.”

As an argument for opposing homophobia this smacks of both desperation and cynicism. It says to the reactionary club chairman, “Not convinced about equality? Think again. These gay people have money!” Principle is replaced with the promise of the pink-pound. No doubt this reflects the FA’s own mind-set where profit is always the primary consideration, but it also speaks volumes, I think, about the politics of some people running football clubs across the country.

One problem facing Football v Homophobia – aside from reactionary intransigence – is that the FA aren’t known for their success in creating grassroots campaigns. Ideally they would have wanted an openly gay footballer to front the campaign, thereby generating a wave of media attention and goodwill. The trouble is there are still no openly gay male footballers in this country. As far as I can tell there is only one openly gay footballer in all of Europe – Anton Hysén who plays in the third tier of the Swedish league. Recently the former Leeds player and USA international Robbie Rogers came out before posting a moving statement on his blog stating that he was retiring from the game with immediate effect. This is in stark contrast to the women’s game where a number of European players past and present, including England’s current national coach, Hope Powell, are openly lesbian.

The only professional footballer to have come out as gay in the history of the English game was Justin Fashanu. As a young black player in the 1980s Fashanu was already struggling with discrimination before publically declaring his sexuality in 1990. As a result he was shunned by some of his teammates, suffered a breakdown in the relationship with his brother, and was at the centre of a string of kiss and tell stories in the media – all of which I’d wager were untrue. Fashanu had been an England Under-21 international and became the first £1 million black player when he signed for Nottingham Forest. The manager who bought him, Brian Clough, soon guessed that Fashanu was gay, some ten years before the player came out, and proceeded to treat the young striker in the most unforgivably homophobic fashion. After this experience Fashanu’s career never really recovered.

In 1998 Fashanu was alleged to have been involved in an altercation with a young man in the US. He returned to England, thereby avoiding arrest, but remained convinced the authorities would at some stage move to prosecute. Within a month of moving back to London Justin Fashanu committed suicide. His suicide note read, “I realised that I had already been presumed guilty. I do not want to give any more embarrassment to my friends and family.” An inquest would later reveal that there was no warrant for his arrest. No doubt Fashanu’s own nightmare weighs heavy on those players since who have considered making their own sexuality public.

Justin Fashanu, the only pro footballer in the UK to have come out of the closet, who was subsequently tormented into suicide.

Highlighting this tragedy, or the more general problems, should not, however, be taken as an indication that other sports have succeeded where football has failed. With the exception of a handful of high profile instances – I’m thinking primarily (exclusively?) of Martina Navratalova and Billie-Jean King – sport has seemingly remained a bastion of heteronormativity. One need only look at the treatment of the South African runner Caster Semenya to see how badly sporting authorities continue to treat people who don’t fit their cosy, nineteenth century ideas of gender norms. At the London Olympics last year there were only a reported 18 gay athletes out of a total 12,602 competitors. But there have been small and noticeable changes recently. In 2007 John Amaechi, an English basketball star in the NBA, spoke openly about his sexuality, although the effect was felt more keenly in the States than in the UK. Gareth Thomas, Wales’ most capped rugby union player, came out in 2009 whilst still playing professionally. The fact that the Welshman then topped the 2010 Independent on Sunday ‘Pink List’ – a selection of the most influential people from the LGBT community – was an indication of just how large a step he had taken.

Others have followed in their wake. The Puerto Rican boxer, Orlando Cruz, came out last year, describing in this wonderful and highly recommended Guardian interview how he “lost one friend who was murdered by people who hated gay men. I was very angry then because homophobia ended his life in the most violent way. But I was also angry because, at the time, I was hiding this secret of mine.” In 2011 Steven Davies became the first international cricketer to announce he was gay in this interview with the Daily Telegraph. Despite the support of his family and teammates Davies understood how some LGBT people were put off from participating in sport:

“Too many who don’t participate in sport find the culture around sport alienating or unwelcoming, and many had negative experiences at school or experienced discrimination which put them off participating.”

These are welcome developments and are mirrored by a growing willingness on behalf of straight sportspeople to speak out on questions of homophobia and oppression. Brendon Ayanbadejo, a linebacker with reigning SuperBowl champions the Baltimore Ravens, has been outspoken in his support of the LGBT community. Last January the British tennis player Laura Robson wore a rainbow hairband at the Australian Open in solidarity with the gay community following disgustingly homophobic comments from one-time player Margaret Court. Yet football, by virtue of its position as the national game, indeed the most popular game in the world, will always be the yardstick by which many people measure sport’s commitment to challenging homophobia.

Statistically speaking it is highly likely that there are gay footballers playing professionally today, dotted around the biggest clubs, in the most high profile leagues, heroes to millions of people. Why then do none feel capable of coming out? The Secret Footballer, an unnamed professional who writes a regular column in The Guardian, tackled this question and concluded that the blame lies with the fans. There is, no doubt, some truth to this assertion. We live in a world where the words ‘gay’ and ‘poof’ are routinely used as terms of abuse; inevitably the bigotry of wider society finds an expression on the terraces. Occasionally this appears in the most ludicrous form – such as the abuse aimed at (the heterosexual) Greame Le Saux during his playing career. The former Chelsea and England left-back was erroneously outted by virtue of being softly spoken and his preference for reading a broadsheet newspaper. Not that the abuse was limited to supporters - Le Saux was infamously taunted by fellow pro Robbie Fowler during a match. (Fowler himself was often on the receiving end of disgusting and unwarranted abuse, most of which was based on a rumour that his sister was a heroin addict. The former Liverpool frontman is a study in contradictory consciousness and really deserves a post all of his own.)

But there are also occasions when the abuse from the terraces takes the vilest of forms. Young footballers have been reduced to wrecks after being targeted by an opposition’s fans, and once a crowd is in this mood, and sense that they are beginning to affect a player’s performance, their insults only intensify. To this end the Secret Footballer recounts the treatment of Sol Campbell who was subjected to horrendous racist and homophobic abuse by Spurs fans. I quote the section in full to demonstrate the ferocity and vitriol on display that day, and apologise in advance for any offence it may cause:

“Rewind to Fratton Park, September 2008, when Sol Campbell was subjected to homophobic abuse and a section of Spurs supporters were caught on film singing: “Sol, Sol, wherever you may be, Not long now until lunacy, We won’t give a fuck if you are hanging from a tree, You are a Judas cunt with HIV.” Apologies if you didn’t like reading those words. But spare a thought for how Campbell felt when he was listening to them.”

Unquestionably homophobia exists amongst a section of football fans – although I would hesitate to conclude that this is representative of the majority, or that such discrimination goes unchallenged by fans themselves. Their bigotry is visible but I am reluctant to fully concur with the Secret Footballer. Can we say with certainty that the culture of the training ground doesn’t intimidate footballers into remaining silent about their sexuality? Do managers, coaches and other backroom staff hold views akin to Brian Clough some thirty years ago? Surely homophobia is as likely to appear in the dressing room as it is in the stand? The Stonewall survey conducted in 2009 found that a third of fans think “gay professional players are unable to come out because clubs, managers or teammates would discriminate against them or subject them to anti-gay abuse.” Times have changed, possibly even in the world of football, but without players coming out and telling the story of their experiences there is little first hand evidence to go on.

Where evidence does exist, taken from the wider sporting world, the picture is at best uneven. [Editor's note: this very matter was taken up, as it plays out in the National Hockey League, in Left Hook in 2012.]  Many openly gay sportspeople talk of the support they have received from other players, fans and coaches. Other examples are far less inspiring. Dave Zirin’s latest piece in The Nation, highlights the practice of NFL bosses grilling rookies and prospective signings on the details of their personal lives, whether they have a wife, and whether “they like girls”. These questions – inappropriate, immoral and illegal – are justified on the basis that coaches need to ensure potential recruits won’t upset the chemistry and camaraderie of the locker room. Do football managers in this country operate in the same fashion?

The only article I can find which has attempted to investigate the views of football managers on homophobia and the lack of openly gay players dates back to 2005. More importantly, and most tellingly, it ends in an epic fail. Following an FA meeting exploring ways to tackle homophobia in football the BBC’s Matt Williams contacted the bosses at all 20 Premier League clubs. He asked them three questions: 1) Why are there no openly gay professional players? 2) Could an openly gay footballer fit comfortably into the dressing-room culture? 3) Is this something football needs to address? Not one manager was willing to answer the questions. Some claimed they did not answer surveys, others said that they were “uncomfortable” with the questions being asked. One email response, obviously not intended for the eyes of the journalist, asked, “should we touch this or palm them off with a ‘can’t comment’?”

In the absence of a mass movement against homophobia in wider society we are left in an awkward Catch-22. A large-scale campaign is perhaps unlikely to take off at the present time without a high profile figure coming out. That person is unlikely to have the confidence to come forward unless a large-scale campaign can provide sufficient generosity and support. Will that circle be unbroken? I have little faith in the FA – and this campaign is long overdue – but Football v Homophobia is a step, however small, in the right direction. As such it should be welcomed. Could it inspire a current professional player to publically declare that hey are gay? Not only does this seem unlikely, it is also an incredible ask. The inevitable media circus would weigh heavy on their shoulders, and one can only speculate as to the effect it would have on the player’s career – let alone any relationship in which they may be involved. Moreover, assuming one were able to dismiss the effects of bigotry, even professional footballers are entitled to keep their private life private whatever their sexuality. In an era of tabloid hackery and the internet rumour mill, what footballer would want to give that up?

Gareth Edwards is a socialist activist and writer based in Portsmouth, UK. He writes mainly on the relationship between sport, politics and money.  This article first appeared at Gareth’s Inside Left blog.

The “Ultras” and the Egyptian Revolution – An Interview with Ali Mustafa

The “Ultras” and the Egyptian Revolution – An Interview with Ali Mustafa

Last month marked the one year anniversary of the massacre at Port Said in Egypt.  Though much was made in the North American media of the so-called “Arab Spring,” attention quickly turned away as the politics became demonstrably more complicated than a simple narrative of liberal, democratic demonstrations (using twitter and facebook, we are always reminded) against military dictatorships.  Ali Mustafa is a Toronto-based journalist who has spent much time in Egypt covering the ongoing and complicated Egyptian Revolution, and here he answers some questions about the role of football fans – the “Ultras” – in the movement in Egypt.

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Left Hook: The Arab Spring is read by most people in the West as a pro-democracy movement that used social media to organize protests to oust a military dictator. Hosni Mubarak was removed from power more than two years ago. Can you give a bit of background on the political situation in Egypt right now? How much has really changed?

Ali Mustafa: Firstly, Egypt’s revolution is part of a long and ongoing process that is far from complete. More than two years after former dictator Hosni Mubarak was toppled, ordinary Egyptians are still taking to the street en masse to fight for bread, freedom, and social justice. Nothing has changed at all in that regard. In fact, mass protests, labour actions, and ongoing clashes with state security forces in opposition to the ruling regime have only intensified in recent months.

Despite the transition to liberal democracy finally completed last year, many of the underlying structural flaws that have plagued Egypt for decades are not only still in place but arguably worse than they were before: vast inequality, widespread corruption, grave human rights abuses – all of the problems that originally led Egyptians to rise up against Mubarak in the first place.

Since taking office as the first ever democratically elected president in the country’s history, Mohamed Morsi has largely failed to capitalize on the historic opportunity before him. His top priority has clearly been to consolidate his own grip on power. As a result, his presidency has signaled far more continuity than actual change.

Yet it is a mistake to treat any new democracy as some sort of a blank slate, ignoring just how much of the dynamics at play are inherited rather than decided. In Egypt, the so called ‘deep state’ – a longstanding legacy of deeply entrenched elite interests, including but not limited to those of the military – remains firmly intact. As a result, the transition from dictatorship to democracy is by no means an easy one. Elections alone do not signify a major break with the prevailing political and economic order. Without any meaningful level of structural reform, they only serve to further consolidate the status quo.

Egyptians, however, refuse to let up pressure. They have made it very clear that they are no longer willing to accept politics as usual, merely having one autocrat replaced by another. Too much has been sacrificed over the past two years to simply turn back now.

Rocks prepared for use during the ‘Cabinet clashes’. December 2011. Photo: Ali Mustafa

That being said, many serious challenges still lie ahead. The inspiring sense of unity found in Tahrir Square during the original 18 day uprising that finally toppled Mubarak actually concealead far more than it revealed. Egypt is more polarized now than ever before. The result has been one major political crisis after another with virtually no end in sight. How exactly everything will play out is still difficult to say at this point, but the fault lines are clear.

LH: On February 1, 2012, over 70 people were killed in the ‘Port Said massacre’ at a football match. Many people have argued that this attack was orchestrated from the top as a reprisal against the ‘Ultras.’ What happened in Port Said and who are the Ultras?

AM: Ultras are a group of avid, typically young football fans united by a very strong sense of loyalty to their club. Generally, each team will have its own dedicated following of Ultras supporters. Aside from style of clothing, like a hoodie or scarf bearing their team’s colours, Ultras are otherwise distinguishable from ordinary fans by the animated displays of support they bring to football matches in the form of chants, flare shows, and other theatrics. These activities are meant to inspire a unique sense of belonging among the participants involved, awe spectators, as well as intimidate supporters of the opposing side.

What many people may not know about the Ultras is just how sophisticated they are organizationally. They have a centralized leadership structure, smaller subgroups divided by region, and regular meetings attended by local representatives where key decisions concerning the group’s activities are made. The reason so little is known about them is because of their somewhat secretive nature and reluctance to talk to media.

The Ultras phenomenon originally has its roots in Europe, and really only made its way to Egypt and other parts of the Middle East in the early 2000s. Nevertheless, the impact has been unmistakable. The youthful spirit and energy they bring with them to the matches, much like we find elsewhere, including Europe, naturally creates a highly charged atmosphere inside the stadium. As a result, tension tends to run very high during most matches, occasionally leading to minor skirmishes or sometimes even larger outbreaks of violence between rival Ultras. They certainly have no problem taking on the police as well.

Actually, despite some notable variations from one region to another, one of the basic, underlying themes of the Ultras culture globally is a deeply held contempt for the police and authority more generally. This type of intense hatred can be best summed up by the motto made popular by the Ultras, which you will find, for example, spray painted on walls all over downtown Cairo: All Cops Are Bastards (or ACAB). This kind of longstanding feud that exists between Ultras and the police in Egypt has only grown worse in recent years.

During the start of the Egyptian revolution on January 25 2011, Ultras were at the forefront of the clashes against the police in Tahrir Square, especially during the now infamous Battle of the Camel. Since then, the Ultras have played a major, indispensable role in the ongoing struggle against the regime and become renowned among Egyptians for their bravery and fighting skills. Basically, they have brought their years of experience in fighting against police from the stadium to the streets.

A police truck is smashed after Central Security Forces (CSF) raid Tahrir Square earlier in the day. November 2011. Photo: Ali Mustafa

All of this provides really important context for understanding what happened a year later in Port Said, which, as you say, saw over 70 people brutally killed and 1,000 more injured in a stadium riot after a match between Al Ahly and Al Masry on February 1, 2012. The incident is recognized as the deadliest sporting disaster in Egypt’s history. After the match, fans from the hometown Masry side stormed the pitch and began attacking visiting Ahly supporters in the stands with clubs, knives, and other types of weapons. Most of the individuals killed, however, actually suffocated to death after being trampled in the ensuing chaos – it was later revealed that the gates of the stadium had in fact been welded shut, leading to a deadly stampede at the exit that could have otherwise been avoided.

Several important questions immediately come to mind, which until now have not really been sufficiently answered. First of all, why were the gates of the stadium welded shut, making any sort of safe exit virtually impossible? Why were so many people not searched by security before being allowed to enter the stadium as per standard protocol? Why did the police do nothing to intervene and instead just stand idly by watching the massacre unfold?

The whole incident just begs too many questions to be dismissed away as a random act of football ‘hooliganism’. Suspicion immediately turned towards the Ministry of Interior and even higher up the chain of command to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the ruling military junta at the time, who the Ultras accused of orchestrating the attack as an act of revenge against them for their role in the uprising. Whether or not the authorities actively colluded in the attack and to what degree is still unclear, but I think it is safe to say, based on the evidence, they were at the very least willfully negligent.

Last month on January 26 2013, 21 individuals – all of them residents of Port Said – were sentenced by a judge to death for their role in the massacre. Interestingly, no police or government officials at any level were convicted. The city of Port Said immediately erupted into violence over what many locals claim was a politically charged verdict. The argument is not entirely without merit. Ultras Ahlawy, who are supporters of Ahly, the country’s biggest club in Cairo, had for weeks been threatening retribution if a swift guilty verdict was not handed down.

I think it is certainly possible that the ruling was made as an attempt to appease Ultras Ahlawy. Of course, no one was counting on Port Said erupting the way it did. Some 30 more people were killed in the ensuing clashes with police over the verdict. Actually, the fallout is still being felt until today. Whoever claims that there is no relation between sports and politics clearly understands neither.

LH: It may come as a surprise to North American observers that sports fans could be such central political actors, especially in a progressive cause, given that North American sporting culture has become so apolitical or, worse, so deeply conservative. Can you talk a bit about the way that sporting culture is more complicated in Egypt, and how football fans/clubs can come to represent important and progressive political ideals?

AM: The Ultras phenomenon in Egypt, like elsewhere, cannot be isolated from its broader social, political, and economic context. In the case of Egypt, these are largely marginalized urban youth who until the revolution really had no outlet to channel their frustration except through sports. The specific internal dynamics at play are necessary to look at.

Each finger shows off a shotgun shell used on protesters over the course of the clashes in and around Tahrir Square. November 2011. Photo: Ali Mustafa

Importantly, Ultras groups in Egypt have not developed the same type of neo-fascist political ideology we find steadily taking root among their Western European counterparts. I think the reason is largely because Egypt has historically been far less polarized than, for example, Greece, the UK, or many of the Eastern bloc countries where this specific brand of far right-wing hooliganism has become particularly prominent over time. There are many other factors.

That being said, I do not want to overstate or romanticize at all the progressive political ideals, as you say, of Egypt’s Ultras. For many years, they were in fact quite explicitly apolitical and shied away totally from the arena of politics. Even today to a large degree, Ultras will insist that their role in the revolution is not so much political per se, but rather part of a longstanding and bitter rivalry with the Ministry of Interior, police, and other state security forces.

What is clear, however, whether it is acknowledged or not, is the degree to which the revolution has actually played a part in politicizing the Ultras in the first place – and that is true for large sectors of the society in general. Although the Ultras in Egypt have for a long time avoided politics, a basic notion of freedom, justice, and dignity has always been at the core of its values. These sort of core values, together with an already pronounced anti-police sentiment, I think helped provide a firm basis for the Ultras’ overall development politically.

By the time the revolution started, Ultras members were already participating as individuals, although not yet formally as a group. They were for the most part not acting on any sort of deeply held political convictions but more so a growing sense of indignation towards their hated enemy, the police, and increasingly the government itself. Although the sense of anger, outrage, and injustice they felt still lacked any clear political coherence, it was not very difficult for them to make a connection with the goals of the revolution at a basic emotional level.

Martyrdom, memory, and memorialization are also all very central aspects of the Ultras spirit. They have a very strict ‘eye for an eye’ mentality. When Ultras members started dying in the clashes, their relationship to the revolution changed – it became intensely personal. As a result, the focus for them immediately turned to avenging their martyrs at any cost. In fact, one of the main criticisms against the Ultras is that they care far more about their club and fellow members than anything else. I think it is difficult to dispute that claim.

Yet there is no doubt that the Ultras have played an incredibly important role in the ongoing revolution to date. Like I said, they have taken a lead role in most of the clashes against the regime over the past two years, not to mention the many times they have helped defend Tahrir Square from attacks by thugs loyal to the government. Exactly how effective the clashes have been to the overall goals of the revolution is still very much in dispute, but in reality nothing else has done more to raise the price of dictatorship, make the status quo untenable, and generally disrupt politics as usual.

What is interesting, however, is the way the Ultras as a movement has evolved over time – not only politically but tactically as well. In the early stages of the revolution, we only really saw them engage in street fighting with police – which they still do – but they now also employ a wide variety of other strategies to achieve their demands, including mass sit-ins, road blocks, and other forms of direct action. In the lead up to the Port Said verdict a few weeks ago, for example, Ultras Ahlawy staged a sit in at one of the largest metro stations in Cairo to demand justice for their martyrs. They held up traffic for several hours, making it very clear the scale of disruption they could cause in the country if the verdict did not go their way.

Youth watch nearby clashes atop a street lamp holding a sign that reads: “raise your head, you are Egyptian”. November 2011. Photo: Ali Mustafa

Another important development linked directly to the revolution is the decision by Ultras Ahlawy and Ultras White Knights, supporters of the two biggest clubs in Egypt, and former heated rivals, to put aside their differences and join forces in the fight against the regime. The move is very significant, especially considering the historic rivalry between the two teams. For me, it definitely demonstrates just how much the Ultras have matured as political actors since the start of the revolution.

LH: Can you talk a little bit about the way that gender plays out in the context of the Ultras and its role in the movement? 

Yes, that is a very important question. There is definitely a clear macho mentality that permeates the Ultras culture, whether in Egypt or elsewhere. The same can also be said of sports in general. Yet I think the glaring gender divide found in Egypt’s Ultras movement is really just a symptom of a much larger systemic problem. The Ultras culture of hyper masculinity cannot really be addressed until it has been confronted in Egyptian society as a whole.

In Egypt, not only is any kind of open interaction between the sexes still sort of taboo but there is also an entirely different set of social expectations imposed on women that simply do not apply to men. As a result, women in Egypt are often castigated for failing to conform to their prescribed role in society. The problem existed long before the Ultras, but I think, whether intentionally or not, they have done a lot more to reinforce these problematic gender norms than actually confront them.

For example, during the sit in that Ultras Ahlawy staged outside the parliament building a month after the Port Said massacre – their first major direct action – the group’s leadership tried to impose several ground rules directed explicitly at women. Firstly, they put a curfew into effect prohibiting women from being at the sit in after 10 pm. Even more shockingly, women were also banned from smoking cigarettes at the site. Although in the end the rules were only loosely enforced, I think it goes a long way to highlight the many barriers women still face to be treated as equal players in this revolution.

That being said, I think the revolution itself has done a lot to put a spotlight on the problem. Since the start of the revolution, women have been increasingly targeted for participating in marches, protests, or other related activities – sexual assaults in Tahrir Square have increased dramatically in the past few months alone. Yet rather than back down or retreat from the public sphere, women have in fact only increased their presence on the streets. The fight for women’s rights, being led by women themselves, is now a key battleground in a way it had not really been a year or two ago.

Youth assemble by a wall erected by the army in an effort to put a stop to ongoing clashes. December 2011. Photo: Ali Mustafa

LH: The obsessive reification of technology and social media in North American culture has created a perception that the Arab Spring was driven by Facebook and Twitter. This seems rather superficial to me. These technologies may have influenced the shape and the specific manifestations of demonstrations, but it seems to me that social movements have to be rooted in real human, social relationships between people. Do you think sport can be a space where those kinds of connections can be formed and fostered? Does the Egyptian context suggest something that we can build on, with respect to our own movement building, and its relationship to sports?

AM: To be honest, I am not so sure that the Ultras offer the best model for anyone to replicate. Sports by itself is simply not a useful basis for effective social movement building, in my opinion. Like sports, there is also a very clear, deliberate divide between participants and spectators in the Ultras movement that should not go overlooked. While the type of mass mobilization, camaraderie, and energy for which the Ultras have become renowned all make for a very awe-inspiring spectacle, it is not one that is really open to outsiders who do not embody the same type of youthful enthusiasm for football that they do.

Yet the factors that help explain why the Ultras have become such a powerful and influential force on the ground transcend far beyond the realm of sports alone. There is nothing inevitable about their transformation into political actors. As a result, the Ultras cannot really be understood outside the context of the revolutionary process from which they emerged.

That being said, I think there are definitely some general lessons to be gleaned. The test for any social movement lies primarily in its ability to build and strengthen unity. Social movement are more likely to find success where there is also a strong sense of shared identity among members. The bond may find expression in a variety of ways, like sports, for example, but it must be based first and foremost on real root grievances to have any kind of potential politically.

Aside from unity of cause, most successful social movements also typically feature some sort of ritualistic component through which the bond shared between individual members is not only forged but sustained over time – it is in here where the role of collective memory that I alluded to earlier becomes particularly important. Some examples that immediately come to mind include the Landless Rural Workers Movement in Brazil, the Zapatistas in Mexico, and even, to a large degree, the Idle No More movement here in Canada. Although these social movements could not possibly be any more different from one another, they all share a certain kind of spirituality that gets expressed, nurtured, and reinforced through the act of specific rituals. The Ultras are certainly no exception in that regard.

When thinking about building an effective social movement, the key questions for me are is it inclusive? Is it participatory? Is it democratic in character? Those are the questions that I find important. Whether a social movement emerges from sports or somewhere else is a secondary matter.

Ali Mustafa is a freelance writer, photographer, and multimedia journalist. His work can be found at: http://www.frombeyondthemargins.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter at: @_fbtm

Above: On February 1, 2012, 74 people were killed and over 1,000 more injured in a stadium riot following a football match between rival clubs Al-Masry & Al-Ahly in Port Said, Egypt.  Al-Ahly fans, also known as ‘Ultras’, directly blamed the Ministry of Interior for orchestrating the violence.  Ensuing clashes in downtown Cairo between protesters & security forces lasted five days, leading to at least another dozen people killed in the aftermath.

Soccer and Societal Bigotry – Israeli Style

Soccer and Societal Bigotry – Israeli Style

Alan Wieder

Two months ago when A. C. Milan star, Kevin-Prince Boateng protested racist chants from opposing fans of Pro Patria, the video of him kicking the game ball into the crowd and walking off the field went viral. Surprisingly, the critical mass of the opponent’s fans cheered Boetang. Then, his teammates and coaches, those of Pro Patria, as well as the referees, walked off the pitch with him. After the incident there was global support as well as demands for FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, to take substantive, rather than public relations action, against racism in the sport.

Now we have another shrill example from Israel where there are racist protests because Beitar, a Premier League (Ligat Ha’al) team in Jerusalem, have signed two Muslim players from Chechnyan Russian Premier League team Terek Grozny. Beitar has a long history of racism and xenophobia, but they are not solely responsible for discrimination in the country’s soccer society. Racism in Israeli soccer corresponds directly to the bigotry that is prevalent in Israeli society. In Israel, however, the racism is magnified because of the discrimination and oppression of Palestinians, a practice that some people around the World, including the prestigious Bertrand Russell Tribunal, refer to as apartheid.

Beitar Jerusalem has a long, nationalist, Zionist history that matches the political foundation of the club. The latest events, however, have brought more light on the crass, oppressive, and of course racist reality of the team and segments of Israeli society. The Beitar movement was founded in Latvia by right wing, Zionist, Ze’ev Jabotinsky in 1923. According to Beitar’s webpage: “The new youth movement aimed at educating its members with a military and nationalistic spirit.” The organization grew in Eastern Europe and was responsible for emigrating approximately 40,000 people to Palestine by the 1940s. In addition, Beitar partnered with the underground army, Irgun, in attacks on the Palestinian population before, during, and following World War II. Beitar became affiliated with the Herut political party and then later Likud. And like its political opposition, Hapoel (Workers’ Federation), Beitar started a football club. Founded in 1936, the team became successful in the late 1970s under the leadership of Uri Malmilian who is sometimes referred to as the Israeli Pele. Because of the club’s political foundation and history, supporters have included Prime Minister Netanyahu, neo-fascist Avigdor Liberman, and Parliament Speaker Reuven Rivlin. Former Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is a season ticket holder.

The teams’ history, however, has been racist and exclusionary. In 76 years there has never been an Arab player, in spite of the fact that Arabs play on teams throughout all three divisions of Israeli soccer. In addition, the team has signed only a handful of Muslims and in some of those cases the religion of the player was hidden by team management. A decade ago a Nigerian, Muslim player, Ibrahim Nadallah, was signed to play with Beitar Jerusalem. In correspondence to the anti-Muslim and racist dispositions of both Israeli society and soccer, the team’s fans harassed Nadallah viciously. Nadallah left before completing his initial season in Israel.

During his stay at Beitar Jerusalem, Ibrahim Nadallah endured chants of kushi, the ‘n’ word in Hebrew. The team’s fans besieged him with monkey calls as they threw bananas at him on the pitch. They delivered the same derision for black, Israeli star, Baruch Dego, also born Nigerian but adopted by an Israeli woman when he was two years old. If more venomous behavior is possible, the Beitar Jerusalem fans have saved their worst vitriolic for Arab players. One particular case involved Israeli national team player, Salim Toamah, who is an Israeli-Arab. After Beitar Jerusalem beat his Tel Aviv team for the league championship in 2008, Beitar fans sang the following words to the melody of an Israeli folk song that promotes the civil rights of Israeli-Arabs:

“What’s Salim doing here? I don’t know. What’s going on here I ask? From all around me I hear, Toamah here is the Land of Israel! This is the Jewish state! I hate you Salim Toamah, I hate all the Arabs.”

There are many more racist, anti-Arab incidents revolving around Beitar Jerusalem. How can you even begin to address this hatred when fans still take pride in a pre-game chant that includes: “Here it comes, the racist team of the country.” While there are Israelis, mostly on the left, that fight and challenge the oppression of Palestinians by their country, some of the country’s critics believe that it is getting more difficult to confront Israeli racism and bigotry. Hebrew University historian Moshe Zimmerman worries that bigotry is more pronounced – both in the country and at Beitar Jerusalem.

“People in Israel usually try to locate Beitar Jerusalem as some kind of the more extreme fringe; this is a way to overcome the embarrassment. The fact is that the Israeli society on the whole is getting more racist, or at least more ethnocentric, and this is an expression.”

The recent incident at Beitar Jerusalem in some ways parallels Professor Zimmerman’s point of view. In other ways, it points to both nominal and substantive resistance. In January 2013, the team owner and Russian oligarch, Arcadi Gaydamak, announced that he was signing two Chechnyan players from the Russian Premier League team Terek Grozny. The players, 19-year-old midfielder Dzhabrail Kadiyev and 23-year-old striker Zaur Sadayev are both Muslims. The announcement of the signings came just before the Israeli election and the reaction from at least some of the Beitar Jerusalem fan base was swift and venomous. Criticism regarding the actions of the bigots came as both window dressing and serious confrontation. The fans’ racism was evident at two Beitar Jerusalem matches just after the signings of Kadiyev and Sadayev. On the Saturday after Gaydamak signed the players, a day that also happened to be the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, fans’ bigotry imploded on players from rival Hapoel Tel Aviv. While one might question how knowledgeable Beitar Jerusalem hooligans are in terms of a detailed history of their own club or Hapoel, they do understand the historical essence and know that their team was founded within the Zionist right while there opponents come from the opposite “progressive” Zionist tradition.

Beitar fans welcomed Hapoel with a banner “Beitar forever pure” and chants of “Death to Arabs,” “Death to Muslims,” and “No entry to Arabs.” None of this, of course, was new for Beitar fans, however, there appeared to be more intensity because of the forthcoming addition of Muslim players. The brunt of their attacks, on this particular day, was hurled at Nigerian born Hapoel player Toto Tamuz, who scored a goal in the match.* Both Tamuz and his Nigerian teammate, Eric Djemba Djemba, were met with the same racist chants cited earlier in the article. Being called a Kushi is the norm for African players at Beitar Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium.

There was also more subtle, political, racism at Teddy Stadium on the eve of both the Israeli elections and International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Two right wing politicians, Michael Ben Ari and Aryeh Eldad, attended the game in a clear attempt to garner the votes of Beitar Jerusalem hooligans. Neither man was elected to the Knesset! After the match, the actions of Beitar fans were condemned but that did not stop the fans from even worse displays of racism and pure bigotry two days later when Maccabi Umm al-Fahm came to play at Teddy Stadium. The declaration of Hapoel Tel Aviv players after the game might be the most forward reaching and impactful response in terms of Israeli football. Backed by management, and in correspondence to Kevin-Prince Boateng’s stand cited at the beginning of this article, the players announced that they would walk off the pitch if they were met with the same racism that they experienced from Beitar supporters.

Both the coach of Beitar Jerusalem, Eli Cohen, and the owner, Arcadi Gaydamak, spoke out against the bigotry of the team’s fans. However, Gaydamak ignored past and present bigotry and oppression from both his team and Israeli society and blamed the racist violence on the stupid acts of a few youngsters.

Unfortunately, racism and bigotry in Israeli society and thus Israeli soccer is not just the “stupid acts of a few youngsters.” Likud politicians who are among the fan base of Beitar Jerusalem also castigated the hooligans. But like Gaydamak, there was neither depth nor breadth in their declarations. Current Speaker of the Knesset, Reuvin Rivlin, chastised the fans saying: “Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Imagine the outcry if groups in England or Germany said that Jews could not play for them.” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat also condemned Beitar Jerusalem fans, but he praised the club for speaking out against them. And although he did globalize the issue in terms of bigotry, he misrepresented the problem as belonging solely to a segment Beitar Jerusalem fans. Finally, he crafted his statements to question how the actions of the hooligans would affect Jews.

“As we do not want Jews to be abused around the world simply because they are Jews… we must value Muslims and Christians playing on our sports teams. This is not just a soccer matter, but an international Jewish issue… The whole world watched Jerusalem’s behavior, and that racism among Beitar fans hurt the whole city.”

The strongest statement came from former Prime Minister Olmert who criticized the racism as “hatred, contempt, disgust, and intolerance of the darkest kind.” Adding, “This issue should concern us all. If we do not remove these racists from our stadium and disconnect them from the team, we will be just like them.”

While it is difficult to argue with Olmert’s condemnation, it too implies that there is a small problem to fix. But, the Israeli society he describes is far from the present reality in terms of bigotry, racism, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian dispositions and actions.

Two days after the Hapoel match, Beitar’s racist fans were in full force when Maccabi Umm al-Fahm, a predominantly Israeli-Arab team, came to play in Jerusalem. Police were stationed around the neighborhood and some of the better-known Beitar hooligans were barred from the stadium. Ironically, the first banner seen at the stadium read, “Beitar fans against violence and racism.” Although hopeful, it was dwarfed by other signs and incessant, bigoted chanting. Back from the previous match was “Beitar pure forever,” reminiscent of the same types of placards seen regarding Jews in Nazi Germany.

A Beitar banner extolling tolerance would be lost in the sea of racist Beitar fandom. If non-racist Israeli Beitar fans are the exception, then, what does that tell us about entrenched racism in Israel and the prospects for ending Apartheid?

Before the match, Umm al-Fahm’s coach, Samir Issa, had publicly stated that his team would leave the field if fans cursed the Prophet Muhammad. Issa also said: “It was important for both the teams to cooperate in a “supreme effort” to change the stereotypes and make sure that no problems arose.” The Beitar chants were definitively racist and anti-Arab. It must be said, however, that the 1,000 Arab fans attending the game, segregated by a fence in a corner of the stadium, answered abusive taunts. One of those fans said: “They’re always cursing the Prophet Muhammad, so we came to answer back.” For some reason, however, Beitar did not present their entire repertoire and there was no mention of the Prophet. But Beitar Jerusalem fans were clear about their racism as they left the stadium. Comments included: “Arabs are impure people” and “all Palestinians are terrorists.”

Might it be that for the Beitar Jerusalem hooligans as well as other Israeli people, “all Palestinians are terrorists” equates to an oppressive, colonial, anti-Muslim, and possibly apartheid disposition that is part of the Israeli psyche that is promoted by the beliefs and actions of Israel’s current government. And that said, the issue of bigotry and racism within Israeli soccer cannot be divorced from the same in the whole of Israeli society. In an article entitled “Some Fear a Soccer Team’s Racist Fans Hold a Mirror Up to Israel,” Jodi Rudoren writes that the current government enacted at least 20 new laws that discriminate against Arab-Israeli citizens including neighborhood housing covenants. In addition, the Coalition Against Racism reported that during 2011 and 2012 racist incidents in Israel had risen by close to 30 percent.

There is no question that the overt racism of Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans corresponds to the bigotry that exists in Israeli society. The team fan club, La Familia, is representative of the far right anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian segment of Israeli society and of course needs to be dealt with. But it also might be that the Beitar fans who are softer, or its more famous fans who condemn the racism but ignore the societal reality, and actually promote the oppression of Palestine through their support and facilitation of settlements and IDF violent oppression are the bigger problem. Unfortunately, Israeli leaders, just as other leaders throughout the world, do not make the society-sports connection. In Israel it is more stark because Palestinian oppression is both harsh and deadly – might the Beitar Jerusalem racism help us make the link.

Alan Wieder is an oral historian who lives in Portland, Oregon. His forthcoming book, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid will be available in June from Monthly Review Press.

* Even more ironically while Beitar Jerusalem was not penalized for the actions of their fans, Tamuz was exiled from the game by the referee when he celebrated scoring his goal. Not only was the referee not in tune with the racist atmosphere, sports radio in Israel reported that the taunts toward Tamuz were not racist but rather in response to him being a former Beitar player. How did they explain the treatment of Djemba Djemba?

Why Royce White Might be the Most Important Athlete Since Muhammad Ali, and Why Chuck Klosterman Doesn’t Get It

Why Royce White Might be the Most Important Athlete Since Muhammad Ali, and Why Chuck Klosterman Doesn’t Get It

Nathan Kalman-Lamb

There is a chance — not a large one, mind you — that in 2012 the most important athlete to enter public consciousness in the past few decades was drafted into the NBA. I am not talking about Anthony Davis.

Unless you are a basketball junkie, you have, even now, probably never heard of the person in question. But, if we are all lucky, supportive, and motivated, perhaps there will come a day when everyone will recognize the name Royce White.

If you are already familiar with White, it may be that you met him only recently, thanks to a story written by Chuck Klosterman for Grantland. The article is not a bad way to get to know the man. This is not because Klosterman provided a thoughtful, sympathetic, or insightful portrait. (Not at all, in fact.) It’s because the story Klosterman wrote, and the person he reveals himself to be as the interviewer, is a perfect representation of the broader ideological challenges that White faces, and challenges, as interviewee.

Chuck Klosterman represents common sense neo-liberal capitalist ideology. And maybe, just maybe, Royce White represents the antidote.

Before I delve into Klosterman’s mis-reading of White, I want to provide a little context for the development of my own awareness of White and his increasingly well-publicized struggles with mental illness and basketball culture.

I first learned of White’s story last year when he was starring as a point forward for the Iowa State University basketball team. Myron Medcalf wrote a lengthy profile for ESPN chronicling the difficulties White had experienced — specifically, with anxiety — while at the University of Minnesota (which he attended prior to transferring to Iowa State). As someone who has experienced a fair share of anxiety myself — and as the child of someone who suffered from acute mental illness — I felt tremendous empathy for what White was going through, and tremendous admiration for his willingness to speak publicly despite the persistence of stigma in relation to all forms of mental illness in general.

I watched with interest as White was drafted 16th by the Houston Rockets in the 2012 NBA Draft, after an interview process in which he spoke openly (video) with teams about his anxiety and his desire and need to work with an organization that would accommodate him. (If you watch the linked video you may be struck by how remarkably articulate White is, and also how candid he is about the challenges he faces. I was.) I hoped for the best for White (who happens to be a supremely gifted player) but didn’t think much more about it at the time.

Then, in November, I noticed that White was back in the news, this time for what was offensively described by various media outlets including USA Today as the Royce White Twitter Rant. I’ll reproduce this so-called “rant” in its entirety below.

On reading these Tweets (let’s stop calling them a “rant” shall we?), I was immediately struck by a few things:

First, White’s politics are far more sophisticated than I initially imagined. He understands that the NBA commodifies its athletes. He also grasps that, as a consequence, the league has little regard for the long-term health and well-being of its players (beyond the short-term ability to put them on the floor).

Second, White is remarkably courageous. We all know the kind of abuse that finds its way onto social networking sites. By making his position so public, White opened himself up to assault from legions of fans who believe that players are part commodity, part avatar for the vicarious fulfilment of their desires and aspirations.

Third (and this point is inextricable from the second), White consciously chose to articulate his position via Twitter in order to circumvent mainstream media outlets which are invested in the political economy of the NBA and thus, unlikely to fairly or accurately represent his position. The very fact that this sequence of arguments was framed as a rant by USA Today and others testifies to the prescience of this decision.

This brings me to Chuck Klosterman, long-time music writer who has increasingly taken the liberty of reporting on and analyzing sports since the establishment of Grantland last year by Bill Simmons and ESPN. (Klosterman is listed on the website as a “contributing editor.”)

Klosterman, according to his testimony in a podcast taped with Bill Simmons immediately after the publication of the story on White, suggested that the impetus for the interview was a long-standing desire to explore the relationship between mental health and professional sport (he claimed to have attempted to pursue the same story with pitcher Dontrelle Willis). This may explain why he ends up finding himself so far out of his depth so quickly. For though Klosterman is interested in producing a de-contextualized puff piece on anxiety and performance, White forces him to confront political economy. And, unfortunately for Klosterman, that is something he appears, at least in the article itself, woefully ill-prepared to do.

Let’s start at the top. After introducing White, Klosterman helpfully explicates the terms of his “contractual, philosophical dispute with the Houston Rockets.” I quote at length:

“White wants the Rockets to implement what he calls a “mental health protocol,” a medical curriculum that essentially hinges on White having his own personal psychiatrist decide when he’s mentally fit to play. The Rockets feel they’ve already done enough (including agreeing to transport him to drivable away games so he won’t have to fly). They want him to accept their compromise and show up for work. And for most people, this is the whole argument. If you side with White, you believe that his anxiety disorder is no different from a physical injury, and that his mental health advocacy is warranted and overdue; if you side with the Rockets, you suspect that White is something of a con man whose adversarial attitude is an affront to his $3.4 million contract and the calculated risk Houston took by drafting him 16th overall. It’s a clash between labor and management, and his supporters and detractors tend to split down those preexisting lines.”

The problem here is that Klosterman immediately informs us that this contractual dispute is not what is important. He writes, “But that practical dichotomy tends to de-emphasize something that’s considerably more complex: Royce White’s radical (but not absurd) belief about mental illness as a whole.” Klosterman’s failure here is not in his acknowledgement that there is something more at stake than a labour dispute; his failure lies in his inability to understand that the contract issue and the larger discussion around mental illness are one and the same.

White’s argument and Klosterman’s failure to comprehend it are evident in the transcript of their interview, which Klosterman, to his credit, provides. However, before getting to the interview, it is worth pausing to dwell on a passing comment Klosterman choose to make, for it is an early sign of the ideological investments that frame both the story and the broader society it can be seen to represent. Klosterman writes of White, “He’s built like a double helix of panther sinew — whenever he adjusts his left arm, the biceps bulges so dramatically that it’s distracting.” What is evident here is a classic instance of racial coding. Klosterman’s first reaction upon meeting White is to reduce him to base physicality.

Frantz Fanon wrote about this phenomenon in Black Skin, White Masks:

“There is one expression that through time has become singularly eroticized: the black athlete… The Negro symbolizes the biological. First of  all, he enters puberty at the age of nine and is a father at the age of ten; he is hot-blooded, and his blood is strong; he is tough…I have always been struck by the speed with which ‘handsome young Negro’ turns into ‘young colt’ or ‘stallion,’” (1967, 158-167). 

Or, in this case, “panther.” Fanon is indexing the tendency within hegemonically white societies for the racialized other to be fetishized and fixed as fundamentally physical or biological. The non-white other becomes an object onto which the fears and desires of the white subject (Klosterman) are projected. In the process, the objectified other (White) is dehumanized.

By engaging in this form of objectification from the outset of the story, Klosterman (likely unconsciously) undermines White’s subjectivity. That is, he creates a contrast between his own implicit authorial omniscience and White’s comparative corporeality. The power of Klosterman’s description is that it draws on widespread cultural codes associating blackness with the body. Readers are pre-disposed to see White (as black athlete) in bestial terms; all they need is for Klosterman to push the necessary buttons.

Thus, by the time we as readers are confronted with the text of the interview itself, a power dynamic between interviewer and interviewee has already been established. Here is the first exchange reproduced at length (note that Klosterman, as questioner, is bolded in the source material):

Do you believe 26 percent of the league is dealing with a mental illness, or does mental illness prompt those dealing with it to self-select themselves out of the pool? Are you the rare exception who got drafted?

The amount of NBA players with mental health disorders is way over 26 percent. My suggestion would be to ask David Stern how many players in the league he thinks have a marijuana problem. Whatever number he gives you, that’s the number with mental illness. A chemical imbalance is a mental illness.

So, wait … if somebody has a drinking problem, is that –

That’s a mental illness. A gambling addiction is a mental illness. Addiction is a mental illness.

Well, then what’s the lowest level of mental illness? What is the least problematic behavior that still suggests a mental illness?

The reality is that you can’t black-and-white it, no matter how much you want to. You have to be OK with it being gray. There is no end or beginning. It’s more individualistic. If someone tears a ligament, there is a grade for its severity. But there’s no grade with mental illness. It all has to do with the person and their environment and how they are affected by that environment.

OK, I get that. But you classify a gambling addiction as a mental illness. Gambling is incredibly common among hypercompetitive people. The NBA is filled with hypercompetitive people. So wouldn’t this mean that –

Here’s an even tougher thing that we’re just starting to uncover: How many people don’t have a mental illness? But that’s what we don’t want to talk about.

Why wouldn’t we want to talk about that?

Because that would mean the majority is mentally ill, and that we should base all our policies around the idea of supporting the mentally ill. Because they’re the majority of people. But if we keep thinking of them as a minority, we can say, “You stay over there and deal with your problems over there.”

OK, just so I get this right: You’re arguing that most Americans have a mental illness.

Exactly. That’s definitely correct.

But — if that’s true — wouldn’t that mean “mental illness” is just a normative condition? That it’s just how people are?

That doesn’t make it normal. This is based on science. If there was a flu epidemic, and 60 percent of the country had the flu, it wouldn’t make it normal … the problem is growing, and it’s growing because there’s a subtle war — in America, and in the world — between business and health. It’s no secret that 2 percent of the human population controls all the wealth and the resources, and the other 98 percent struggle their whole life to try and attain it. Right? And what ends up happening is that the 2 percent leave the 98 percent to struggle and struggle and struggle, and they eventually build up these stresses and conditions.

So … this is about late capitalism?

Definitely. Definitely.

There is so much to unpack. Let us begin with Klosterman’s first questions about mental illness. Clearly, as discussed above, this is the story he is interested in telling. Yet, something strange emerges from the outset. As White begins to make a perfectly conventional case about addiction as mental illness (saying, “a chemical imbalance is mental illness”), Klosterman reacts as if this is a startling revelation: “So, wait … if somebody has a drinking problem, is that —.”

There are three possibilities here. Perhaps, Klosterman is woefully ignorant about the nature of mental illness. This is possible, although highly improbable and distinctly unprofessional given that he has set out to write a story on the subject. There is also the possibility that Klosterman is simply teeing up White to provide the obvious answer to the question (which he does). This is the most generous reading, but it is also the least likely. For, upon hearing White’s thoughtful answer, Klosterman attempts to problematize it: “Well, then what’s the lowest level of mental illness? What is the least problematic behavior that still suggests a mental illness?” The third possibility, and the most probable, is this: Klosterman is attempting to undermine and humiliate. He is trying to provoke White to fulfil his role as a bumbling athlete. There’s only one problem. White refuses to play his part.

Royce White, outspoken advocate for mental health as a social – not individual – phenomenon. And perhaps one of the most important public figures in the NBA?

This becomes ever-more apparent as one reads White’s testimony. He is a young man who has fully worked through the logical implications of his argument. We see from the transcript that Klosterman wants this to be a story about mental illness, or perhaps, if that story does not play out the way he has in mind, a story about a recalcitrant athlete using mental illness as an excuse for his own indolence and greed (which is how Bill Simmons seems to interpret White in the podcast mentioned earlier). What Klosterman is unprepared for is a story about how the NBA stands in as a microcosm for the way in which mental illness and capitalism are linked.

Again, I will let White explain in his own words, as related by Klosterman:

“At the end of the day, we don’t associate mental health disorders with having severe health risks. And they do,” he explains. “In that Real Sports piece, they only touched on the addictive traits and the suicidal and homicidal behaviors [associated with mental illness]. But there are other elements that no one wants to talk about. Stress is one of the number-one killers of human beings. Stress hardens your arteries. And that’s scary for a lot of humans, so they don’t want to talk about it. It’s like — what is the pollution in the air really doing to us? We’d rather just tiptoe around that idea and argue that it’s the food that’s killing us. But the reality is that stress is a killer of humans, and if we don’t support mental health in the right way, the nature of the illness causes people to become overly stressed. And that’s serious.”

…”My request was to have an addendum to my contract,” he begins. “Now, would that set a precedent? That’s not really my thing. I asked for something to be put into my contract. Not something for all players to use.”

 But then he continues talking. And this is where it becomes difficult to see how White and the Rockets will ever find real common ground, even if he eventually ends up on their roster.

“But if you want to talk about it through that lens, every player should have their own doctor. The reality is that American businesses are built on the idea of cutting overhead. And how do we cut overhead?” White points to the door that leads from the patio to the main restaurant. “Why do restaurants put exit signs over every exit? I bet if Cheesecake Factory didn’t have to do that, they wouldn’t. Because it would cost less to do nothing. They have to be forced to do that. So if a team or a business can save money by making things less safe, they’re going to do that. They don’t care. It’s a conflict of interest to have the team doctor paid by the team. What we need is a doctor who can look at a situation and say, ‘Listen, I know the team wants you to do this, and I know their doctor is saying you should do this. But as a non-biased doctor with no interest in how you perform athletically, I recommend differently.’ Right now, you have players pushing themselves back in three weeks who have three-month injuries.”

I ask him if he understands why NBA owners might be reluctant to give players that level of input into when they’re ready to play basketball, particularly for a disease that’s invisible (and arguably subjective).

“I’m always going to run into problems with people who think business is more important than human welfare,” he replies.

White’s struggle is not just a contract dispute. It is not just a struggle with mental illness. It is both. White understands that capitalism inherently isolates, alienates, and dehumanizes. It is a system in which people are treated as commodities and in which generation of wealth is the highest social end. These are not simply abstract concepts, however. They have a palpable impact on people’s lives. Marx gives us one vocabulary to talk about this (the one I have been employing in this paragraph). White simply gives us another: mental illness.

The reason why this is important is because it allows White to produce a sophisticated, logically-developed argument that connects subjectivity (experience) to political economy. In other words, it prevents him from betraying precisely the naivety that Klosterman craves and expects. Klosterman wants White to fall into the trap of admitting that he has a unique problem requiring a special solution, and that this is an indefensible position if taken to its logical conclusion (for, if he gets special conditions in his contract, everyone else will want the same, and the league will collapse). Only, White has thought of that.

What if stress is just part of it?

What does that mean, “It’s just part of it”? That’s like saying people getting killed is just part of war.

But people getting killed is part of war. That’s the downside of war.

It doesn’t have to be, though. We choose that. When you say, “That’s just part of it,” it implies that this is natural. Volcanoes don’t kill human beings. Volcanoes kill human beings because human beings build houses right next to them.

Yes. But when I ask, “What if stress is just part of it?” I’m really asking, “What if it’s just part of the choice that society has made?” It may be problematic, but what if we’ve all agreed that this problematic thing is part of the experience of being involved in a rarefied profession?

That’s fine. But don’t act like this wasn’t a choice.

So what would you have done if, upon drafting you, the Rockets had said this: “Look — this is going to be hard for you. It might, in fact, be detrimental. But that is just part of competing at this sport at this level.”

You can’t do that, though. You can’t discriminate against somebody, because that’s ADA6 law. People say I’m getting special treatment, but it’s the NBA who wants special treatment. They want to say they’re this rarefied profession where laws don’t apply. But ADA law is federal. I’ve always said the NBA should have a mental health policy. I didn’t know they didn’t have one, until I got drafted. But the NCAA doesn’t have one, either … I had to sit my first year at Iowa State, because there was no mental health protocol. I transferred on the basis of mental health issues. Both my doctor and my psychiatrist wrote letters to the NCAA that said my staying at Minnesota would not be healthy, because I’d just been through a three-month case where I was targeted by police for a crime I was not guilty of, and that I needed a fresh start. Because I have a mental illness. But the NCAA denied my waiver.

What was the NCAA’s argument?

They didn’t really have one. They said it was my choice to transfer.

In a new paragraph immediately following the above exchange, here is how Klosterman responds: “There are times when White seems like a brilliant ninth-grader who just wrote a research paper on mental illness and can’t stop talking about it. He’s arrogant, and perhaps not as wise as he believes himself to be.” There is tremendous irony here, for in this passage Klosterman displays the height of self-aggrandizement and insulting condescension. The reality is that it is he, not his interview subject, who is “not as wise as he believes himself to be.”

The reason for this is quite simple. Klosterman is attempting to critique White from precisely the ideological position that White is in the process of deconstructing. Because he does not recognize his own ideological investments, Klosterman believes that he is outside of ideology itself and thus suitably-positioned to analyze it. In fact, this ignorance leaves him completely unequipped to understand the extent to which he embodies the very object of White’s critique.

White is suggesting that those born into capitalist societies are socialized to see such a social structure as natural and normal. From this standpoint, it becomes very difficult to imagine another way of organizing society. Thus, on his podcast, Klosterman dismisses White’s argument as ultimately absurd because it would culminate in chaos for the NBA: each player with his own physician determining whether or not he can play. Such a conclusion makes sense for someone who cannot imagine his way out of capitalism; who views its institutions as timeless and inevitable.

Fortunately, White is not similarly myopic. What Klosterman cannot understand is that the entire purpose of White’s pesky, uninteresting contract dispute, his ‘irrational’ outbursts on twitter, and his “radical” views on mental illness is to challenge the very structure of capitalism itself, and following from that, all of the forms in which capitalism manifests, from the mass media to the National Basketball Association. The fact that genuine concern over mental illness (and other forms of bodily injury) might require a complete reorganization of the NBA to the extent that power would have to shift from ownership to labour is not a reason to throw these arguments away. They are the very reasons why such a radical change needs to occur and should be fought for. White gets this; Klosterman does not.

Clearly, much can be understood about the promise of White and the limitations of his society by reading his ideas in literal conversation with one of capitalism’s organic intellectuals, Mr. Chuck Klosterman. However, I want to conclude by imagining White in the shadow of a person with a very different legacy: Muhammad Ali.

It is difficult now to imagine a moment when athletes stood for something more than their own brand. The last few decades can be summed up largely in Michael Jordan’s infamous claim that “Rebublicans buy sneakers too.” This has become a mantra to live by for America’s most celebrated athletes, from Jordan to Tiger Woods to LeBron James. There was, however, a time when American athletes chose to use their remarkable public platform to challenge the inequities of racism and capitalism. Perhaps no one embodied that confluence of celebrity and political radicalism more fully than Ali.

At the end of his superb exploration of Ali and his era, Redemption Song, Mike Marqusee writes:

“If one day we’re lucky enough to live through a sporting revolution in which the domination of finance is overthrown and sport is at last permitted to come into its own, not as an instrument for monetary gain, or national aggrandizement, but as an exercise with no end but itself, I have no doubt the revolutionaries will draw inspiration from Muhammad Ali. His example of personal moral witness, of border-crossing solidarity, belongs not to sixties nostalgia, but to the common future of humanity,” (2005, 298).

Royce White may not see himself as the heir to Muhammad Ali. He doesn’t have to. He has already demonstrated the same spirit of political conviction and courage that animated his predecessor. Now, all he needs is the stage. The challenge for White will be to find a way to reconcile his distaste for the structures of capitalism and the NBA and the political imperative to carve out a prominent place in those spaces. If he cannot, Klosterman may be the last obnoxious pop-journalist to be befuddled by him, not just the first.

We live in a unique era: one in which we can speak directly to those we might otherwise admire from afar. White has already demonstrated the power of social networking to disseminate an unfiltered message. It’s time we showed  him that he does not walk alone. Tweet your support to Royce at @Highway_30.

Nathan Kalman-Lamb is a PhD. Candidate at York University in Toronto and is the co-author (with Gamal Abdel-Shehid) of Out of Left Field: Social Inequality and Sports.

Refereces

Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks. New York: Grove Press.

Marqusee, M. (2005). Redemption song: Muhammad Ali and the spirit of the              sixties. London: Verso.

“No One Wants To Watch It” : The Year of Women in Sports

“No One Wants To Watch It” : The Year of Women in Sports

Ellie Gordon-Moershel

If had a nickel for every headline this past year that claimed 2012 was the “Year of Women’s Sport” I would be able to buy a hefty bag of candies from Seven Eleven. This has even come from heavy hitters such as NPR, Time, CNN, and The Advocate among others. Many of these proclamations were sparked by the 2012 London Olympics for its various milestones. All countries represented had female and male competitors for the first time; the US even had more female than male athletes in attendance. Women’s boxing made its debut as an Olympic sport. In Canada, we voted national soccer team captain Christine Sinclair as Canada’s Athlete of the Year. Those of you who caught Sinclair’s performance in the recent summer Olympics will not be surprised by this award selection. Her performance was simply mesmerizing. CBCSports.ca soccer writer Ben Rycroft has said, “For Sinclair, it was the best year by the best player Canada has ever produced — on the men or women’s side.”

I have, indeed, swooned over Sinclair’s moves and swooned over Canada’s swooning over this deserving soccer player. I had goose bumps when hearing 17-year-old boxing gold medalist Claressa Shields explain that she was “so mad” when she was told as a little kid that girls couldn’t box. And, I’m not the only one. That story won the best radio documentary of the year at the esteemed Third Coast Festival. (The politics of Shields’ participation was discussed in Left Hook last summer – the editor.) The public are rooting for these women. I mean actually rooting – there’s no paternal “ain’t that sweet” sentimentality surrounding these athletes.  

I do think the excitement around these stories is a marker in a cultural shift, of sorts, in North America. These female athletes are legitimate athletic role models.

However, this shift (as pleasing as it is to this sporty feminist’s eye) seems to be merely a chip in the facade of a greater and firmly rooted patriarchal foundation. I was thinking about this recently when my news alerts brought me to an article which rightfully pointed out that considering all the recent athletic achievements of women in sport it is pretty appalling to witness the stats associated with its media coverage. A 20 year study (1989-2009) by University of Southern California found that “women’s sports accounted for less than 2% of network news and ESPN’s SportsCenter.” I’ve seen these stats before so I don’t find them shocking any longer. What I am increasingly having a hard time digesting is how ordinary and banal people seem to find these facts. As one commenter under the above mentioned article wrote, “It is simple really. No one wants to watch it.”

Canada’s Athlete of the Year, footballer Christine Sinclair.  If she is good enough to garner such a title, why is it taken for granted that “no one wants to watch” her play?

It’s become a kind of cognitive dissonance. We can adore and give the highest acclaim to Christine Sinclair and at the same time we understand that it’s perfectly natural that she should never be able to make a living at soccer nor enjoy a supportive viewership year round.

How did we get here? To an era that seems to celebrate women in sport at the same time we expect it to remain second class. Well, I have some theories (with a little help from some wise sports scholars).

Theory 1: We keep putting all our equality eggs in the Olympic basket. 

It’s no secret that I find much about the International Olympic Committee and its reign to be problematic to say the least. But, this does not mean every person involved in every level of Olympic organizing consciously believes that women’s sport should remain a substandard spectacle. It does mean that any progress around gender equality will never be led by the IOC unless it happens to coincide with a presumed increase in profits or a benefit to the Olympic brand.

At the London Olympics opening ceremony IOC president Jacques Rogge said that the participation of at least one female athlete per participating country was “a major boost for gender equality.” As I mentioned above, this is one of the main cited reasons for 2012 being the Year of Women’s Sport. Last summer I asked Kathleen Lahey, a law professor and sport equity expert, about these declarations of equality in the Olympics. She responded, “I have likened that to saying: Oh well then women in Canada must be equal now because we have at least one woman MP sitting in the Canadian parliament from each province and territory. That is a very superficial definition of equality.”

To give further perspective, the first female IOC member was not accepted until 1981. Not exactly trailblazers of women’s inclusion. According to a recent IOC fact sheet, “more than 18.8%” of the current membership include women (4 of which are “honorary” members). Pardon me if I don’t rejoice in the apparent brag-worthy percentage of 18.8679 as marking some sort of dawning age of equality.

The IOC is not a democracy. It does not have internal laws like Canada’s Charter, the U.K.’s Human Rights Act 2010, or other non-discrimination provisions. In the words of acclaimed sport journalist Laura Robinson, the IOC is “powerful men who answer to no one [who] decide whether women can participate.” However, due to the hard work of canoeist Samantha Rippington and her legal team we may yet see some movement in the IOC’s and host country’s human rights accountability in the near future.

Theory 2: Ending homophobia in sport is seen as unrelated to ending sexism

“The usual way the people are taught to think in amerika is that each subject is in a little compartment and has no relation to any other subject.  For the most part, we receive fragments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no logical format or pattern.  It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don’t have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated.” – Assata Shakur

A happy thing has occurred over the last couple years in men’s professional sport – homophobia against men (lesbian/queer women are largely ignored as all women in professional sport) is slowly becoming unacceptable. A few NFL players have come out in support of gay marriage and Patrick Burke’s You Can Play Project, dedicated to “ensuring equality, respect and safety for all athletes, without regard to sexual orientation” has seen much press and support.  (Another matter discussed in Left Hook last July – the editor.)

A couple months ago I attended a small workshop on the topic of homophobia in men’s professional sports. There were a few very young women in attendance who made it obvious that their participation was contingent on an extra credit for a first year undergraduate course at the host University. However, as the workshop progressed I could tell that the topic was exciting their interest. The facilitator took us through some examples of instances of homophobia in men’s sports – most notably Blue Jays player Yunel Escobar’s anti-gay slur written on his eye black – as well as acknowledging that derogatory terms used against gay men are often synonymous with slurs that have been used to put down women.

During the discussion period one of the young women offered that rejection of homophobia is much easier to embrace when one knows a gay person. She admitted to saying things like “that’s so gay” before two of her close cousins ‘came out.’ I thought this the perfect opportunity to tease out some of the issues for this young woman who initially seemed entirely bored by the subject. I said to her that surely she has women in her life that she is close with; she’s a woman herself. Homophobia against men is rooted in a devaluation or hatred, even, of what we understand to be feminine traits: sensitive, physically weak, superficial, materialistic etc. So, you’re a “fag” and therefore not a ‘real man’ because you’re behaving like a ‘woman’ which is the ultimate insult for a boy or man. This is entirely related to society’s devaluation of women. She gave me a blank stare. I looked to the facilitator for help and when it didn’t arrive I tried to get him to talk about the significance of Escobar’s defenders who said that the Spanish slur written under his eyes actually translated to “pussy” not “faggot” and therefore was obviously more acceptable. He acknowledged that that was interesting but could not help me break down the significance for the young woman. Too bad Hudson Taylor wasn’t there.

I have thought about that moment a lot and what it says about how we’ve come to understand sexism in contemporary times. It’s important to stop using anti-gay slurs in the fight to end homophobia but if we’re unwilling to talk about why gay men so wholly offend the status quo, especially in a uber masculine environment like men’s professional sport, then we’re at best simply treating the symptoms instead of the cause. The resultant disease is that sexism remains unscrutinized, difficult to challenge, and largely invisible.

Theory 3: The sex binary myth has been replaced by ‘mutant women’ myth

Sport is organized around the celebration of masculinity (i.e. traits we socially prescribe to men). Due to this, female athletes occupy an uncomfortable social space because their very existence confuses traditional notions of femininity and masculinity.  What this means is that the treatment of female athletes is a useful barometer for the status of women in society as a whole.

As elite female athletes continue to push the gender expectations the last several years has seen a pushback against this challenging of the status quo. Only this time around the conversation has changed.

Last summer I interviewed sport scholar Sandy Wells about recent developments in the language around gender in sport and continued debates in sport about sex testing. An important fight in feminism has been pointing out that the sex binary is a myth. To quote the linked article by Melissa McEwan, “Every time one sex has assigned to it a particular trait or behavior or emotion, then the other is assigned its opposite, or merely its absence—and a failure to demonstrate its opposite or absence, as prescribed by one’s own gender, thus results in a deviation of which our gender-obsessed, binary-obsessed, gender role-enforcing patriarchy will not approve.” Fortunately, as mentioned, female athletes by mere existence have busted many of these binaries. This makes me think of people like Kathrine Switzer (first woman to run the Boston Marathon) whose own track coach didn’t believe women had the physiological capability to run a marathon until she proved him wrong one day at practice.

An apt comparison – Castor Semenya is treated as a “mutant woman” and subjected to humiliation and ‘testing’ in order for the sporting world to determine whether her body gives her an ‘unfair advantage,’ while basketball star Yao Ming is celebrated for his unusually tall body – which most certainly does give him an advantage at basketball – and recieves no similar questioning or humiliation.

When controversy exploded over the gender/sex of South African athlete Castor Semenya, Sandy Wells analyzed reactions on a track and field listserv on which she is a subscriber. She made some interesting observations. She noted that, “people were very knowledgeable about biological myths about the sex binary.” So, unlike more sensationalist headlines concluding that Semenya must be a “man” because she competed so well, these track experts believe that her biology merely gives her an ‘unfair’ advantage over other women (this accusation was thrown on basketball player Brittney Griner more recently – read linked post to see why I believe it’s no coincidence that these two high profile cases were centred around women of colour). This unfair advantage being her “abnormal” testosterone levels. As Sandy Wells points out, this is no less sexist as “the result is that women are still compared against a standard of athleticism that is defined always as being outside of their capacity.”

In other words, the dialogue, in the institution of sport (Wells noted these conversations in the IOC level as well), has changed from blatant refusal to believe that any woman could compete at a high level at all (and therefore must be a man if they actually did) to a proposed desire to ‘protect’ female athletes from abnormal outliers that make the playing field “unfair.” Sandy Wells reiterates why the latter is still problematic by explaining that the demand for anatomically and hormonally equivalence in sport is only demanded in women’s sport because “men who play sports are just exhibiting maleness.” Standing at 7 ft 6 inches, Yao Ming’s hasn’t been barred from basketball in order to level the playing field. He is just using his ‘natural’ characteristics to his advantage as is expected from any male athlete. 

Theory 4: Sex segregation in sport cements notion that women are worse than men at sport

Dividing sport based on sex relies on a lot of assumptions on sex differences in performance. It seems like a useful marker because it is believed that men are generally better than women in sport. I can’t think of any other institution where blatant proclamations of women’s inferiority are taken so wholly for granted.

Despite this ingrained sense of female inferiority, progressive sport experts have been questioning the usefulness of sex segregation for years. As early as 1985, Bruce Kidd (former Olympian and current University of Toronto professor) was reported to have said that, “there are little or no physiological reasons to exclude women from participating with men in most sports. Given the same training, time and resources women could learn to play most sports as well as men.” In 1988, after battling for 3 years in court, young Justine Blainey won the right to play in the boy’s Metro Toronto Hockey League. In a Globe and Mail article from 1993, sport journalist Laura Robinson explains that Blainey’s win, unfortunatlely, has not been enough to change attitudes. She ends the article by writing: “1947, Jackie Robinson bravely challenged the colour barrier in sports. Today it would be unthinkable to segregate people by race in sports. Isn’t it time we took the same attitude toward segregation by sex?”  

Some of you may be thinking, well, race is different. We know that the fastest man is faster than the fastest woman; the strongest weight lifting man is stronger than the strongest weight lifting woman etc. To begin, these kinds of stats are pulled from a tiny minority of the all ready tiny minority of elite competitors based in a world that does not make it easy for women to live and train solely as an athlete. Additionally, most sex segregated sports have stats that are not so easily comparable. Rules in women’s sports tend to be ‘lighter’ than men’s (e.g. best of 3 sets in women’s tennis vs. best of 5 sets in men’s). Even so, any results we have deemed comparable do not prove that this will be the way things are forever or that these differences are based solely on inherent ‘man genetics’ and not cultural expectations.

Cordelia Fin writes about how sensitive our mind and performance is to the social environment in her illuminating book Delusions of Gender. Through simple manipulations of social context social psychologists are disproving many long held beliefs on gender differences of cognition and at the same time showing the power of ingrained stereotypes. Historically, mental rotation performance – a type of test linked to spatial intelligence – has been the most consistently measured aspect of cognition that invokes male superiority. Higher levels of testosterone in boys and men have been a popular explanation for the results. This 2010 study in Physiological Science journal supported this theory by hypothesizing that female twins from opposite-sex pairs will “show a large and robust male advantage, such as the mental rotation task” due to their prenatal testosterone exposure. So how big exactly is this large and robust male advantage? In her book Fin points out several social cues that adjusted these results. The most staggering involved 3 groups; the first was told that men perform better in this test, “probably for genetic reasons,” the control group was given no information about gender and the last group was told the blatant lie that women perform better in this test. In the first two groups the men outperformed women in the usual way but the last group, the “women are better” group, the women performed just as well as the men.

This does not prove exactly what biology is behind success in the mental rotation performance but it does prove that our social expectations, especially when triggered, appear to greatly affect performance. If our social expectations are strong enough to change actual performance then it’s a safe assumption that dividing all sports by sex (as a way to mark general skill level) will reinforce the societal expectation that women’s sports are lower status.

Anybody remember this poster?

Poster advertising the 2011 Rogers Cup tennis tournament.

Writers and scholars Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pannano explore the sex segregation issue more deeply in their book Playing with the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sport. They do a convincing job of explaining why these assumptions create a near impenetrable cycle, “…the initial assumption that women are inferior to men in sports gets institutionalized not only by the way sports is coercively organized on a sex-segregated principle, including sex segregation in the monetary rewards for playing sports, but also in the way these principles reproduce the initial assumption of women’s inferiority in the first place.” That’s a bit of a mouth full but it explains the catch-22 of “little demand for women’s sports = low monetary investment/low monetary investment confirms women’s sports as low-grade = little demand” reinforced by the assumptions for dividing sexes in the first place.

I do not have room in this piece to discuss the various forms and ramifications of taking away the sex dividing line in sport (e.g religious requirements, maintenance of safe trans/women’s/girl’s only spaces etc). I do not think any feminist minded sport enthusiast is advocating to do away with this division in every circumstance. Women/trans sport spaces will remain important fixtures in our communities as will discussions led by Muslim feminists on Right To Wear campaigns. Conversations on how to change the sport institution to be more fair and equitable have been going on for years and what better time to bring them to the forefront than in the post-Year of Women’s Sports era.

Ellie Gordon-Moershel is a Left Hook contributor and a radio journalist with the Vancouver-based feminist collective The F Word.