Nationalism and the Rio Olympics

The Rio Olympics are taking place in a world which has seen an upsurge of nationalism. Do the Games serve to reflect, amplify, or diffuse this nationalist wave?

The Olympic charter talks of “building a peaceful and better world . . . with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” But in practice the Games have long since been overtaken by displays of jingoistic nationalism and rampant commercialization.

The Olympic Games are a unique opportunity for athletes from different countries to get to know each other, united in their love of sport. This has been exemplified in Brazil by the warm welcome given to the ten athletes of the Refugee Olympic Team.

One the other hand, from its earliest years the Olympics have involved national teams performing under their respective flags, with anthems sung. The infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics saw the Games turned into a giant mass spectacle, staged for the cameras and an audience of millions. The Nazi salutes may have dropped out of fashion, but treating the Olympics an opportunity to boost the prestige of the host nation and its leaders has persisted through to the present day.

The Games provide a unique platform for the performance of national identity before a mass audience. With modern mobile TV cameras, viewers can see, up close and personal, the exertions, the sweat, the stress, and the emotion of athletes competing for their country. The viewers vicariously share in their struggle: the athletes literally embody the nation. While expressions of nationalism in everyday life, such as flying the flag or wearing a T shirt, often appear ritualistic and superficial,  the Olympic athletes have devoted years of painstaking effort in preparing for the games.

China skillfully used the 2008 Olympics to announce its arrival – literally – on the world stage, with its impressive opening ceremony and huge medal tally. Much to everyone’s surprise, the United Kingdom replicated China’s success in 2012, with a breathtaking opening spectacle and a third place finish in the medals table (their best performance since 1908). The triumph of Team GB reversed Britain’s sense of anomie, and is a factor helping explain the June 2016 vote to leave the EU. Apart from the boost to national confidence, the Olympics showcased the London mayor Boris Johnson, who was to become the face of the Brexit campaign.

Britain has also done well in Rio, currently standing in third place in the medals table. The “secret” to Britain’s success is simple – money. A national lottery was introduced in 1997, with proceeds going to sport. Rather than spend money on say inner-city basketball, UK Sport targeted athletes with a chance of victory in the Olympics. Britain went from 36th place in 1996 to third in 2012. Their medal total rose from 15 in 1996 to 47 in 2008 and 65 in 2012, while funding went from £85 mn to £265 mn and £350 mn. In 2012 that worked out to £4.5 million of funding for each medal won by Team GB. (The British seem to do particularly well at events that involve sitting down, such as cycling, kayaking, and equestrian events.) In Rio they managed 67 medals.

Naturally enough, in each country broadcasters tend to focus on athletes from their home country, and on the sports where their athletes are doing well. Research on the coverage of the 2008 Olympics found that NBC devoted 84% of the comments to American Olympians, while China’s CCTV allotted 52% of all comments to Chinese athletes.

The Olympics also boosts national pride in countries lower down the medals table. Kosovo, competing in the Olympics for the first time since its declaration of independence in 2008, struck gold in women’s judo, a cause of great celebration in Pristina. Even the clothes the athletes wear can become a source of pride – or controversy, in the case of Georgia, for example, which opted for a neo-medieval look in Rio, with floor-length robes for the women.

The Olympics are more inclusive than the United Nations, allowing Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and Taiwan to compete in Rio under their respective flags. There were some heartwarming cases of Olympians reaching across nationalist divides, such as the North and South Korean gymnasts who embraced for a selfie. However there were also counter-examples, such as the Egyptian judoka expelled for refusing to shake hands with the Israeli who defeated him, or the Lebanese team that refused to allow Israelis onto their bus on the way to the opening ceremony.

The Olympics are also ethnically and socially inclusive, as evidenced by the success of African American athletes such as Gaby Douglas and Simon Biles. Gone are the days when sport at this level was the privilege of a narrow elite from private schools. Thanks to sponsorships and state programs, athletes now come from all walks of life.

Brazil, beset by political and economic crises, is unlikely to experience much of a national identity boost from hosting the Olympics. They can however take pride in the fact that the facilities were ready on time and the Games have gone off without incident (notwithstanding the occasional mugging or green pool) and seem to have been enjoyed by all involved. Brazil were just about able to top the 17 medals they won in London – they won 19 in Rio. They won gold in men’s soccer and volleyball, the two sports they were most vested in. Talking of disappointment, China is adjusting to winning fewer golds than anticipated: they are battling with Britain for second place. But after the triumph in Beijing, China’s national narrative has moved on to other projects beyond the sporting realm.

Arguably the most prominent impact of Rio on nationalism has been the scandal over state-sponsored doping, which led to the banning of the Russian athletics team (and all Russian teams from the Paralympics). Vladimir Putin had invested some $50 billion in making the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics a success, so Russia’s exclusion from Rio strikes at the core of Putin’s platform.  However, the Kremlin had no problem convincing the Russian public that the ban is just another example of the US-led conspiracy to diminish Russia.

The Games are not just about nationalism: they are also big business. The Rio Games were put together on a tight budget – but still cost $12 bn. The costs are recouped from the sale of broadcasting rights and sponsorships (though Brazil faces a likely deficit of $4 bn).

Nationalism and commercialism overlap, with corporations using nationalist appeals to sell their products.

Olympic advertising by sponsors ahead of the Games, usually uplifting and global in nature, was quite nationalistic this time around. National brands selling in their home market tend to focus on showcasing native athletes to the exclusion of those from other countries. Global brands tend to favor universal appeal, invoking the dreams and struggles of individual athletes. For example, Procter and Gamble’s Rio Olympics ad is a sentimental appeal on the universal theme of parents looking out for their children (“Thank you Mom”), the same theme they had used in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Coca Cola developed a generic feel-good Rio ad for use in markets around the world – but ran customized ads for China that focused exclusively on Chinese athletes. Likewise, Samsung produced an impressive “one world” anthem for global markets, but ran a China-specific ad in that market. The Chinese market is so important, and their national pride so sensitive, that it is worth according them special treatment.

Whatever the costs and benefits of the Olympics, civic and national ambition means that some cities are willing to take on the challenge. Four cities are currently in the running to host the 2024 Olympics – Budapest, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome. The show will go on.

took place in a world that has seen an upsurge of nationalism. Do the games serve to reflect, amplify or diffuse this nationalist wave?

The Olympic charter talks of “building a peaceful and better world . . . with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” But in practice, the games have long since been overtaken by displays of jingoistic nationalism and rampant commercialization.

The Olympic Games are a unique opportunity for athletes from different countries to get to know each other, united in their love of sport. This has been exemplified in Brazil by the warm welcome given to the ten athletes of the Refugee Olympic Team.

One the other hand, from its earliest years the Olympics have involved national teams performing under their respective flags, with anthems sung. The infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics saw the games turned into a giant mass spectacle, staged for the cameras and an audience of millions. The Nazi salutes may have dropped out of fashion, but treating the Olympics an opportunity to boost the prestige of the host nation and its leaders has persisted through to the present day.

The games provide a unique platform for the performance of national identity before a mass audience. With modern mobile TV cameras, viewers can see, up close and personal, the exertions, the sweat, the stress and the emotion of athletes competing for their country. The viewers vicariously share in their struggle: the athletes literally embody the nation. While expressions of nationalism in everyday life, such as flying the flag or wearing a T-shirt, often appear ritualistic and superficial, the Olympic athletes have devoted years of painstaking effort in preparing for the games.

China skillfully used the 2008 Olympics to announce its arrival on the world stage, with its impressive opening ceremony and huge medal tally. Much to everyone’s surprise, the United Kingdom replicated China’s success in 2012, with a breathtaking opening spectacle and an unprecedented third-place finish in the medals table. The triumph of Team GB reversed Britain’s sense of anomie, and is a factor helping to explain the June 2016 vote to leave the EU. Apart from the boost to national confidence, the Olympics showcased London mayor Boris Johnson, who was to become the face of the Brexit campaign.

Britain has also done well in Rio, ending the games at third place in the medals table. The “secret” to Britain’s success is simple: money. A national lottery was introduced in 1997, with proceeds going to sport. Rather than spend money on, say, inner-city basketball, UK Sport targeted athletes with a chance of victory in the Olympics. Britain went from thirty-sixth place in 1996 to third in 2012. Its medal total rose from fifteen in 1996 to forty-seven in 2008 and sixty-five in 2012, while funding went from £85 million to £265 million, then to £350 million. In 2012, that worked out to £4.5 million of funding for each medal won by Team GB. (The British seem to do particularly well at events that involve sitting down, such as cycling, kayaking and equestrian events.)

Naturally enough, in each country broadcasters tend to focus on athletes from their home country, and on the sports where their athletes are doing well. Research on the coverage of the 2008 Olympics found that NBC devoted 84 percent of its comments to American Olympians, while China’s CCTV allotted 52 percent of all comments to Chinese athletes.

The Olympics also boost national pride in countries lower down the medals table. Kosovo, competing in the Olympics for the first time since its declaration of independence in 2008, struck gold in women’s judo, a cause of great celebration in Pristina. Even the clothes the athletes wear can become a source of pride—or controversy, in the case of Georgia, for example, which opted for a neo-medieval look in Rio, with floor-length robes for the women.

The Olympics are more inclusive than the United Nations, allowing Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and Taiwan to compete in Rio under their respective flags. There were some heartwarming cases of Olympians reaching across national divides, such as the North and South Korean gymnasts who embraced for a selfie. However there were also counterexamples, such as the Egyptian judoka expelled for refusing to shake hands with the Israeli who defeated him, or the Lebanese team that refused to allow Israelis onto their bus on the way to the opening ceremony.

The Olympics are also ethnically and socially inclusive, as evidenced by the success of African American athletes such as Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles and Simone Manuel. Gone are the days when sport at this level was the privilege of a narrow elite from private schools. Thanks to sponsorships and state programs, athletes now come from all walks of life.

Brazil, beset by political and economic crises, is unlikely to experience much of a national identity boost from hosting the Olympics. It can, however, take pride in the fact that the facilities were ready on time and the games have gone off without incident (notwithstanding the occasional criminal incident or green pool) and seem to have been enjoyed by all involved. Brazil topped the seventeen medals it won in London. The country had its highest hopes for volleyball and soccer, and won gold in both men’s tournaments. Meanwhile, China had to adjust to winning fewer golds than anticipated: battling Britain for second place, it won fewer gold medals than the Brits but three more medals overall. However, after the triumph in Beijing, China’s national narrative has moved on to other projects beyond the sporting realm.

Arguably the most prominent impact of Rio on nationalism has been the scandal over state-sponsored doping, which led to the banning of the Russian athletics team (and all Russian teams from the Paralympics). Vladimir Putin had invested some $50 billion in making the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics a success, so Russia’s exclusion from Rio strikes at the core of Putin’s platform. However, the Kremlin had no problem convincing the Russian public that the ban is just another example of the U.S.-led conspiracy to diminish Russia.

The games are not just about nationalism: they are also big business. The Rio games were put together on a tight budget—but still cost $12 billion. Costs are recouped from the sale of broadcasting rights and sponsorships (though Brazil faces a likely deficit of $4 billion).

Nationalism and commercialism overlap, with corporations using nationalist appeals to sell their products.

Olympic advertising by sponsors ahead of the games, usually uplifting and global in nature, was quite nationalistic this time around. National brands selling in their home market tend to focus on showcasing native athletes to the exclusion of those from other countries. Global brands tend to favor universal appeal, invoking the dreams and struggles of individual athletes. For example, Procter and Gamble’s Rio Olympics ad is a sentimental appeal on the universal theme of parents looking out for their children (“Thank you, Mom”), the same theme the company had used in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Coca-Cola developed a generic feel-good Rio ad for use in markets around the world—but ran customized ads for China that focused exclusively on Chinese athletes. Likewise, Samsung produced an impressive “one world” anthem for global markets, but ran a China-specific ad in that market. The Chinese market is so important, and their national pride so sensitive, that it is worth according them special treatment.

Whatever the costs and benefits of the Olympics, civic and national ambition means that some cities are willing to take on the challenge. Four cities are currently in the running to host the 2024 Olympics: Budapest, Los Angeles, Paris and Rome. The show will go on.

(A version of this piece was published in The National Interest August 22, 2016.

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The politics of religion in post-Christian Europe

Recent years have seen a startling rise in the political salience of religion. This seems to hold true in every corner of the globe, from the 9/11 atrocity in the U.S., to the embrace of Orthodoxy by Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the attacks on Muslims by militant Buddhists in Myanmar. And now, we have the brutal assaults on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and kosher market in Paris to add to the list.

Yet at the same time, religious belief and participation in religious rituals at the level of the individual has steadily declined. In the European Union, according to a 2005 Eurobarometer poll, only 52% of respondents agreed with the statement “I believe there is a God.”

How is one to explain this apparent paradox: the gap that has opened up between the politicization of religion at national level even as it recedes from the life of most individuals?

The answer lies in political changes, and the impact of globalization on the capacity for collective action at the national level.

The 1960s saw the onset of a sharp decline in church-going in Europe and the U.S. Hugh Mcleod, a historian at Birmingham University in England, explains that this was a result of multiple factors, from changes in family structure – including more rights for women – to a weakening of national identity. In subsequent decades the arrival of large numbers of non-Christian migrants forced European states to adapt by cutting state ties to Christian churches, changing school curricula, and seeking a new narrative of collective belonging.

While in France the state doubled down on assimilation (banning the wearing of the hijab in public schools), Britain opted for multiculturalism. Previously, the overwhelming majority of citizens had been baptized into the Church of England and had compulsory bible class in all state schools. But now British schools teach a world religions curriculum – or a Moslem curriculum, in certain Moslem-majority areas, as a recent scandal revealed.

Daniel Loss, a historian at Harvard, argues that this enabled the Church of England to find a new role as part of a national dialog on how to incorporate the new religious communities and preserve social unity. The Archbishop of Canterbury continues to play a prominent role in moral debate, even though less than 5% of the population are regular attendees at Anglican services. Religion shifted from being founded in a direct relationship between individuals and the state, to a question of communal group representation.

Some religious believers pushed back against the secularization trend by turning to more radical or dogmatic expressions of their faith. The 1980s saw a revival of religious activism in the U.S. and many other parts of the world, often through grass-roots organizations that had weak ties with the state. Examples range from the evangelicals in the U.S. to the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt. These groups became more prominent in part because mainstream congregations were continuing to shrink.

In the most extreme cases, the movement that grew in response to the secularization of the 1960s turned to violence. In Britain, the wake-up call showing the limits of the state’s multiculturalism strategy was the London bombings of July 2005. This has triggered a lively and as yet unresolved debate about how the state should respond. In France, the assault on Charlie Hebdo is the equivalent of the 7/7 bombings. In both cases, the perpetrators were home-grown, born and raised in Britain (three of the four) and France respectively, so the attacks could not entirely be blamed on foreign radicals. Both the British and French terrorists cited the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a reason for their anger. (This despite the fact that the French government at the time, under conservative President Jacques Chirac, had vociferously opposed the U.S.-led invasion.)

The shift to political violence arose because of a sense of frustration and powerlessness. Faith in democracy has been declining faster than faith in religion. The increased flow of people, ideas, and power across national borders undermined the democratic model of communities making collective decisions about their fate. Increasingly, decisions about a country’s economic policies or political direction seemed to be made in Brussels or Washington, and not in the national capital. This has caused the Christian and post-Christian majority populations to drift into apathy, consumerism, and alternative religions – and to offer their vote to populist and nationalist parties.

As for the ethnic minorities, majoritarian electoral systems and winner-take-all economic conditions made it increasingly unlikely that their voice would be heard – unless it was amplified through demonstrative atrocities. Radical Islamists see democracy as a threat to Shariah law, so they want to hasten its demise.

The rise of politicized religion is thus a product of deep and varied developments in the international political economy; it is not caused by some flaw in Islamic theology. Finding a solution to the problem will be equally complex and protracted.

 

 

 

Putin’s Caucasian knot

Grozny Attack Is Another Headache for Putin

Arbi Zubairaev / Reuters

The terrorist attack in Grozny on Dec. 4, the day of President Vladimir Putin’s state of the nation address, was a brutal reminder that the problem of unrest in the Muslim republics of Russia’s North Caucasus remains a mortal danger to the stability of the country in general and Putin’s regime in particular. Fifteen years ago, Putin rose to the presidency pledging to “restore constitutional order” in the then-breakaway republic of Chechnya.

The nine gunmen on Dec. 4 arrived in the center of Grozny in the dead of night, where they were stopped by a police patrol and forced to take refuge in nearby buildings. All were eventually killed, at the cost of 14 police lives and 30 wounded. The fact that the group did not succeed in killing a large number of civilians is testimony to the effectiveness of the security regime of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, which relies on a blanket police presence and ruthless hounding of dissidents.

In the wake of the assault, Kadyrov announced that family members of those who took part in the attack will be expelled from Chechnya, and their houses will be leveled. Such punishments are not allowed under Russian law, but that has not proven an obstacle to Kadyrov’s actions in the past.

Evidence thus far released suggests that this was a locally recruited gang, part of the Caucasus Emirate, and not loyal to a more far-flung terrorist network, such as Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq. The last major attack sponsored by the Caucasus Emirate was the suicide assault on Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport in January 2011, which killed 37.

However, it seems clear that large numbers of young men from the former Soviet Union have been drawn to the fighting in Syria and Iraq — just as they have been recruited from Britain, Canada, France and elsewhere. There are reportedly 1,000 Russian-speakers fighting on the side of Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria — split among the various rival factions — including many Chechens.

There has been some speculation that Ukrainian radicals might try to make common cause with anti-Russian Islamist terrorists. Chechens have been fighting on both sides in eastern Ukraine — some among the Russian “volunteers” supporting the separatists, and others supporting the Kiev government — such as a group led by Isa Munayev, a veteran of the Chechen independence wars. This development is manna to Russian propagandists and their narrative of the evil intentions of their opponents in Kiev.

However, the more serious problem that the Grozny attack highlights is domestic rather than international — the risk that the pro-Moscow rulers in the North Caucasus will lose their ability to control the situation in their respective republics.

It is not only that threats of terrorist violence emanate from the North Caucasus: The financial subsidies that Moscow pays to keep the republics in line are a drain on the Russian federal budget. Russian oppositionists complain that in return for Moscow’s support, the leaders of the Caucasus republics shamelessly rig elections to deliver absurdly high votes for Putin and United Russia.

In December 2011, Chechnya delivered an implausible 99.48 percent of its votes for United Russia, while the national average was 64 percent. In neighboring Ingushetia 91 percent voted for United Russia, and in Dagestan 83 percent. In the March 2012 presidential election, Chechnya voted 99.76 percent for Putin, while Dagestan voted 92.8 percent and Ingushetia 91.9 percent. The millions of votes in the North Caucasus could prove decisive in ensuring a Kremlin victory in a future close-run federal election.

With the Kremlin under strain from a declining economy and unsettled standoff in eastern Ukraine, instability in the Caucasus is the last thing they need, since it brings attention back to the thorny question of whether the North Caucasus will in fact remain part of the Russian Federation in the long run.