For much of its existence, the International Olympic Committee has claimed that sports cannot be political. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) argues that sports and politics do not mix and that politics should never be a part of the Olympics in any way.
Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter reads:
We believe that the example we set by competing with the world’s best while living in harmony in the Olympic Village is a uniquely positive message to send to an increasingly divided world. This is why it is important, on both a personal and a global level, that we keep the venues, the Olympic Village and the podium neutral and free from any form of political, religious or ethnic demonstrations.
From the outset the Olympics have been a spectacle that invites countries from all over the world to compete against one another for glory. Given the often fraught relationships between any number of countries at any given moment in history, it’s no surprise that politics and political protests have been present since the early days of the Games. While the IOC has done its best to shy away from the inherently political nature of basically anything, they have never missed a chance to capitalize on tragedy as a result of political conflict.
The Olympics have used the “recovery” narrative as a way to draw a larger audience to the Games for decades. Whether it was after the 1972 Munich Games, which saw the kidnapping and murder of five Israeli athletes, or the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games which were the first Olympics after 9/11, “recovery” has regularly been part of the Olympic PR machine.
The postponed (and likely to be canceled 2020 Tokyo Games) have relied heavily on this recovery narrative. The bidding process for Tokyo 2020 was completed in 2013, merely two years after the devastating Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster. Nine years after the devastating tragedy, pockets of dangerously high radiation remain in areas of the Fukushima coastal region. Many evacuees do not want to return, understandably distrusting the government’s assurances that returning poses no health risks. To demonstrate the safety of the area, the Japanese government and the IOC decided to hold part of the torch relay in Fukushima. Because radiation poisoning is most dangerous to those experiencing long-term exposure, the smiling faces of athletes, dignitaries, and spectators who attend the torch relay will serve as a pleasant misdirection from the very real threat facing residents. It will also serve to distract from the idea that Fukushima could have been rebuilt faster if construction cranes weren’t busy building stadiums in Tokyo.
The reason this recovery narrative is so destructive and pernicious is that it allows the IOC and local governments to operate with impunity behind the scenes. The recovery narrative exploits the pain of the moment to sell hollow promises about our future. While the community is distracted by grief and united in their shared trauma, those in power push an agenda that harms the very people they claim to be helping to “recover”.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the world was on high alert. The 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics were the first time the Olympics were declared a National Special Service Event (NSSE), which meant that not only would there be an increased police presence but there would also be a massive federal law enforcement presence. When the 2002 games took place there were more troops on the ground in Salt Lake City than there were deployed in Afghanistan at the time. While the world watched the opening ceremony that celebrated world unity, and while Mitt Romney saw what he thought was his clear path to a presidential bid, government agents were free to brutalize, harass, and deport people who they deemed “threats.” According to ex-NSA official Thomas Drake, “Officials in the NSA and FBI viewed the Salt Lake Olympics Field Op as a golden opportunity to bring together resources from both agencies to experiment with and fine tune a new scale of mass surveillance.”
We are years away from the proposed 2028 games but we know that they’ll be used not only to boost the LAPD budget but to once again run with the recovery narrative. Given the toll this pandemic has already taken on the city’s economy, it is inevitable that LA’s power elite will push the Games as a vessel of recovery. One can imagine Mayor Garcetti, who will be long out of office, speaking in platitudes about what this city had to go through during quarantine, patting himself on the back for his “rapid response” and hoping residents don’t remember his destructive tenure. We’ll hear about the 2020 uprising and how the city suffered from looting and was able to recover from racial injustice. We will likely see Kobe Bryant further propped up as LA’s patron saint of sports, while the IOC exploits his passing and misses no opportunities to remind us that not only was he an NBA star, but also an Olympic athlete and a member of the 2024 bid committee.
If the public is not paying attention, it can be easy to fall for these hokey and hollow redemption theatrics. But if we continue to be as engaged as we have been since March, the Olympic myths of transit expansion, Olympic “profit,” and recovery will likely fall flat, because they don’t hold up to any real scrutiny. They don’t line up with the realities of our world and our city, where long-running institutions are being deeply challenged and rethought. We have over a century of failed recovery games to look back to. To the IOC “recovery” means business as usual. The elite of the world get to line their pockets and leave devastation in their wake as they move on to any city that will have them.
While the Olympics will always try to push a recovery narrative, many of the cities that have hosted them will never recover.
You cannot recover from having entire communities violently displaced.
You can’t recover from rapid gentrification.
You sure as hell can’t recover from being killed by a hyper militarized police force.
The Games and capitalism will not save us. More mega-events, more building and development, more tourism, more Airbnbs, more police and security aren’t the means to recovery. As we grapple with the tough questions about what LA should look like, we need to remember that the Olympics, and all the shiny objects they will dangle in front of us as if we’re children, are not just a distraction; they are destruction.