Come on, confess: You have not enjoyed a story so much in years. A round-the-world marathon with all-in wrestling, kick boxing, rugby tackling and sanctimonious steeplechasing, staged free of charge in the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco by the International Olympics Committee (IOC) — and before the Beijing Games have even started. To add to the joy, nobody gets hurt except politicians.
On one side are British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the Chinese politburo, senior London 2012 figures, the IOC fat cats and 1,000 jogging policemen, all playing “protect the holy flame” as if in a scene from Harry Potter. On the other side is an old-fashioned mob. The mob wins and the nation splits its sides with glee. The old left dares not walk the streets of London these days, but must tremble behind police protection. Sweet is the sight of the boot on the other foot.
I have decided that the mob is a much underrated political phenomenon. In London on April 6, it reduced the Olympic torch parade to a Keystone Cops farrago. Then in Paris it extinguished the flame altogether and in San Francisco it forced the proceedings to vanish into an early grave. Some pundits consider such demonstrations undignified and ineffective in an era of television studios, e-politics and blogs. But they said that of rock concerts, too.
The mob helped kill the Thatcherite poll tax in the UK and felled the Berlin Wall. It toppled dictators in Serbia and Ukraine and may yet do so in Kenya and Zimbabwe. A crowd running amok in the streets of a capital somehow outguns opinion polls and election victories in the minds of rulers. When those in palaces of power peer round their curtains and see the howling throng, their knees go weak and some primitive instinct communicates defeat.
Last week’s mob in London, Paris and San Francisco was tiny and unrepresentative of mostly non-violent Tibetan opinion. But by attaching itself to a publicity stunt, the mob delivered a humiliating blow to the mightiest dictatorship on earth, China. It also exposed the hypocrisy of IOC president Jacques Rogge, now trying to pretend that, “with hindsight,” awarding the games to Beijing was not a great idea as they might be exploited politically. He should have listened.
The torch tour, shorn of the overtones of world peace and harmony, was political. It was conducted by Chinese heavies and patronized by has-been celebrities and publicity-hungry lobbyists. As for the IOC, it failed to withdraw its approval even when told the tour would climax in the former Tibetan capital of Lhasa. Rogge and his crew have spent so long immersed in five-star hotels that they cannot tell a Gandhi from a Ghengis Khan. The Chinese have taken them for the mother of all rides. Never were so many conned so rotten by so few.
The mistake of this tour was its hubris. Had the Chinese and the IOC been shrewd, they would have avoided democracies altogether, or at least they would have run the torch inside stadiums, where they could ensure photo-opportunities with politicians smiling as they received free tickets for Beijing. But they craved geographical authenticity. They thought with Rudyard Kipling that they could “talk with crowds and keep your virtue.”
They accepted the advice of the IOC that playing to the mob would serve the glory of them both. They both got a raspberry.
That said, every catastrophe has a silver lining.
The Olympics can now go in one of two directions. The costly-is-beautiful, politburo-cum-New-Labour Olympics are irrevocably tainted and seem incapable of purging themselves. As the cameras roll, the anthems play and the flags fly in the forthcoming orgy of chauvinism, every contestant in Beijing must be pondering what political statement to make on the rostrum, whether about Tibet or US President George W. Bush or Tower Hamlets borough council.
Hecklers will shout, banners will wave and thugs will beat up bystanders. Track and field will be way down the news list.
If London sticks to this agenda in 2012, then it should make the best of it and plan a parallel Olympiad of protest. By then, the event will be regarded globally as a festival of political activism, like G8 summits and UN assemblies. With so much publicity and so much hype, it will be the occasion for mass campaigning about anything and everything. The theater of the street will out-dazzle the theater of sport.
Unlike G8 summits, the games offer real leverage to a mob. Nobody cares if a G8 summit is disrupted or abandoned. But US$20 billion to US$30 billion is invested in the Olympics these days, with just two weeks to make a return.
London would be a splendid venue for a political Olympiad. It has long been a place of refuge and asylum. For the period of the games its doors should welcome any cause, however worthy or crackpot. Halls should be open for rallies and churches for protest. Let Trafalgar Square be standing room only for the duration, while the IOC tucks into the taxpayer’s champagne.
Much nonsense is uttered about the Olympics not being political. Anything rooted in blatant nationalism is political. Anything so expensive as to impose a multibillion-dollar opportunity cost on the host nation is political. Anything “awarded” as a prize to authoritarian states like the Soviet Union or China is political. The Olympics were political to the Greeks and included diplomatic parleys among the poetry competitions and beauty parades.
The revival of the games by Pierre de Coubertin in the 19th century was also political, albeit the facile politics of world peace and platitudes about the global fraternity of youth. There is no fraternity in international sport, which as Coubertin recognized is war by other means. Sportsmen are trained to beat hell out of each other to the greater glory of their country. All else is naivety.
To those who might find a political Olympiad distasteful, there is a clear and simple alternative. They can treat the Olympics as only about sports and not about world harmony and the enrichment of the construction industry. Athletes can attend the games as individuals. Suppress national anthems, flags and all visits and speeches by politicians. The games would become solely about running, throwing, jumping, swimming and riding.
If that happened there would be no need of idle threats against China. There need be none of the political clutter that Rogge and others have brought to the Olympics, any more than there has been at this month’s world cycling and swimming championships in Manchester. They passed off without anyone mentioning Tibet.
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