July 29, 2024 • 37 mins
James and Shereen discuss the history of the modern Olympic Games, the Nazi Olympics of 1936, and how the games harm the communities that host them.
James’ book about the Olympics: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-13-8071-6
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi, Scheren, Hi James, I was alarming. Yeah, I went
into like twenty tens YouTube boys.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Well, yeah, Hi James is excited today I am excited.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm always excited to make a podcast, you know, I
love to cast a pod, but today I am especially
especially with an X like Espresso, the coffee drink. I
am especially excited to talk to you, Serene, because we
are talking about a subject which I have wasted far
too much of my life reading and writing about. What
are we talking about, Sharen sports? Sports? Olympics. Yeah, sports,
(00:46):
I'm going to explain to Sharen sports why they're fun.
I did too many of them. Okay, we're talking about
the Olympics, the Olympic Games specifically. I guess they're happening
in Paris this year. They may be happening in Paris
by the time you listen to this. But I'm want
to talk a little bit about the history of the
Olympics because I wrote a book about it, and so
I get to drawing on about it for half an
(01:07):
hour and you have to listen to me. Where you
drive your cars to work?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Cool?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
The mon Olympic Games is it draws links to ancient Greece, right,
And it does that because at the time that the
modern Olympic Games in the late nineteenth century were being
created by a guy called Baron Pierre de Kuberta, the
aristocracy of Europe were obsessed with drawing links to the
classical period.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
This is the same time when we see all those
like neoclassical buildings going up, like people were trying to
draw links between themselves and the ancient Greeks and to
sort of posit themselves as the new Greco Roman font
of civilization.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
And hey, I took our history and I minor to that,
so I know stuff too.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Okay, Yeah, because I did not take our history. Okay,
I'm sure you know more all kinds of stuff about
like impressionists and shared own understand So if we're looking
at like to understand the Olympics, we have to understand sport, right,
And to understand sport, we have to understand play.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So I was right about sports.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
You don't have to yeah, no, no, you agree, you're
right on it. Yeah, but first we do play, right.
So if we're looking at like kind of the classic
text on this, it's a book called Homo Ludins. But
we probably don't need to read that. It's not a banger.
We very few academic books are bangers. I like to
think mine's in a sort of semi banger category. But yeah,
(02:30):
it's also overpriced and you shouldn't buy it. Just go
to your library and get it for free. Play is
it's pretty obvious what play is. But it's the difference
between play and sport is that sport is bounded. It
happens in a certain place, within a certain set of rules.
Play doesn't. So the archetypal kind of example of transitioning
from play to sport would be folk football in Britain.
(02:51):
So back in the day, in the place where I
come from, for holidays, the Saints Days and other days
when people didn't work, they would have a game of
football which consisted of a ball inflated pigs bladder or
a similar similar device, and you have to get it
from one village into the other village. And those are
about all the rules, right. Sometimes they had specific rules
(03:13):
against stabbing. There have been like an outbreak of stabbing incidents,
but other than that, it was pretty much you do
what the fuck you wanted, right, You want to go
on a five mile detour and come around, people come
in the back way, No problem. You're on a form
of phalanx of all your mates and just kind of
go through like a wedge style. Not a problem at all.
(03:33):
You know you want to start hitting people with sticks, Yeah,
not an issue. It was very loose, right, and every
village or pair of villages that would play had their
own kind of understanding of the rules. But it wasn't
a codified set of rules. They existed across all incidences
of folk football. And then we go from there to
association football. Right, that's where soccer comes from. Right, as
(03:55):
soccer soccer, association becomes assoc us sock becomes our soccer,
that becomes soccer.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Does that makes sense kind Yeah, I'm going to say yes.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It's a very like nineteenth century posh British effect that
takes the word association football and comes out with soccer.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's so funny.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, that's that's where it comes from. So association football
codifires the rules. Right, there's a pitch that pitch its
the same size as a goal. The goal is the
same size. You can't pick it up now, and from
that comes rugby football, right, So rugby football is type
where you pick up the ball. There's a kind of
founding myth for rugby football that this guy called William
(04:35):
ware bellis with a glorious disregard for the rules. Quote,
picked up the ball and ran with it. It's a
bit weird that, like they've created a founding myth for
dude who effectively just like sucked at football, so he
picked it up and ran with it. Like, it doesn't
seem like he deserves a literal statue that he has. Yeah,
and that happened at Rugby School, right, which was one
(04:57):
of these English boarding schools that existed to prepare young
men to be officers and administrators in the British Empire.
And that is really what's the codification of sport as
far as we can sort of create, like a reason
for it is to prepare young men and just men
to be administrators in the British Empire. Right, it's supposed
(05:19):
to make them physically strong. It's supposed to make them
obey the rules and learn to do what they're told
even in stressful situations. Right, it's part of an idea
called muscular Christianity. And like, as far as we can
attribute this whole combination of things to one person. It
would be Thomas Arnold, right, Thomas Arnold being the headmaster
at Rugby School, and he develops his idea of educating
(05:41):
young Christian men and doing so using sport as well
as academia and sports very quickly develop a set of
rules around amateurism. Amateurism like sometimes we just use amateur
now to me not very good, but at the time
it's specifically meant not paid to do the sport. And
so yeah, this is the early Olympics. Actually, the Olympics
(06:02):
still relatively recently have an amateurism rule, right that people
can't participate if they are paid to do the sport.
They have exemptions for fencing coaches, which I think tells
you about everything you need to know that this isn't
This isn't there for any like purity reason. It's there
to serve as a class barrier, right, And we see
(06:23):
it used as a class barrier first of all in football, right,
Like that's why we have rugby league and rugby union
because the rugby league people tended to be working people
and they needed to be paid. It's the rugby league
allowed for professionalism, Rugby union did not, and those tended
to be wealthier people, right, but it's used at the
Olympics extensively to police class. Like probably the most prominent
(06:45):
example would be Jim Thorpe. You familiar with Jim Thorpe.
Jim Thorpe's the cool guy. Actually, I got to read
some of his correspondents. He actually wrote a history of
the Olympic Games, which is very sad when you consider
that Jim Thorpe himself he's a member of the Sacond
Fox Nation, right, so he's indigenous to North America. He
won a medal for the United States in the nineteen
(07:06):
twelve Summer Olympics. Who went to gold medals actually won
in pentathlon and won decathlon. So like decathletes are kind
of like the uber athletes, right, Like you're doing ten
ten different sports that you have to just be good
at exercising. And Jim thoughte was good at exercising. He
also played collegiate and professional football, professional baseball, and professional basketball. See,
(07:26):
he's an all around sport to dad. Unfortunately, he lost
his Olympic title because he had been paid at some
point for playing baseball, even though he didn't do baseball
in the Olympics. That's a fucked yeah, It's very clearly
used as a way to class and race police the games. Right,
(07:47):
And I think this gets to a point about what
the Olympics are. So the early Olympics tend to coincide
with what are called World's fairs. Familiar with World's Fairs, Shreen? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
people sort of get together have these big exhibitions and
they show off there, you know if you really got
yeah whatever, Yeah, look what I stole from this country
(08:08):
that I have colonized and under force extracted these the
following things. If you're in Britain, like the most famous
sort of World's Fair site would be Crystal Palace, right,
Crystal Palace was built, burned down, but it was built
for the World's Fair. If you're in San Diego, Balboa Park, right,
was built fourteen Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Feel like I knew that somewhere in my head.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, when you go to Balboa Park, little niche San
Diego diversion for the millions of you are not in
San Diego, you can just tune out for ten seconds.
Those are little cottages like the International Cottages and the
Palestine House and yeah, Palestine House school that they got
recognition in San Diego at least those are from the
World's Fair. Each country would have a little exhibition in
(08:48):
their house right and all down the Prado. So that's
actually has zoos started as well. Someone in their exhibition
had lions and then fucking left them when they left
and they were like, uh, I guess we start a zoo.
Got a couple of lines on our hands. Yeah, incredible,
incredible vibes. So the Olympics happen at the same time
(09:09):
as world for it's for a long time, and that
is because the Olympics are essentially a gathering of transnational bourgeois.
He that's not a phrase I came up with myself.
It's from my friend David Goldblatt, who's written a really
excellent history of the Olympics that's called The Games. And if
you're going to read one book about the Olympics, it
should be David's book. He's a lovely guy. I'm sure
he's not listening hello, David. If you are, I would
(09:32):
recommend his book because I think his analysis is great. Right,
that what these become is a place where the sort
of the people who make money from finance capital all
around the world can gather together and share the little
ideas and play their little games. And we see that,
for instance, in the nineteen oh four s In Lewis
Olympics Saint Louis. In addition to like the World's Fair,
they have the Olympics and they have something called the
(09:53):
Anthropological Days. Have you heard about this? Sharing? Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Will you?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
No? It's one of the more funck they happening in St. Louis,
which I think is saying a lot. They essentially kidnapped
people from around their various imperial possessions, brought them to
Saint Louis, which in itself is a crime, and then
forced them to compete in events that they didn't fully
explain to them what the fuck yeah like, and then
(10:19):
concluded from this that like white people were better.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
It's like some gladiator shit that's like, yeah, yes, what
are you doing? That's too modern, that's too hard.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
This is nineteen oh four, yeah, not so long ago. Yeah,
very yeah. And this kind of exhibits what the world's
fairs were and to agree to a degree like what
the Olympiads became, which was like a way for the
colonizing powers to get together, right right, Ian, do you
know what will not kidnap you from your home country
(10:51):
and fly you to Saint Louis and then force you
to compete in games that you don't understand.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Gold.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, you probably right. Well, indirectly it will, you know,
because as a sort of source of wealth.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah right, okay, whatever, I was trying to make a
trying to think of something that I might hear next.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, it's it's properly gold. You're right way back, and
we hope you have bought your gold, the only the
only metal that you can make an Olympic medal out of. Incidentally,
(11:31):
really I will over to gold. Oh really, you turn green?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I get like ear like it's it's not good for
my skin. Well, I'll get like infections, but like I'll
get like an exema kind of reaction.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Oh well, what do you u? Did you have an
alternative jewelry?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I don't wear a lot of jewelry. I wear rings
the most, but I can't wear ear rings anymore. They're
two My ears are too sensitive. I usually like stick
with silver if I have to. But yeah, I don't know, not.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Meant to be rich, no shame or maybe maybe platinum
is what's Oh yeah, platinum? Yeah, okay, listeners sen Cherine
Platinum do hikis, well, yeah to where Yeah gold they're
the Olympic metals are not solid gold, they're just gold coated.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah it's a little cheap. Yeah yeah, right, like you
spend your whole life training something and then they did, yeah, yeah,
you drop it and it's just plastic in the middle.
I guess they have more value sing pick medals than
they do as lumps of gold. Anyway, you can sell them,
and people have sold them online because, as it turns out,
like spending your entire youth exercising and then getting to
(12:45):
a point where you're too injured or old to compete,
it's sometimes not great for your future career prospects. And
then I've unfortunately seen lots of friends take that path.
And so I want to talk about like the Olympics
in the twenty century, and specifically I want to talk
about the Olympics in the nineteen thirties. Right, so when
the Olympics. By the time we come to the nineteen thirties,
(13:07):
the Olympics have really become like they're an American thing.
The Los Angeles Olympics gives us a lot of the
modern Olympics and the rest of the mother Olympics we
get from friends of the podcast Adolf Hitler and his
Nazi Party. Of course, yeah, I knew that you were
expecting them. We never, never don't expect Hitler. So ninety
thirty two is great. Like nineteen thirty two Olympic village.
(13:30):
They build this Olympic village. They haven't patrolled by cowboys,
just like Hollywood cosplay dudes on horses cowboying around. It's
the first. It's very weird. It's the first Olympic village,
and it's it becomes a real estate investment, right like
as soon as the Olympics are done, there in classic
Los Angeles fashion, flipping the houses for more than they
(13:51):
were paid. So it also creates this idea of like
the Olympics as a mass spectacle in nineteen thirty two
is sometimes called the Hollywood Olympics, right, and it really
changes the game from rich people getting together for rich
people to a spectator event and a mass spectator event.
In nineteen thirty one, Spain's Dicta Blander collapses. Dicta Blander
(14:14):
is like a soft dictatorship as opposed to Dictadora as
a hard dictatorship. Right, so, and Spain becomes a Republic
nineteen thirty one. It's also the time when the International
Olympic Committee is meeting in Barcelona, and for geographically challenged listeners, Barcelona,
it's in Catalonia, but Catalonia is within Spain at this time,
(14:35):
so the IOC is almost entirely comprised of very rich people,
and many of them are like barons, counts, princes other
people who like their job is being someone's kid, right,
and they just do things like being on the IOC
to occupy them what they spend their parents' money. So
(14:55):
they're in Spain at the time when Spain has just
deposed a monarch and it has this revolutionary republic, right,
the anarchists are in the street. It's about to begin
a campaign of two years of removing the church from
its official position, like anti clericalism and of land reform.
These are things which rich people do not like. And
(15:18):
so the vote happens in Barcelona about where to hold
the next Olympics, and the two leading candidates are Berlin
and Barcelona. After Barcelona, I think a little weird happens.
The IOC members all go home and not everyone has
come to Barcelona, right, because because of the change in
the situation and instead of being like, okay, well we
(15:41):
had a vote in Barcelona one, the IOC makes an
interesting and relatively unique decision to have another vote by telegram,
and in the telegram vote, they instead of going for
the unstable Spanish Second Republic, up for a more stable
and liberal democracy, which is of course Yamar Germany. Oh
(16:03):
of course, yeah, good choice by their better rich folks.
They really helped us out there, and it's very interesting,
like I've spent a lot of time with these telegrams,
like the actual paper telegrams in the International Olympic Committee
archive in Lausanne, trying to ascertain did they just like
(16:23):
did the vote happen? And then they were like no, fuck,
we can't go to Barcelona, like we got to redo,
We've got to work out a way to jig this,
like we can't go to this republican place, or that
they claimed that there weren't enough votes, right, that they
didn't have like a quorum. But I've looked at previous
and subsequent votes and there are there are plenty of
other votes that have fewer participants, and it was relatively
(16:44):
normal at this time for not everyone to show up
at a meeting right, because it's nineteen thirty one, Like,
traveling is hard, and so I can't categorically say what's happened.
But maybe that's what I suspect has happened. I can't
really see any way I could find out now, And
so went to every member of the International Olympic Committee
at the time and looked in their personal archive. But
(17:05):
either way, they decided to give the Olympics to this
little place called firemar Germany. In between ninety thirty one
and nineteen thirty six. History fans will know that the
Nazis came to parent Germany. Nazis not very nice people
and no bad Many people are saying, yeah, many people
are saying.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
The mosquitoes of the world not sorry, we just recorded
the Mosquito episode.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yes, yeah, in any ways, like the mosquito could be eradicated,
maybe wouldn't be bad. Yeah, my favorite George Orwell line,
one of my favorite joints or world lines. I joined
the militia to kill a fascist because if all of
us did so, then there wouldn't be any of them left.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, yeah, very prescient. So the Olympics, then the Nazis
going to power. First they want to do away with it.
Right then when they're like, fuck this, this is some
bougie shit, went on into it. We don't want to
see other people, we don't care about other nations with arians.
And then over time the administrators of the Olympics, including
(18:07):
guy called Carl DM who would be classified, according to
the Nazis owned sort of standards as a Jewish person,
They persuade the Nazis that having the Olympics will be
good for them. It will let them exhibit their shit
on a world scale. And they are not wrong. Right,
The Olympics turned into a massive boon for Nazi Germany.
We don't have enough time in this short episode to
(18:29):
explain the whole boycott movement. There was a substantial boycott movement,
including in the United States. The United States very nearly
boycotted the Berlin Olympics, but in the end it ended
up not doing so. You had opposition from really interesting groups.
Actually had opposition obviously from Jewish groups, right, because Nazis.
You have opposition from elements of an NAACP, but not
(18:51):
from other elements because they have this very reasonable objection.
They're like, well, America is also racist as fuck. Actually,
like we also like this is a time all week
exclude black folks from a lot of yeah not yeah,
And so you have black folks boycotting, and you have
black folks being like, now fuck it, like we'll take
the chance, you know. And then you have the opposition
(19:12):
from an interesting group like the liberal Catholics, right, because
the Nazis had their own ideas on religion, and so
a lot of Catholics were anti Nazi at that point,
and including Jeremiah Mahony, who was president of the Amateur
Athletic Union at the time, who was kind of leading
the boycott movement. The United States decides not to boycott,
lots of other places in the world decide that they
are going to boycott, right, and lots of other people
(19:35):
around the world. And that's where Barcelona. They had a
conference in Paris. Actually they're the international conference sort of
respect of the Olympic ideal, and that is the conference
out of which the bars that remember Barcelona applied in
thirty one, right, so they have all their shit together.
They actually have the site of a former World's Fair
and that's what they're going to use. So the Catalans
(19:56):
come to this conference in April of thirty six, and
are like, hey, we can have another Olympics, which isn't shit,
And they go ahead and have their Olympics and shit,
now first happened the Nazi Olympics, Right. The Nazi Olympics
give us so much of what we consider to be
the Olympic tradition today. The torch relay, you know, the
(20:18):
torch relay. They go to Olympia and bring the flame. Yeah,
that's that's a Nazi thing. Actually, it comes from the Nazis.
The idea of drawing a link from ancient Greece to
Berlin was a Nazi idea.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Why don't we still do it?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, that's a good question, Sharen, isn't it the good question?
As we entered the Paris Olympics, one thing they have
done away was is the Olympic salute because it bears
an unfortunate resemblance to the Nazis. They also start in no,
the Olympics salute predates it. So you have these interesting
mark people march like were they the parade at the
(20:51):
opening ceremony of the Olympics, right, and lots of these
The pageantry of the opening ceremony also comes from the Nazis,
by the way, and We got people walking in and
the come in and they're doing a salute, and people like,
is that the Nazi salute they're doing? It's at the
Olympic salute. I'm pretty sure it's the Olympic salute. I'm
pretty sure.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
If it's too close, I think it's bad. Yeah, I
think getting confused for something else. I think I think
you should stop.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah. I just tried to not do things that little
like gunsy kilink like that is how I live my life.
You have other nations who don't do it, right. You
have the Americans. The Americans traditionally in the they're supposed
to dip their flag. The Americans have never dipped their
flag in opening ceremonies. So sometimes you'll see this written
as like yeah, the Americans said, fuck, hey, they didn't.
(21:36):
They just did what they'd always done, which was to
not dip their flag, and that that Olympiad is a
great success for Hitler, right, Like this is where a
lot of this like, oh, but yeah, he's very efficient.
He makes a trains run on time. Kind of shit
comes from.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
They use it as a pageant and they downplay their racism.
They include a couple of Jewish athletes on their team,
which is one of the demands of Avery. Brandage, head
of the America Olympic Committee. Brandage Brandish is an interesting dude. Brandage.
You can read more about Brandage in my book Robert
Did Behind the Bastards on Brandage. I don't think he
begins the nineteen thirties of the anti Semite, but after
(22:13):
the boycott campaign, which he calls a Jewish Communist conspiracy,
well yeah, he absolutely becomes an anti Semite, like he
grows closer to hit that when other because like his
idea is that politics shouldn't influence the games, which is
inherently a political choice when the games have been given
to fucking Adolf Hitler. Yeah, so the ninety thirty six
(22:35):
Olympics go ahead in Germany, lots of fascism, lots of
zieg Heiling, a real success for Hitler. Ninety thirty six
Olympics in Barcelona don't go ahead because the Spanish Civil War.
The Barcelona Olympics are like an alternative to the Berlin Olympics. Yeah.
At this time, also, it should be pointed out that
you got the Winter Olympics when you've got the Olympics.
(22:55):
So the Nazi had already had their garmentge part in
Kirschen Winter Olympics and had predicted to me that a
bunch of Nazi shit, right, which didn't stop anyone going
to the Summer Olympics. Sharan, do you know what won't
do a bunch of Nazi shit? What? James, it's the
products and services that support this show, Saran, I founder.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
It's easier instead of trying to come up with something
just to give you the question right now.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, damn foiled again way back. So yeah, these Olympics,
they're supposed to happen in Barcelona. They don't happen because
the Spanish Civil War starts at the same time, right,
(23:44):
Lots of these anti fascist athletes go on to participate
as fighters in the Spanish Civil War, about four hundred
of them. The popular Olympics are cool. The main reason
they're call is because I've written a book about them,
but other reasons include that they had like elite amateur
and then provincial races, so like you could just show
up and be like, yeah, man, I'm just going to
fucking check my hand the ring one hundred meters, let's
see how I do. And there would be a place
(24:06):
for you to compete, right, It wasn't about who was
a freak athlete. They were really interested in working class health.
So for that reason, they also had like these mass
relay events where you'd have like the fifty by twenty
five meters or the ten by fifty meters and you
couldn't have all runners. So the idea was that the
country that would win or the nation that would win.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
They competed as nations rather than states, So the exiled
Jews of Europe competed together for the obvious reason that like,
if you're a German Jew in nineteen thirty six, you
don't want to compete for fucking Germany, you know. So
even at the Populalympics they competed to Jewish workers sports associations.
And you have exiled and anti fascists from Germany and
(24:46):
Italy competing under their own banners. And you have Glicia,
Catalonia Scady, the Basque country competing as their annual nations, right,
and the same with the colonized people of North Africa.
And you have the women students of the world with
their own old team, which is nice. They also made
a big deal of including women, allowing women to do
sports that men do at the time. In the nineteen
(25:07):
thirty six women can run more than two hundred meters. Well,
but they actually could, as it turns out, Yeah, yeah, right,
they just weren't allowed to. Yeah, shocking discovery. They didn't
just evolve that capacity since thirty six. But these Olympics
don't go ahead beause the Spanish Civil War starts. Lots
of the anti fascist athletes who came state to fight, right,
(25:29):
including people I've written about in my book. We did
a whole cool people who did cool stuff about this.
So you can listen to more if you want to.
In Margaret's feed. I'm sure if you search popular Olympics
will be there. By the way you sometimes see it
translated as People's Olympics. I prefer popular because it's inherently
tied to the idea of a popular front right, which
is a policy of like united front between everyone from
(25:51):
the liberals to the communists to the anarchists against fascism.
Sometimes the anarchists don't participate in the popular front because
it is dominated by communists. Communists, in fact, love to
kill anarchists a lot more than they love to kill fascists,
and they use the popular front as cover for doing that,
as we see in Spain. But the anarchists did participate
in workers or popular sport in Barcelona at least to
(26:12):
an extent. So these games, so that said, they don't happen.
You can read about that my book, or you can
listen to Margaret's podcast about it. But I want to
talk about what the Olympics represent today, the modern Olympics. Right,
they have become as they always were, Right, they continue
to be a spectacle that they've been since thirty two,
and they continue to be a vehicle for capitalism as
(26:34):
they have been forever. Right, if we look at their
recent Olympic games, right, we look at London, we look
at Rio. I think Rio is a really great example, right,
the Olympics that they were able to clear areas of
the city using the potential Olympics. Right, displace favela communities,
displace poor and excluded and marginalized people, and take advantage
(26:57):
of incredibly underpaid labor. And there's probably it's a bit
rarer now, but for like most of the last eight years,
you've met Haitian folks in Tijuana mostly right, the US
has been especially racist and bigoted towards Haitians, and you can.
I wrote a piece for NBC about Bidens hypocracy on
Haitian immigration. But there were people who had worked on
(27:21):
the Olympic Stadium in Brazil, right, So they've gone from Haiti,
like after the earthquake or the economic and political issues,
so they've had ever since the earthquake, they've gone to Brazil.
And then they've worked in Brazil building the stadia, getting
paid fuck all and doing dangerous work. And then eventually
I've been able to find work that visas had run
out or that they'd otherwise chosen to come north to
(27:41):
the United States, and they often end up not being
able to They end up stuck in Tijuana or living
in Tijuana and finding work there. So often Olympics take
advantage of migrant labor. They are used as a means
of like reshaping the city in to like sculpting it
(28:02):
under capitalism. Yea right, pushing folks out of their neighborhoods.
They don't do the Olympics in bougie neighborhoods. They use
it as an excuse to gentrify a neighborhood, to remove
in trench working class communities. Yeah, like it's really sad.
It's when I read so much of the stuff about,
like specifically the Barcelona Olympic Games, Like we see these
(28:23):
people who are unquestionably good people, right, Like they genuinely
believe that through what they see is the ideal of
the Olympics, they can liberate women. They the Barcelona organizers
so like, they didn't have much money, right, they were
putting people up. And I found these forms in the archives.
They'd go around people's houses and be like, hey, do
you have a spare bedroom? And in the form you
(28:44):
can tick I have one, two, three spare bedrooms. I
can serve breakfast. I can't serve breakfast. And that's how
they would bill at the athletes, right. The athletes didn't
have an Olympic village. They had a hotel and then
any surp plus you would just stay with a local person.
It was a very different vision of what the Olympics
could have been, right, And they believed in the youth
of the world coming together. They really thought that at
the popul Olympics they could show the strength of anti fascism,
(29:06):
that anti fishing wasn't just a talking point, that it
was that it was young and it was healthy and like,
most importantly that they could fucking kill you, right like
that that sport all Well again double or Well quote
episode or Well called sport War without the shooting, and
I think he's spot on. Actually it is good. He's
got some bangers sharene you do say that. Yeah, he's
(29:30):
a word guy, George or Well. People do love to
misquote George your Well, but I like to quote him correctly.
You know you can. You can always when someone miss
quote George your Well, you can always just quote tweet
them with the I had joined the militia to kill
a fascist, right or the other absolute banger from all Well.
I have no particular love for the idealized worker as
he exists in the mind of the bourgeois communists. But
(29:51):
when I see a real flesh and bug worker in
conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I don't have
to ask myself which side them on. Ooh it's a banger.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
That's that's poetry.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah it is. It's great. Like it's something that when
I get around, will have tattooed on my body. Maybe,
like maybe when I have to cross fewer borders. It's
probably not something you want to be showing off to
the intelligence agencies of various countries. Yeah, it's really sad
to see this thing. And I think it does have potential.
I think it's a potential. What I want to end
(30:23):
on is, like, I think we can recover that potential,
Like we can take the Olympics away from the people
who did nineteen oh four and the people who did
nineteen thirty six, and like it doesn't mean to have
to use that obviously that the IOC is not fucking
coming with us, Right, I've been to the IOC, very
nice building, but like this is the you know, the
(30:44):
the interests of finance, capital and the interesting iOS here
inherently tied.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Coca Coat, every massive corporation in the world is a
massive spot for the Olympics, Right, And it's also been
a platform for some really good things that we think about.
Tommy Smith and John Carlos right at the ninety sixty
eight Olympics giving the raise fist salute on the podium.
I'm sure you've seen it. There's a statue of them,
several statues of them, I think, actually, but yeah, very
(31:10):
famous Olympic moment. The whole ninety sixty year Olympics actually
kind of gave a platform for protest, and Parisians have
been protesting against this Olympics, and Angelino's are already protesting
against what it's going to happen in twenty eight. You
can look up no Olympics LA for those folks, and
I think that that is something that's worth supporting. I
don't think that the idea is inherently bad, the idea
(31:30):
of coming together to play and like sports are where
we decide who's on our team and who's not on
our team, right, And what the Popula Olympics did was
said working people are all on the same team, and
they've played that out right. The day the games were
supposed to start, some of those athletes were in the
streets killing fascists and they weren't. Right that day that
minitary coup failed in Barcelona, a lot of them left
(31:51):
really feeling like they got something out of the games
that they couldn't have got. All that they came to play,
and then they saw like what they were playing for
acted out. And I think there's still something really powerful
in that, but we can only get there by acknowledging
how fucked up the Olympics have always been. I see
this like liberal narratives that the Librics, the Olympics are
(32:12):
once great and about sportsmanship and now they're about capitalism.
No fuck that, Like they have always been inherently about capitalism.
They have been inherently about colonialism, about eugenics. Right, the
medal table. We don't do the medal table for shits
and giggles. The medal table is there to prove like
the superiority of one race. Like that is why Hitler
is obsessed with the medal table. Right, He's extremely worried
(32:36):
that like either the black folks in the United States
or like god forbid, the Japanese do well in the Olympics.
It's like and then the Olympics trying to sort of
posit itself as inherently pro human rights, I think is
very problematic when we look at like how Olympics Stadia
get constructed, by whom they get constructed, and where they
get constructed, yeah, the effect and yeah, and who who
(33:00):
they're for and who who they take from. So I know,
I'm not saying don't watch the Olympics. Like when I
was a kid, the Olympics were like fucking formative in
me wanting to do sport, and when I was an
athlete the Olympics beginning, I wanted to do. I have
friends who are going to be at the Olympics, and like,
I guess I wish them the best, but still a
bad thing. And like I certainly don't blame folks who
(33:23):
come from like resource poor settings for taking that chance.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Of course not, but it is like, yeah, the way
it currently is and the way it's always been is
just doesn't necessarily make the world a better place. But
maybe there's a different timeline where I don't know, Barcelona's
idealism of an Olympics is like true.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, I know, I think we can bring it back.
I think like antio fascism is having a moment that
it probably hasn't had them to nineteen true the last
four years. We can get together and we can have
our own institutions too, Like I don't think we should
abandon sport to the chuds, just of course the chance
of like sport, Like yeah, there's a way, but.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
I also don't want anyone to use it as a
way to like not sports wash, but like kind of
focus on something that is not as relevant as the
bigger picture. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Like yeah, totally. Like, yeah, it shouldn't be used to distract.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Exactly, that's what that's the short wordsode.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, and like it has been like global sports are
increasingly going to like Petro states in the Middle East. Yeah, right, like,
and that is a problem. I think if you're an athlete,
I would encourage you to really consider what your role
is and some of my friends listen who are still
like professional athletes, and just think about what you can do.
And like, I will tell you that when you stop
getting paid to exercise, all of it seems very unimportant
(34:44):
and like you suddenly realize that in my case, but
there's important shit that you can do if you have
a chance to do it, and you should do it
if you get the chance. But yeah, I think hopefully,
you know, if people want to know more about the Populalympics,
I will fucking talk your eer of me an email. Yeah,
(35:05):
my book. I think it might be on libcom now
as well. I think you can. I think it's been pirated,
which is good to see. You can get it from
your library. I'd love you to get it from a
library because it's for someone else libraries. Yeah, I do
love a library. Yeah, we should do a library episode.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
I was trying to get the library San Diego Library
Association on because we've been defunding the libraries here in
San Diego to have more cops. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Yeah, no, I love the libraries are just this I
don't know, pure little place. We got to do some
library episodes. Yeah, we'll do, and we we'll get them back.
We'll get the library. So if you work in a
library and the police are taking away the money you
used to read books to little children, you can you
can DM me on dot com. Yeah, and we will
(35:46):
fight the good fight for you.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yeah. All right, that's uh, that's that's been the Olympics. No,
go go forth, do an little decathalon. Here's a fin
Olympic fact for you, a fun fun facts end the episode.
A general pattern, right. American war guy entered the pentathlon
at the Olympics and used such a large pistol that
they were unable to determine the size of his grouping
(36:11):
of shots on the target because he just viscerated the
whole target his hand cannon. Yeah. So, embody that the
pentathlon a sport that was designed to train offices. Right,
you have to run, swim, ride a horse, sword, find
and shoot. Yeah, so make a better pentathlon, make make
our anti fascist to cathalon. Yeah, send us your You
(36:32):
can tag us with your your decathlon ideas on on
x dot com. We both use at I write Okay,
bizarrely we have the same the same Twitter handle. Yeah,
send us your sporting ideas. Enjoy your little Olympic viewing.
Now that I've ruined it all for you.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
I guess yeah, no, I mean it's it's good to
know context. But yeah, until next time, Until the next
time you and dreams talk about something either terrible or fun.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Or somewhere in between. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll yeah, we'll
be back seeing you with something else. You'll never know
what these are always fucking just these must just come
out of left field for people, like, what the fuck
are they talking about today?
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Well, I guess I'll ever know until you listen.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
That's listen every day. Bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening,
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi, Scheren, Hi James, I was alarming. Yeah, I went
into like twenty tens YouTube boys.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Well, yeah, Hi James is excited today I am excited.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm always excited to make a podcast, you know, I
love to cast a pod, but today I am especially
especially with an X like Espresso, the coffee drink. I
am especially excited to talk to you, Serene, because we
are talking about a subject which I have wasted far
too much of my life reading and writing about. What
are we talking about, Sharen sports? Sports? Olympics. Yeah, sports,
(00:46):
I'm going to explain to Sharen sports why they're fun.
I did too many of them. Okay, we're talking about
the Olympics, the Olympic Games specifically. I guess they're happening
in Paris this year. They may be happening in Paris
by the time you listen to this. But I'm want
to talk a little bit about the history of the
Olympics because I wrote a book about it, and so
I get to drawing on about it for half an
(01:07):
hour and you have to listen to me. Where you
drive your cars to work?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Cool?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
The mon Olympic Games is it draws links to ancient Greece, right,
And it does that because at the time that the
modern Olympic Games in the late nineteenth century were being
created by a guy called Baron Pierre de Kuberta, the
aristocracy of Europe were obsessed with drawing links to the
classical period.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
This is the same time when we see all those
like neoclassical buildings going up, like people were trying to
draw links between themselves and the ancient Greeks and to
sort of posit themselves as the new Greco Roman font
of civilization.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
And hey, I took our history and I minor to that,
so I know stuff too.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Okay, Yeah, because I did not take our history. Okay,
I'm sure you know more all kinds of stuff about
like impressionists and shared own understand So if we're looking
at like to understand the Olympics, we have to understand sport, right,
And to understand sport, we have to understand play.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So I was right about sports.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
You don't have to yeah, no, no, you agree, you're
right on it. Yeah, but first we do play, right.
So if we're looking at like kind of the classic
text on this, it's a book called Homo Ludins. But
we probably don't need to read that. It's not a banger.
We very few academic books are bangers. I like to
think mine's in a sort of semi banger category. But yeah,
(02:30):
it's also overpriced and you shouldn't buy it. Just go
to your library and get it for free. Play is
it's pretty obvious what play is. But it's the difference
between play and sport is that sport is bounded. It
happens in a certain place, within a certain set of rules.
Play doesn't. So the archetypal kind of example of transitioning
from play to sport would be folk football in Britain.
(02:51):
So back in the day, in the place where I
come from, for holidays, the Saints Days and other days
when people didn't work, they would have a game of
football which consisted of a ball inflated pigs bladder or
a similar similar device, and you have to get it
from one village into the other village. And those are
about all the rules, right. Sometimes they had specific rules
(03:13):
against stabbing. There have been like an outbreak of stabbing incidents,
but other than that, it was pretty much you do
what the fuck you wanted, right, You want to go
on a five mile detour and come around, people come
in the back way, No problem. You're on a form
of phalanx of all your mates and just kind of
go through like a wedge style. Not a problem at all.
(03:33):
You know you want to start hitting people with sticks, Yeah,
not an issue. It was very loose, right, and every
village or pair of villages that would play had their
own kind of understanding of the rules. But it wasn't
a codified set of rules. They existed across all incidences
of folk football. And then we go from there to
association football. Right, that's where soccer comes from. Right, as
(03:55):
soccer soccer, association becomes assoc us sock becomes our soccer,
that becomes soccer.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Does that makes sense kind Yeah, I'm going to say yes.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It's a very like nineteenth century posh British effect that
takes the word association football and comes out with soccer.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's so funny.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, that's that's where it comes from. So association football
codifires the rules. Right, there's a pitch that pitch its
the same size as a goal. The goal is the
same size. You can't pick it up now, and from
that comes rugby football, right, So rugby football is type
where you pick up the ball. There's a kind of
founding myth for rugby football that this guy called William
(04:35):
ware bellis with a glorious disregard for the rules. Quote,
picked up the ball and ran with it. It's a
bit weird that, like they've created a founding myth for
dude who effectively just like sucked at football, so he
picked it up and ran with it. Like, it doesn't
seem like he deserves a literal statue that he has. Yeah,
and that happened at Rugby School, right, which was one
(04:57):
of these English boarding schools that existed to prepare young
men to be officers and administrators in the British Empire.
And that is really what's the codification of sport as
far as we can sort of create, like a reason
for it is to prepare young men and just men
to be administrators in the British Empire. Right, it's supposed
(05:19):
to make them physically strong. It's supposed to make them
obey the rules and learn to do what they're told
even in stressful situations. Right, it's part of an idea
called muscular Christianity. And like, as far as we can
attribute this whole combination of things to one person. It
would be Thomas Arnold, right, Thomas Arnold being the headmaster
at Rugby School, and he develops his idea of educating
(05:41):
young Christian men and doing so using sport as well
as academia and sports very quickly develop a set of
rules around amateurism. Amateurism like sometimes we just use amateur
now to me not very good, but at the time
it's specifically meant not paid to do the sport. And
so yeah, this is the early Olympics. Actually, the Olympics
(06:02):
still relatively recently have an amateurism rule, right that people
can't participate if they are paid to do the sport.
They have exemptions for fencing coaches, which I think tells
you about everything you need to know that this isn't
This isn't there for any like purity reason. It's there
to serve as a class barrier, right, And we see
(06:23):
it used as a class barrier first of all in football, right,
Like that's why we have rugby league and rugby union
because the rugby league people tended to be working people
and they needed to be paid. It's the rugby league
allowed for professionalism, Rugby union did not, and those tended
to be wealthier people, right, but it's used at the
Olympics extensively to police class. Like probably the most prominent
(06:45):
example would be Jim Thorpe. You familiar with Jim Thorpe.
Jim Thorpe's the cool guy. Actually, I got to read
some of his correspondents. He actually wrote a history of
the Olympic Games, which is very sad when you consider
that Jim Thorpe himself he's a member of the Sacond
Fox Nation, right, so he's indigenous to North America. He
won a medal for the United States in the nineteen
(07:06):
twelve Summer Olympics. Who went to gold medals actually won
in pentathlon and won decathlon. So like decathletes are kind
of like the uber athletes, right, Like you're doing ten
ten different sports that you have to just be good
at exercising. And Jim thoughte was good at exercising. He
also played collegiate and professional football, professional baseball, and professional basketball. See,
(07:26):
he's an all around sport to dad. Unfortunately, he lost
his Olympic title because he had been paid at some
point for playing baseball, even though he didn't do baseball
in the Olympics. That's a fucked yeah, It's very clearly
used as a way to class and race police the games. Right,
(07:47):
And I think this gets to a point about what
the Olympics are. So the early Olympics tend to coincide
with what are called World's fairs. Familiar with World's Fairs, Shreen? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
people sort of get together have these big exhibitions and
they show off there, you know if you really got
yeah whatever, Yeah, look what I stole from this country
(08:08):
that I have colonized and under force extracted these the
following things. If you're in Britain, like the most famous
sort of World's Fair site would be Crystal Palace, right,
Crystal Palace was built, burned down, but it was built
for the World's Fair. If you're in San Diego, Balboa Park, right,
was built fourteen Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Feel like I knew that somewhere in my head.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, when you go to Balboa Park, little niche San
Diego diversion for the millions of you are not in
San Diego, you can just tune out for ten seconds.
Those are little cottages like the International Cottages and the
Palestine House and yeah, Palestine House school that they got
recognition in San Diego at least those are from the
World's Fair. Each country would have a little exhibition in
(08:48):
their house right and all down the Prado. So that's
actually has zoos started as well. Someone in their exhibition
had lions and then fucking left them when they left
and they were like, uh, I guess we start a zoo.
Got a couple of lines on our hands. Yeah, incredible,
incredible vibes. So the Olympics happen at the same time
(09:09):
as world for it's for a long time, and that
is because the Olympics are essentially a gathering of transnational bourgeois.
He that's not a phrase I came up with myself.
It's from my friend David Goldblatt, who's written a really
excellent history of the Olympics that's called The Games. And if
you're going to read one book about the Olympics, it
should be David's book. He's a lovely guy. I'm sure
he's not listening hello, David. If you are, I would
(09:32):
recommend his book because I think his analysis is great. Right,
that what these become is a place where the sort
of the people who make money from finance capital all
around the world can gather together and share the little
ideas and play their little games. And we see that,
for instance, in the nineteen oh four s In Lewis
Olympics Saint Louis. In addition to like the World's Fair,
they have the Olympics and they have something called the
(09:53):
Anthropological Days. Have you heard about this? Sharing? Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Will you?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
No? It's one of the more funck they happening in St. Louis,
which I think is saying a lot. They essentially kidnapped
people from around their various imperial possessions, brought them to
Saint Louis, which in itself is a crime, and then
forced them to compete in events that they didn't fully
explain to them what the fuck yeah like, and then
(10:19):
concluded from this that like white people were better.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
It's like some gladiator shit that's like, yeah, yes, what
are you doing? That's too modern, that's too hard.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
This is nineteen oh four, yeah, not so long ago. Yeah,
very yeah. And this kind of exhibits what the world's
fairs were and to agree to a degree like what
the Olympiads became, which was like a way for the
colonizing powers to get together, right right, Ian, do you
know what will not kidnap you from your home country
(10:51):
and fly you to Saint Louis and then force you
to compete in games that you don't understand.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Gold.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, you probably right. Well, indirectly it will, you know,
because as a sort of source of wealth.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah right, okay, whatever, I was trying to make a
trying to think of something that I might hear next.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, it's it's properly gold. You're right way back, and
we hope you have bought your gold, the only the
only metal that you can make an Olympic medal out of. Incidentally,
(11:31):
really I will over to gold. Oh really, you turn green?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I get like ear like it's it's not good for
my skin. Well, I'll get like infections, but like I'll
get like an exema kind of reaction.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Oh well, what do you u? Did you have an
alternative jewelry?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I don't wear a lot of jewelry. I wear rings
the most, but I can't wear ear rings anymore. They're
two My ears are too sensitive. I usually like stick
with silver if I have to. But yeah, I don't know, not.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Meant to be rich, no shame or maybe maybe platinum
is what's Oh yeah, platinum? Yeah, okay, listeners sen Cherine
Platinum do hikis, well, yeah to where Yeah gold they're
the Olympic metals are not solid gold, they're just gold coated.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah it's a little cheap. Yeah yeah, right, like you
spend your whole life training something and then they did, yeah, yeah,
you drop it and it's just plastic in the middle.
I guess they have more value sing pick medals than
they do as lumps of gold. Anyway, you can sell them,
and people have sold them online because, as it turns out,
like spending your entire youth exercising and then getting to
(12:45):
a point where you're too injured or old to compete,
it's sometimes not great for your future career prospects. And
then I've unfortunately seen lots of friends take that path.
And so I want to talk about like the Olympics
in the twenty century, and specifically I want to talk
about the Olympics in the nineteen thirties. Right, so when
the Olympics. By the time we come to the nineteen thirties,
(13:07):
the Olympics have really become like they're an American thing.
The Los Angeles Olympics gives us a lot of the
modern Olympics and the rest of the mother Olympics we
get from friends of the podcast Adolf Hitler and his
Nazi Party. Of course, yeah, I knew that you were
expecting them. We never, never don't expect Hitler. So ninety
thirty two is great. Like nineteen thirty two Olympic village.
(13:30):
They build this Olympic village. They haven't patrolled by cowboys,
just like Hollywood cosplay dudes on horses cowboying around. It's
the first. It's very weird. It's the first Olympic village,
and it's it becomes a real estate investment, right like
as soon as the Olympics are done, there in classic
Los Angeles fashion, flipping the houses for more than they
(13:51):
were paid. So it also creates this idea of like
the Olympics as a mass spectacle in nineteen thirty two
is sometimes called the Hollywood Olympics, right, and it really
changes the game from rich people getting together for rich
people to a spectator event and a mass spectator event.
In nineteen thirty one, Spain's Dicta Blander collapses. Dicta Blander
(14:14):
is like a soft dictatorship as opposed to Dictadora as
a hard dictatorship. Right, so, and Spain becomes a Republic
nineteen thirty one. It's also the time when the International
Olympic Committee is meeting in Barcelona, and for geographically challenged listeners, Barcelona,
it's in Catalonia, but Catalonia is within Spain at this time,
(14:35):
so the IOC is almost entirely comprised of very rich people,
and many of them are like barons, counts, princes other
people who like their job is being someone's kid, right,
and they just do things like being on the IOC
to occupy them what they spend their parents' money. So
(14:55):
they're in Spain at the time when Spain has just
deposed a monarch and it has this revolutionary republic, right,
the anarchists are in the street. It's about to begin
a campaign of two years of removing the church from
its official position, like anti clericalism and of land reform.
These are things which rich people do not like. And
(15:18):
so the vote happens in Barcelona about where to hold
the next Olympics, and the two leading candidates are Berlin
and Barcelona. After Barcelona, I think a little weird happens.
The IOC members all go home and not everyone has
come to Barcelona, right, because because of the change in
the situation and instead of being like, okay, well we
(15:41):
had a vote in Barcelona one, the IOC makes an
interesting and relatively unique decision to have another vote by telegram,
and in the telegram vote, they instead of going for
the unstable Spanish Second Republic, up for a more stable
and liberal democracy, which is of course Yamar Germany. Oh
(16:03):
of course, yeah, good choice by their better rich folks.
They really helped us out there, and it's very interesting,
like I've spent a lot of time with these telegrams,
like the actual paper telegrams in the International Olympic Committee
archive in Lausanne, trying to ascertain did they just like
(16:23):
did the vote happen? And then they were like no, fuck,
we can't go to Barcelona, like we got to redo,
We've got to work out a way to jig this,
like we can't go to this republican place, or that
they claimed that there weren't enough votes, right, that they
didn't have like a quorum. But I've looked at previous
and subsequent votes and there are there are plenty of
other votes that have fewer participants, and it was relatively
(16:44):
normal at this time for not everyone to show up
at a meeting right, because it's nineteen thirty one, Like,
traveling is hard, and so I can't categorically say what's happened.
But maybe that's what I suspect has happened. I can't
really see any way I could find out now, And
so went to every member of the International Olympic Committee
at the time and looked in their personal archive. But
(17:05):
either way, they decided to give the Olympics to this
little place called firemar Germany. In between ninety thirty one
and nineteen thirty six. History fans will know that the
Nazis came to parent Germany. Nazis not very nice people
and no bad Many people are saying, yeah, many people
are saying.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
The mosquitoes of the world not sorry, we just recorded
the Mosquito episode.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yes, yeah, in any ways, like the mosquito could be eradicated,
maybe wouldn't be bad. Yeah, my favorite George Orwell line,
one of my favorite joints or world lines. I joined
the militia to kill a fascist because if all of
us did so, then there wouldn't be any of them left.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, yeah, very prescient. So the Olympics, then the Nazis
going to power. First they want to do away with it.
Right then when they're like, fuck this, this is some
bougie shit, went on into it. We don't want to
see other people, we don't care about other nations with arians.
And then over time the administrators of the Olympics, including
(18:07):
guy called Carl DM who would be classified, according to
the Nazis owned sort of standards as a Jewish person,
They persuade the Nazis that having the Olympics will be
good for them. It will let them exhibit their shit
on a world scale. And they are not wrong. Right,
The Olympics turned into a massive boon for Nazi Germany.
We don't have enough time in this short episode to
(18:29):
explain the whole boycott movement. There was a substantial boycott movement,
including in the United States. The United States very nearly
boycotted the Berlin Olympics, but in the end it ended
up not doing so. You had opposition from really interesting groups.
Actually had opposition obviously from Jewish groups, right, because Nazis.
You have opposition from elements of an NAACP, but not
(18:51):
from other elements because they have this very reasonable objection.
They're like, well, America is also racist as fuck. Actually,
like we also like this is a time all week
exclude black folks from a lot of yeah not yeah,
And so you have black folks boycotting, and you have
black folks being like, now fuck it, like we'll take
the chance, you know. And then you have the opposition
(19:12):
from an interesting group like the liberal Catholics, right, because
the Nazis had their own ideas on religion, and so
a lot of Catholics were anti Nazi at that point,
and including Jeremiah Mahony, who was president of the Amateur
Athletic Union at the time, who was kind of leading
the boycott movement. The United States decides not to boycott,
lots of other places in the world decide that they
are going to boycott, right, and lots of other people
(19:35):
around the world. And that's where Barcelona. They had a
conference in Paris. Actually they're the international conference sort of
respect of the Olympic ideal, and that is the conference
out of which the bars that remember Barcelona applied in
thirty one, right, so they have all their shit together.
They actually have the site of a former World's Fair
and that's what they're going to use. So the Catalans
(19:56):
come to this conference in April of thirty six, and
are like, hey, we can have another Olympics, which isn't shit,
And they go ahead and have their Olympics and shit,
now first happened the Nazi Olympics, Right. The Nazi Olympics
give us so much of what we consider to be
the Olympic tradition today. The torch relay, you know, the
(20:18):
torch relay. They go to Olympia and bring the flame. Yeah,
that's that's a Nazi thing. Actually, it comes from the Nazis.
The idea of drawing a link from ancient Greece to
Berlin was a Nazi idea.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Why don't we still do it?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, that's a good question, Sharen, isn't it the good question?
As we entered the Paris Olympics, one thing they have
done away was is the Olympic salute because it bears
an unfortunate resemblance to the Nazis. They also start in no,
the Olympics salute predates it. So you have these interesting
mark people march like were they the parade at the
(20:51):
opening ceremony of the Olympics, right, and lots of these
The pageantry of the opening ceremony also comes from the Nazis,
by the way, and We got people walking in and
the come in and they're doing a salute, and people like,
is that the Nazi salute they're doing? It's at the
Olympic salute. I'm pretty sure it's the Olympic salute. I'm
pretty sure.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
If it's too close, I think it's bad. Yeah, I
think getting confused for something else. I think I think
you should stop.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah. I just tried to not do things that little
like gunsy kilink like that is how I live my life.
You have other nations who don't do it, right. You
have the Americans. The Americans traditionally in the they're supposed
to dip their flag. The Americans have never dipped their
flag in opening ceremonies. So sometimes you'll see this written
as like yeah, the Americans said, fuck, hey, they didn't.
(21:36):
They just did what they'd always done, which was to
not dip their flag, and that that Olympiad is a
great success for Hitler, right, Like this is where a
lot of this like, oh, but yeah, he's very efficient.
He makes a trains run on time. Kind of shit
comes from.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
They use it as a pageant and they downplay their racism.
They include a couple of Jewish athletes on their team,
which is one of the demands of Avery. Brandage, head
of the America Olympic Committee. Brandage Brandish is an interesting dude. Brandage.
You can read more about Brandage in my book Robert
Did Behind the Bastards on Brandage. I don't think he
begins the nineteen thirties of the anti Semite, but after
(22:13):
the boycott campaign, which he calls a Jewish Communist conspiracy,
well yeah, he absolutely becomes an anti Semite, like he
grows closer to hit that when other because like his
idea is that politics shouldn't influence the games, which is
inherently a political choice when the games have been given
to fucking Adolf Hitler. Yeah, so the ninety thirty six
(22:35):
Olympics go ahead in Germany, lots of fascism, lots of
zieg Heiling, a real success for Hitler. Ninety thirty six
Olympics in Barcelona don't go ahead because the Spanish Civil War.
The Barcelona Olympics are like an alternative to the Berlin Olympics. Yeah.
At this time, also, it should be pointed out that
you got the Winter Olympics when you've got the Olympics.
(22:55):
So the Nazi had already had their garmentge part in
Kirschen Winter Olympics and had predicted to me that a
bunch of Nazi shit, right, which didn't stop anyone going
to the Summer Olympics. Sharan, do you know what won't
do a bunch of Nazi shit? What? James, it's the
products and services that support this show, Saran, I founder.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
It's easier instead of trying to come up with something
just to give you the question right now.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, damn foiled again way back. So yeah, these Olympics,
they're supposed to happen in Barcelona. They don't happen because
the Spanish Civil War starts at the same time, right,
(23:44):
Lots of these anti fascist athletes go on to participate
as fighters in the Spanish Civil War, about four hundred
of them. The popular Olympics are cool. The main reason
they're call is because I've written a book about them,
but other reasons include that they had like elite amateur
and then provincial races, so like you could just show
up and be like, yeah, man, I'm just going to
fucking check my hand the ring one hundred meters, let's
see how I do. And there would be a place
(24:06):
for you to compete, right, It wasn't about who was
a freak athlete. They were really interested in working class health.
So for that reason, they also had like these mass
relay events where you'd have like the fifty by twenty
five meters or the ten by fifty meters and you
couldn't have all runners. So the idea was that the
country that would win or the nation that would win.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
They competed as nations rather than states, So the exiled
Jews of Europe competed together for the obvious reason that like,
if you're a German Jew in nineteen thirty six, you
don't want to compete for fucking Germany, you know. So
even at the Populalympics they competed to Jewish workers sports associations.
And you have exiled and anti fascists from Germany and
(24:46):
Italy competing under their own banners. And you have Glicia,
Catalonia Scady, the Basque country competing as their annual nations, right,
and the same with the colonized people of North Africa.
And you have the women students of the world with
their own old team, which is nice. They also made
a big deal of including women, allowing women to do
sports that men do at the time. In the nineteen
(25:07):
thirty six women can run more than two hundred meters. Well,
but they actually could, as it turns out, Yeah, yeah, right,
they just weren't allowed to. Yeah, shocking discovery. They didn't
just evolve that capacity since thirty six. But these Olympics
don't go ahead beause the Spanish Civil War starts. Lots
of the anti fascist athletes who came state to fight, right,
(25:29):
including people I've written about in my book. We did
a whole cool people who did cool stuff about this.
So you can listen to more if you want to.
In Margaret's feed. I'm sure if you search popular Olympics
will be there. By the way you sometimes see it
translated as People's Olympics. I prefer popular because it's inherently
tied to the idea of a popular front right, which
is a policy of like united front between everyone from
(25:51):
the liberals to the communists to the anarchists against fascism.
Sometimes the anarchists don't participate in the popular front because
it is dominated by communists. Communists, in fact, love to
kill anarchists a lot more than they love to kill fascists,
and they use the popular front as cover for doing that,
as we see in Spain. But the anarchists did participate
in workers or popular sport in Barcelona at least to
(26:12):
an extent. So these games, so that said, they don't happen.
You can read about that my book, or you can
listen to Margaret's podcast about it. But I want to
talk about what the Olympics represent today, the modern Olympics. Right,
they have become as they always were, Right, they continue
to be a spectacle that they've been since thirty two,
and they continue to be a vehicle for capitalism as
(26:34):
they have been forever. Right, if we look at their
recent Olympic games, right, we look at London, we look
at Rio. I think Rio is a really great example, right,
the Olympics that they were able to clear areas of
the city using the potential Olympics. Right, displace favela communities,
displace poor and excluded and marginalized people, and take advantage
(26:57):
of incredibly underpaid labor. And there's probably it's a bit
rarer now, but for like most of the last eight years,
you've met Haitian folks in Tijuana mostly right, the US
has been especially racist and bigoted towards Haitians, and you can.
I wrote a piece for NBC about Bidens hypocracy on
Haitian immigration. But there were people who had worked on
(27:21):
the Olympic Stadium in Brazil, right, So they've gone from Haiti,
like after the earthquake or the economic and political issues,
so they've had ever since the earthquake, they've gone to Brazil.
And then they've worked in Brazil building the stadia, getting
paid fuck all and doing dangerous work. And then eventually
I've been able to find work that visas had run
out or that they'd otherwise chosen to come north to
(27:41):
the United States, and they often end up not being
able to They end up stuck in Tijuana or living
in Tijuana and finding work there. So often Olympics take
advantage of migrant labor. They are used as a means
of like reshaping the city in to like sculpting it
(28:02):
under capitalism. Yea right, pushing folks out of their neighborhoods.
They don't do the Olympics in bougie neighborhoods. They use
it as an excuse to gentrify a neighborhood, to remove
in trench working class communities. Yeah, like it's really sad.
It's when I read so much of the stuff about,
like specifically the Barcelona Olympic Games, Like we see these
(28:23):
people who are unquestionably good people, right, Like they genuinely
believe that through what they see is the ideal of
the Olympics, they can liberate women. They the Barcelona organizers
so like, they didn't have much money, right, they were
putting people up. And I found these forms in the archives.
They'd go around people's houses and be like, hey, do
you have a spare bedroom? And in the form you
(28:44):
can tick I have one, two, three spare bedrooms. I
can serve breakfast. I can't serve breakfast. And that's how
they would bill at the athletes, right. The athletes didn't
have an Olympic village. They had a hotel and then
any surp plus you would just stay with a local person.
It was a very different vision of what the Olympics
could have been, right, And they believed in the youth
of the world coming together. They really thought that at
the popul Olympics they could show the strength of anti fascism,
(29:06):
that anti fishing wasn't just a talking point, that it
was that it was young and it was healthy and like,
most importantly that they could fucking kill you, right like
that that sport all Well again double or Well quote
episode or Well called sport War without the shooting, and
I think he's spot on. Actually it is good. He's
got some bangers sharene you do say that. Yeah, he's
(29:30):
a word guy, George or Well. People do love to
misquote George your Well, but I like to quote him correctly.
You know you can. You can always when someone miss
quote George your Well, you can always just quote tweet
them with the I had joined the militia to kill
a fascist, right or the other absolute banger from all Well.
I have no particular love for the idealized worker as
he exists in the mind of the bourgeois communists. But
(29:51):
when I see a real flesh and bug worker in
conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I don't have
to ask myself which side them on. Ooh it's a banger.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
That's that's poetry.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah it is. It's great. Like it's something that when
I get around, will have tattooed on my body. Maybe,
like maybe when I have to cross fewer borders. It's
probably not something you want to be showing off to
the intelligence agencies of various countries. Yeah, it's really sad
to see this thing. And I think it does have potential.
I think it's a potential. What I want to end
(30:23):
on is, like, I think we can recover that potential,
Like we can take the Olympics away from the people
who did nineteen oh four and the people who did
nineteen thirty six, and like it doesn't mean to have
to use that obviously that the IOC is not fucking
coming with us, Right, I've been to the IOC, very
nice building, but like this is the you know, the
(30:44):
the interests of finance, capital and the interesting iOS here
inherently tied.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Coca Coat, every massive corporation in the world is a
massive spot for the Olympics, Right, And it's also been
a platform for some really good things that we think about.
Tommy Smith and John Carlos right at the ninety sixty
eight Olympics giving the raise fist salute on the podium.
I'm sure you've seen it. There's a statue of them,
several statues of them, I think, actually, but yeah, very
(31:10):
famous Olympic moment. The whole ninety sixty year Olympics actually
kind of gave a platform for protest, and Parisians have
been protesting against this Olympics, and Angelino's are already protesting
against what it's going to happen in twenty eight. You
can look up no Olympics LA for those folks, and
I think that that is something that's worth supporting. I
don't think that the idea is inherently bad, the idea
(31:30):
of coming together to play and like sports are where
we decide who's on our team and who's not on
our team, right, And what the Popula Olympics did was
said working people are all on the same team, and
they've played that out right. The day the games were
supposed to start, some of those athletes were in the
streets killing fascists and they weren't. Right that day that
minitary coup failed in Barcelona, a lot of them left
(31:51):
really feeling like they got something out of the games
that they couldn't have got. All that they came to play,
and then they saw like what they were playing for
acted out. And I think there's still something really powerful
in that, but we can only get there by acknowledging
how fucked up the Olympics have always been. I see
this like liberal narratives that the Librics, the Olympics are
(32:12):
once great and about sportsmanship and now they're about capitalism.
No fuck that, Like they have always been inherently about capitalism.
They have been inherently about colonialism, about eugenics. Right, the
medal table. We don't do the medal table for shits
and giggles. The medal table is there to prove like
the superiority of one race. Like that is why Hitler
is obsessed with the medal table. Right, He's extremely worried
(32:36):
that like either the black folks in the United States
or like god forbid, the Japanese do well in the Olympics.
It's like and then the Olympics trying to sort of
posit itself as inherently pro human rights, I think is
very problematic when we look at like how Olympics Stadia
get constructed, by whom they get constructed, and where they
get constructed, yeah, the effect and yeah, and who who
(33:00):
they're for and who who they take from. So I know,
I'm not saying don't watch the Olympics. Like when I
was a kid, the Olympics were like fucking formative in
me wanting to do sport, and when I was an
athlete the Olympics beginning, I wanted to do. I have
friends who are going to be at the Olympics, and like,
I guess I wish them the best, but still a
bad thing. And like I certainly don't blame folks who
(33:23):
come from like resource poor settings for taking that chance.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Of course not, but it is like, yeah, the way
it currently is and the way it's always been is
just doesn't necessarily make the world a better place. But
maybe there's a different timeline where I don't know, Barcelona's
idealism of an Olympics is like true.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, I know, I think we can bring it back.
I think like antio fascism is having a moment that
it probably hasn't had them to nineteen true the last
four years. We can get together and we can have
our own institutions too, Like I don't think we should
abandon sport to the chuds, just of course the chance
of like sport, Like yeah, there's a way, but.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
I also don't want anyone to use it as a
way to like not sports wash, but like kind of
focus on something that is not as relevant as the
bigger picture. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Like yeah, totally. Like, yeah, it shouldn't be used to distract.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Exactly, that's what that's the short wordsode.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, and like it has been like global sports are
increasingly going to like Petro states in the Middle East. Yeah, right, like,
and that is a problem. I think if you're an athlete,
I would encourage you to really consider what your role
is and some of my friends listen who are still
like professional athletes, and just think about what you can do.
And like, I will tell you that when you stop
getting paid to exercise, all of it seems very unimportant
(34:44):
and like you suddenly realize that in my case, but
there's important shit that you can do if you have
a chance to do it, and you should do it
if you get the chance. But yeah, I think hopefully,
you know, if people want to know more about the Populalympics,
I will fucking talk your eer of me an email. Yeah,
(35:05):
my book. I think it might be on libcom now
as well. I think you can. I think it's been pirated,
which is good to see. You can get it from
your library. I'd love you to get it from a
library because it's for someone else libraries. Yeah, I do
love a library. Yeah, we should do a library episode.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
I was trying to get the library San Diego Library
Association on because we've been defunding the libraries here in
San Diego to have more cops. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Yeah, no, I love the libraries are just this I
don't know, pure little place. We got to do some
library episodes. Yeah, we'll do, and we we'll get them back.
We'll get the library. So if you work in a
library and the police are taking away the money you
used to read books to little children, you can you
can DM me on dot com. Yeah, and we will
(35:46):
fight the good fight for you.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yeah. All right, that's uh, that's that's been the Olympics. No,
go go forth, do an little decathalon. Here's a fin
Olympic fact for you, a fun fun facts end the episode.
A general pattern, right. American war guy entered the pentathlon
at the Olympics and used such a large pistol that
they were unable to determine the size of his grouping
(36:11):
of shots on the target because he just viscerated the
whole target his hand cannon. Yeah. So, embody that the
pentathlon a sport that was designed to train offices. Right,
you have to run, swim, ride a horse, sword, find
and shoot. Yeah, so make a better pentathlon, make make
our anti fascist to cathalon. Yeah, send us your You
(36:32):
can tag us with your your decathlon ideas on on
x dot com. We both use at I write Okay,
bizarrely we have the same the same Twitter handle. Yeah,
send us your sporting ideas. Enjoy your little Olympic viewing.
Now that I've ruined it all for you.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
I guess yeah, no, I mean it's it's good to
know context. But yeah, until next time, Until the next
time you and dreams talk about something either terrible or fun.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Or somewhere in between. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll yeah, we'll
be back seeing you with something else. You'll never know
what these are always fucking just these must just come
out of left field for people, like, what the fuck
are they talking about today?
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Well, I guess I'll ever know until you listen.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
That's listen every day. Bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for it could happen here. Updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening,
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