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NOlympics Guide to Tokyo 2020

TOKYO 2020:

A Disaster a Decade in the Making

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are over. They have exposed to the entire world the depths to which the IOC will play with our lives in order to satisfy TV and sponsorship contracts, and the media has largely echoed the fact that much of the world has now soured on the Olympics. The Japanese government’s prioritization of an optional sporting event under multiple states of emergencies has exposed the fundamental flaws of the Olympics, and the anti-Olympic movement has pushed its message of abolition at a time where Olympic reform is clearly impossible. While the IOC pushes the illusions that the Olympics somehow magically did not exacerbate COVID in Japan and that things would have played out differently in another timeline, the overwhelming majority of people can now see through their lies.

But the full story of Tokyo 2020 starts well before the pandemic and should be considered when trying to assess how Tokyo and the Olympics ended up in the current holes they’ve dug for themselves.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have wreaked havoc on a region for the better part of a decade and were being positioned pre-COVID as the “Recovery Games”. However, the Fukushima region has not as such “recovered” from the 2011 disaster as many residents remain displaced and radiation remains in many pockets of the area. Nevertheless, the Olympic machine has barreled forward, displacing unhoused people, razing public housing and parks, implementing new security theater, destroying iconic cultural landmarks, and incurring a huge mountain of public debt. 

Organizers have been opposing the Olympics for years. And then entered COVID, and we saw how poorly the Japanese government reacted to the crisis, waiting longer than anyone else to ultimately postpone the 2020 Games a year, and only once national athlete bodies started boycotting. After the Games had been postponed for a year, the damage of the Olympics was protracted another year as budget overruns ballooned and the public health crisis deepened in Japan, despite calls from our allies around the world to demand the outright cancellation of 2020 and to put these Olympic funds into public health and services.

Here are some more resources about the struggle against Tokyo 2020 and the Olympics at large.

Anti-Olympic Summit 2019

In July 2019 NOlympics LA sent 15 of its members to Tokyo to meet with Hangorin no Kai, Okotowalink and members from many other Olympic host cities and countries for the first ever Anti-Olympic Summit.

Selected Readings:

Media Coverage of Anti-Olympics Summit pre-COVID

Media Coverage of the Anti-Olympic Movement during Tokyo 2020

Journalism and scholarship on the many destructive effects of Tokyo 2020

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