China carries torch for Olympic Games' new corporate ideal
Credit: Juan Mabromata, Getty Images
Is it too late for China to boycott the Olympics? While we are all agreed that the regime that does so little for its own people and those of Tibet and Darfur is no good, China at least seems to be heading in the right direction -- if you consider the right direction to be the massive exploitation of the workforce at knockdown prices in the name of global capitalism. And, let's face it, as we prepare for a Great Depression, who doesn't want what they've got?
But can the same be said of the Olympics? Can the organisation which will travel to Beijing next August for another fortnight when we will be asked to engage in the most improbable suspension of disbelief be said to be moving closer to the ideals of Baron de Coubertin?
I think we all know the answer to that. The Olympic ideal no longer exists and all that remains is a series of events which are either corrupted or inconsequential and, while they may prove rewarding for the handful of athletes who aren't too whacked out of it to remember how they got there, the presumption of guilt makes the whole thing meaningless.
You don't hear much talk anymore of keeping sport and politics separate, but even if you did, there would be no point in using it as a defence of the Olympics in China or, indeed, China in the Olympics. Because the Olympics is not about sport, it is about business. If there is an Olympic ideal anymore, it is the example they set for businessmen everywhere: this is how you do it. This is how you create a sustainable brand, an empty vessel built on sloganeering that serves no real purpose whatsoever.
That is why if China doesn't boycott the Olympics, they could at least make a convincing case that the Olympics should never be allowed go anywhere else. It is business and politics mixing perfectly. Breaking into China is the constant craving of businesses everywhere and now that the Olympics have cracked it, it would be a shame for them to pack up and go.
Of course, the athletes are the unfortunate ones in all of this, or that's what they like to think. It can safely be said that sportspeople and politics shouldn't mix if the reaction of athletes like Steve Redgrave and Denise Lewis to the hostility they encountered when they carried the Olympic flame through London is anything to go by.
It is not naiveté that stops athletes appreciating that there is likely to be some commotion if they carry an Olympic flame heading for Beijing through the streets of London marshalled by the Chinese secret police, but a wilful failure to face the facts. They crave the applause and have a lifelong desire to be feted. Instead, they were abused and they plaintively wonder why.
On the morning of the relay in London, it was reported that tens of thousands were expected to cheer the flame through the streets. Instead, it looked like Michelle Smith's homecoming and there seemed to be the same level of enthusiasm. The weather took care of the "tens of thousands", proving once again that there is nothing like a bit of snow to determine the authenticity of something the public is supposed to get excited about.
There were a few runners, some ingenious protestors and the Chinese secret police, dressed in blue tracksuits and acting with ultimate authority in a country which sometimes likes to refer to itself as the world's oldest democracy. Of course, China has its unpleasantness, but even their secret police, who were the last line of defence in front of the flame, are not the most ominous bunch to guard this faintly ludicrous symbol.
And what a symbol it is. The relay of the flame was invented for the Berlin games in 1936 in a scheme wholeheartedly endorsed by Goebbels. The man who came up with the idea of the relay of the Olympic flame by 3,422 Aryans from the Temple of Hera on Mount Olympus to Berlin was Dr Carl Diem.
Diem was, apparently, not a Nazi, but ended the war as a military commander exhorting the Hitler Youth, and any other youth, to die like Spartans rather than accept the inevitable defeat. Sounds like a Nazi to me.
And so from this glorious tradition, we are forced to watch the latest incarnation last week and told to believe that something pure is being transported, that the protesters had gone too far in making the case for Tibet in a manner which tainted the Olympics and this holy symbol, created by the Nazis.
Those scheduling conflicts that are stopping Gordon Brown and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from attending the opening ceremony sound like Peter Cook telling David Frost that he wouldn't be able to dine with the Duke and Duchess of York because "I see from my diary I'm watching television that night."
There is nothing left to watch but corporate ingenuity. Because that's what the Olympics stands for: the ability to sell a pup, to convince the public that they are witnessing something they want to see and sell every inch of surrounding space to eager corporates.
It stands for nothing except a model for a reductive type of global capitalism. Even China has something to sell. The Olympics has nothing but itself.
They should stick together, the Beijing government and the Olympians, locked together in an abusive, co-dependent relationship. Keep the games in China for all time; it's where they belong. Because when you consider the tyrants the Olympic movement has engaged with over the years, it's debatable if Beijing is even in a podium position.
dionfanning@gmail.com
