The cultural revolution is devouring sport
The cultural revolution is devouring sport
From football to NASCAR, every sport is now a platform for relentless propaganda
Sports is the new terrain on which the Culture Wars are fought out
Since the Olympics kicked off in Ancient Greece in 776 B.C., competitive sports have always been implicated in politics. However, it is one thing to attach sports to the rivalries and political disputes among Greek City states and quite another to be subjected to acrimonious disputes about what political cause should be advertised on the armbands of international footballers or whether men reinventing themselves as women should be able to participate in female sports.
In the UK, f or the best part of two weeks, the spat between football pundit Gary Lineker and the BBC dominated the news agenda. Despite Lineker’s refusal to apologise for potentially breaching BBC impartiality rules in his attack on the government’s immigration policy, the BBC bent over backwards to keep him employed. Supported by other celebrity football commentators, Lineker demonstrated that he possessed far more cultural power than his employer. And so, to much acclaim from the woke elites, he has been reinstated as host of Match of the Day.
The Lineker affair goes well beyond the BBC. It is ultimately a demonstration of power by Britain’s cultural oligarchy. Every cultural institution in the UK now subscribes to this elite’s ideology. And that goes for the institution of sport itself.
After all, the main protagonists on Team Lineker come from the world of football and sport more broadly. They acted as if the politicisation of sport is perfectly normal. And no wonder. Since the turn of the century, sport has become a key target for culture warriors and woke corporate elites. Their campaign has been particularly successful in the United States, but it is now also fast gaining influence over sports culture in the UK.
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Some excellent points -- I or someone else should write am essay on it.
There have been two attempts in the early 2000’s to instrumentalise sport. The first was to turn competitive sport into a vehicle for improving health. The second was to modify competitive sport so that it enhanced self esteem.
The health push led to an odd form of Cultural Quantitative easing. People would do loads of marathons, join gyms and raise money for charity. All good in themselves but they didn’t replace competition - sporting competition spontaneously produces meaning.
The self esteem invasion was far less successful and left no legacy. An exception would be the discussion about mental health in professional athletes. When it came to this ethos creeping into children’s sport it was short lived and created a very welcome reaction. Parents hated it. To this day the era of ‘everyone’s a winner’ is treated as an appalling and comic anachronism. Kids are pouring into competitive sport (Spiked article to come!). So are adults.
I hope this will act as solace for the Spurs fans. When you try and mess with competitive sport you lose.