Interview: Jules Boykoff on the Politics, Power and Pain of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics

In this interview Brenda Elsey and Amira Rose Davis talk with Jules Boykoff, former Olympian and author of Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics. They discuss the many concerns surrounding the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, including human rights abuses China, athletes' health and safety, ecological harm and the prickly politics of mega sporting events.

This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.

Transcript

Brenda: Welcome to Burn It All Down. I am running the interview segment today with my co-host Amira Rose Davis, and we are so, so super thrilled. I can't believe he hasn't been on the show before, other than being discussed on the show on a pretty regular basis. Dr. Jules Boykoff. He is a professor of politics and government at Pacific University. He has been a stalwart champion for athletes’ rights and a strong critic of mega events, including the Olympic Games. He is a former Olympian himself and author of many books and articles, even poetry.

If you want to have a go-to book because you're thinking through the contradictions of the Olympics, check out Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics, which is at Verso. It was published in 2016. And as you'll hear today a lot of his ideas and critiques from back then remain pretty standard today. If not even. I have been born out in ways that are both depressing and illuminating. So, we are super excited to have Jules with us today. Amira and I are both surprised that he has not been on before. Amira, are you surprised it took us this long to get around to this? 

Amira: I can't believe it. I'm so excited it's finally happening. I think that Jules has been hovering over the show. That's why I can't believe it, because I feel like we're always quoting your work, Jules, and shouting it out. And also, I know I'll speak for myself…Well, actually, I'll speak for many of us who are also just profoundly impacted and engaging in dialogue with you and with your work. So, it feels like your ideas and your words have been circulating on BIAD for, you know, its entirety, even if you've never been on which for now of course, going to rectify that.

Brenda: Well said, well said, Dr. Davis. Welcome to the show then. I just want to jump right in and say you wrote a fantastic piece in the Guardian. It was really moving and harsh. You've been on a ton of interviews, you've been all over the media right now. And basically, I want to just ask you, you know, for the people who say, hey, Burn It All Down covers the World Cup, it still covers the Olympics, it's something that brings us together. How are you responding to the people who are out there still holding onto the very last maybe threads of being kind of pro-Olympics, “Let's do this, Beijing”? 

Jules: Well first, let me just say, it is an enormous pleasure to be with you. I'm a regular listener to this show and I have massive admiration for every single host. It's just great to be here with you today. You know, for people that are thinking about Beijing 2022, my guess is that they're excited because of the athletes that are going to grace the television screens around the world. They're not excited because of the International Olympic Committee, basically kind of a crotchety junta of around a hundred people who actually can make more money at the Olympics than athletes who even earn a medal. My guess is that they're there to watch the Olympians. It's the Olympians that make the Olympics. 

So, what I would say to people that are thinking about these upcoming Beijing Games: we need not devote ourselves to the death of complexity. You can both root for the athletes and also critique the heck out of the unjust machine that is the Olympics. Let me just give one fact, if I may, that might be worth knowing as people move into watching the Olympics. And that is that the Olympians who participate get a minuscule amount of the money that rolls through the Olympic system.

There was an important study done by Ryerson University and Global Athlete, this new, exciting, progressive, athlete-led group, that compared the Olympics to other sports like the National Basketball Association or the English Premier League of football, the National Hockey League, and so on. And in those other big leagues, athletes got between 45 and 60% of the revenues. Olympic athletes get 4.1% – and only 0.5% do they get directly. And so a lot of that is funneled through organizations. So, when we look at the Olympics on your screen, I think it's important to remember that the athletes could be doing a whole lot better in terms of the amount of money that they make, the amount of protections that they have.

And thankfully, as you cover week in and week out on Burn It All Down, that we're in the midst of what I think is fair to call the athlete empowerment moment, or era. And so these athletes are speaking out more and more. Beijing, as I'm sure we'll talk about, presents a slightly more complicated situation for athletes to speak out, but I think it will be a blip on a wider radar of moving forward, of more athletes speaking out about the key issues of our time.

Brenda: And it's so interesting, if you take an athlete centered approach, there's just no doubt that, in the time of this global pandemic, that the athletes are being asked to risk more than ever, whether it's effects of long COVID, which we don't understand, whether it's getting there and not getting to compete, or whether it's having to compromise their own moral and ethical coda to be able to compete. Amira, do you wanna follow up?

Amira: Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what I was going to ask as well. I mean, time is funny, right? It feels like just yesterday that we were in New York, Jules, during Pyeongchang, doing a panel about the ills of the IOC and consumerism at the Olympics and displacement and militarism. And those things are still here, and so too, as Brenda started highlighting, are new and layered concerns, because there wasn't even a pandemic at that point, right? And now of course you said there's also a lot of human rights issues that we are thinking about and seeing and wrestling with in Beijing.

And I wanted to know how you are kind of approaching these Games, because it also feels to me the Winter Games are always usually under the radar, but especially because of the kind of condensed Olympic cycle, I feel like most of us are just recovering from the Summer Games. And I'm wondering, as we move into these Beijing Games, are there ways you're seeing unique concerns? And are there also perhaps unique possibilities? 

Jules: Yes. Well, it's fun to think back at the events that we did in 2018, and a lot of what we talked about back then, Amira, was the trends in the Olympics as they were playing out in Pyeongchang. And those were overspending – what I tend to call Etch-a-Sketch economics, where the Olympic bidders say that the Games are only going to cost so much, but then they cost so much more. In the case of Tokyo, $7.3 billion turned into around $30 billion. We also talked about the displacement and gentrification elements of the Olympics, where working class people are kicked out of their homes to make way for Olympic venues. Last time China hosted the Olympics in Beijing, in the summer of 2008, 1.5 million people were displaced to make way for Olympic venues.

We also talked about the militarization of public space. Basically every single host uses the Olympics like their own private cash machine to get all the weapons they'd never be able to get – and special laws too, during normal political times. And finally, we would talk about things like greenwashing, talking a big green game and not following through. Or racism that is filtering its way through the sport. Or we talk about the democracy deficit that plagues the Games. Well, there's never been…So, we're not really talking about those things during Beijing. It's been very much focused on COVID and human rights – for darn good reasons.

There's never been an Olympics quite like the Beijing Games, in that we're talking about staging an optional sporting spectacle, under coronavirus pandemic conditions, in a country that is a serial human rights abuser, that has long acted in ways that clash mightily with the lofty ideals enshrined in the Olympic charter, and that may well blunt the exciting zeitgeists of athlete activism we were just talking about moments ago. So, there is so much going on with these Olympics. What I’m going to be kind of keeping a really close eye on are few things.

One, how is COVID going to affect the situation? We already saw how it threw Olympic qualifying events into disarray. For example, the US figure skating had an outbreak there. We've seen how the National Hockey League has chosen to pull its players because of concerns around coronavirus. We're already seeing cases pop up inside the so-called Olympic bubble as people arrive in Beijing, on the order of 30 to 40 people a day are testing positive. So, we’re seeing Olympic dreams being scuttled already. Along the way, others jumping into quarantine in the hopes they can pass tests and get out there on the slopes or the rink, wherever they're headed.

So, you know, China has put forth a zero COVID policy that, hey, it must be said, has been highly effective – if, by some people's opinion, a little bit draconian – since the outbreak of coronavirus way back in January 2020. China has had 6,000 or so deaths from COVID. 6,000! I mean, we pass that every three days here in the United States. The question is, can you hold a sporting event where you bring all those people from around the world and put them into sort of a zero COVID mentality in a closed loop management system where there is no real outsiders that are allowed. Can it work? It's already kind of working/not working. It's something for us to definitely keep an eye on.

Of course, human rights advocates, it must be said, have noted that coronavirus has become a convenient alibi for China to ratchet up social control in ways that look responsible, at least epidemiologically speaking, but that have the side effect of muzzling dissent even further. So, I would say, in short, what am I looking out for? Of course, the dazzling performances by athletes. I'm interested in how COVID plays out. Will it be a pretext for suppressing critical reporting from journalists who go there, or suppressing political dissent? Those are the kinds of things I'm going to be keeping an eye on moving forward. 

Brenda: So, one of the disturbing things over the last probably decade has been a vilification of China, and this has only increased during COVID, right? This idea that China is going to come and invade, especially by like, you know, during coronavirus, right-wing sort of outlets. We saw a lot of the ramifications of that in anti-Asian violence. How do we talk about that and say, okay, what's the difference? Are we just singling out China? And why? You know, the US has great relations with Saudi Arabia. Why should we do a diplomatic boycott of China? It certainly can't be worse than Saudi Arabia. 

Jules: This particular Olympics presents specific problems for progressive minded people, for the reasons that you just laid out there. And I think that the Beijing Olympics are a particularly prickly political thicket in that sense. Basically, Beijing is a hotbed of hypocrisy. Everywhere you look, there is hypocrisy. Obviously from the International Olympic Committee – despite the lofty ideals in the charter, they hand the Olympics to an obvious human rights violator. There’s hypocrisy coming out of China. They're saying, hey, let's just keep politics out of the Olympics, and this boycott is ridiculous. Well, guess what? China boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow because it was concerned about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So there's hypocrisy there.

And of course, since we're in the United States, we have to call out the hypocrisy of our own government. I mean, when China comes back at the United States and says, what about Guantanamo Bay and the people not being charged there, and the torture that happens there? When they talk about the kids in the cages at the border here, the southern border in the United States. Or our unending and unrepentant support for Israel, despite what's happening in Palestine. They have a point. These are human rights problems. You know, I'm coming to you from Portland, Oregon, where we have a humanitarian crisis in plain sight that's known as homelessness, and it's up and down the west coast here, everywhere you go. I know it's out east where you are as well, and in the south even, Amira, where you're at.

So, there is reason to call out the hypocrisy of the United States. Now, what Human Rights Watch and other people that are concerned about human rights would say back to me is that what's happening in China is qualitatively different. There are ongoing crimes against humanity as defined in the Rome Statute around the formation of the International Criminal Court. And so what we see in Xinjiang province, where we have Uyghur Muslims and other Turkic Muslim minorities being treated so incredibly poorly – and to say that as to make the biggest euphemism I've made all day today – where they are put in prison arbitrarily, where they are tortured, where they experience (content warning) sexual violence. And that's happening right now in the host country. And so it's qualitatively different.

So yeah, I mean, I think that there's hypocrisy that abounds, and the one place you don't necessarily see hypocrisy is from the athletes, where essentially I view them as athlete workers who are just trying to do their job. Let's not forget that even if these athletes are going to Beijing, they didn't pick Beijing. They didn't have a say in where these Olympics went. They are going there to perform their job duties. And a lot of them have spoken out and said they're not very happy about it and said that they wished the Olympics weren't there. But you know what? When you have a job, you have to go there and do it. So these are all things kind of flowing through the ether here as we get close to Beijing.

Amira: Yeah. And we've talked before about how it's hard, especially when we've covered and you've done great work with NOlympics. We've talked about how it's hard to put the boycotts and the cultural boycotts on the backs of these workers, right? And having a labor analysis is so integral to understand how athletes are part of this system in that they are laborers, and in that, you know, they are making decisions, constrained and with their labor in mind, and the precarity of it. And in that vein, we've talked about this a lot in terms of the athlete voice and protest. We’ve seen, of course, the IOC clinging desperately to Rule 50. We saw this as a discussion a lot during the Summer Games. We also know that, by and large, the largest protesters have been Black athletes globally. And of course, the Winter Games has quite a dearth of Black athletes. [laughs]

But at the same time, as you said, there is other voices and other athletic voices that have been raised about human rights in Beijing. I'm wondering, and I've a lot of curiosity around this, because one of the things, you know, as we cover athletic protests, we've seen China be a kind of third rail for otherwise very vocal athletes. And I'm thinking about this and holding space for that while at the same time looking at Chinese Olympic officials who are saying, warning, or threatening athletes to be wary that their speech will be policed by Chinese law, which is even more restrictive than IOC’s restrictions on speech – which is saying something, because those were already hella restrictive.

And so what are you hearing or are seeing or hoping that we'll see in terms of those athletic laborers who are going into this space and needing to make choices about how they raise their voice or, you know, how they don’t? What are some of your expectations?

Jules: Yeah, well, for starters, the China Law & Policy group, which is based in Washington, DC, put out an analysis recently that I think is just important for us to keep in mind, where they analyzed Chinese criminal law. And they pointed out that taking a stand in China on a controversial cause could breach a law that prohibits making disturbances in public places. So if an athlete were to engage in politics on the medal stand, for instance like Raven Saunders did at the Tokyo Olympics – an amazing and epic act of political dissent that I don't think people are talking about enough, to be honest – that would be a breach of Chinese criminal law. And as you noted, Amira, the Beijing organizing committee has openly stated that athletes would face “certain punishments” were they to speak out in Beijing.

Complicating matters is something you've covered on Burn It All Down before, the fact that the International Olympic Committee has consistently sided with Chinese authorities on the issue of Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star and three time Olympian who accused former vice premier of China of sexual assault. And the IOC essentially ran political interference for China. They set up a 30 minute video call where afterwards they were like, oh, well, she's just fine. We talked to her for 30 minutes on a Zoom call, so she's fine. Not only is that offensive to anybody who's thinking about the wellbeing of athletes. But I mean, it's just breathtaking in its willful gullibility and their willingness to protect their own money-making spigot.

But it also sent an unequivocal message to Beijing bound athletes that if they were to take a stand on a spiky political issue in Beijing, the IOC probably doesn't have their backs. And that's why you're seeing athletes like Noah Hoffman, the two time Olympian in cross country, saying that if he were going to these Olympics, which he's not, he would not speak out. And he's advising athletes not to speak out. Why you're seeing the Dutch national Olympic committee advising all of its athletes to bring burner phones and to basically just leave them in China after the Olympic Games. And so, these are Olympics, like we've been saying, like none other.

And athletes…As if it's not hard enough for athletes to go to the Olympics and perform at their best. Then they've gotta deal with COVID. Then they've gotta deal with hyper-surveillance. Then they've got to deal with the fact that if they do a minor thing, that would just be like talking in the United States or Canada or something, it's actually illegal in China and they could be prosecuted. And the group that oversees the Olympics doesn't even have their back? I mean, you talk about a stressful situation for athletes. I mean, it's kind of incredible that they can go there and perform at all.

Brenda: Once you center the athletes, it's really interesting, because the I've heard people debate you or critique you for being like, for example, pro boycott, or understanding of boycott mentality. And they'll say, “What about the athletes? You're hurting the athletes.” And none of this is ever in their purview, right? It's just sort of like, oh, their medaling chances. But there's all these other ways in which these athletes could get hurt or are vulnerable that never seem to enter that same train of thought. And so it's always great for me to hear you put that together.

And I've also seen, just recently we covered on the show, Shim Suk-hee, who is the short track speed skater who brought charges against the South Korean speed skating federation in 2019, who's the world's top speed skater in her division, and who will now not be competing at the Olympics. And China, it seems, has nothing to say about that, but to support South Korea’s retributive punishment of her for speaking out. Because the reason she's banned is something ridiculous, like, she sent a text message making fun of one of her teammates for being slower, or something, you know what I mean? And so it's obvious.

And so, you've seen this backlash of Me Too in many areas, and of course of Black Lives Matter, in many areas of these mega events. I wanted to just turn a little bit…I know you've done a lot of work on the ecological damage of these Games and that also of course has to do with race and gender and poverty and all the things that we're talking about, but it's a little different angle. How do you see this, compared to Pyeongchang for example, this Olympics?

Jules: Sure. Well, first, just scoping back, this is one of the trends that a lot of social scientists are working on, is greenwashing: promising a big green game, but not actually following through when it comes to the Olympic Games. In the 1990s, the International Olympic Committee brought the idea of sustainability into its rhetoric, and then slowly started to integrate ideas of sustainability into the way they carry out the Olympic Games. Unfortunately, a pretty customary chasm has developed between word and deed when it comes to sustainability and the International Olympic Committee.

I mean, you mentioned before, Brenda, that I lived in Rio de Janeiro when I was a Fulbright research fellow. And I talked to people who were actually really excited about the possibility of cleaning up Guanabara Bay, which is an area that's notoriously polluted in Rio, that the Olympic organizers said that if you let us host the Olympics, we will clean up Guanabara Bay. We'll have more than 80% of the water that flows into there filtrated and cleaned and treated. Well, guess what? By the time the Olympics arrived, it was still like 25, 26%. So, a broken promise. And we've just seen it Olympics after Olympics.

You mentioned Pyeongchang; they cut down a sacred forest, a 500 year old sacred forest, to make way for a ski run along Mount Gariwang. And that was an option, because there were two other ski runs that they could have used, but they felt like they just wanted to have a brand new one for the Olympic Games. I mean, even by the time the Olympics were ending in Pyeongchang, the athletes were saying, hey, this has been nice, but this is so distant and far away. We're going to just keep skiing in Europe where we have these mountains really close to us. Which is probably the ecological thing to do too, because they often don't calculate, when they're talking their big green game, about all the jet fuel that is expended to get people there.

So that takes us to Beijing, and Beijing is yet another example of greenwashing. They mistreated an environmentally sensitive area to make the ski runs for the Olympics here as well. So, that actually mirrored what happened in Pyeongchang. They’re talking about using almost exclusively fake snow, some 49 million gallons of water in a water-parched area, that they're going to treat with chemicals and just spray out there in the form of fake snow. And I mean, I think we should note that fake snow is not a new thing to the Olympics. In fact, Lake Placid was the first city to do that in 1980, in New York there, where they used fake snow. It’s happened in the last three Olympics, whether you're talking about Sochi in 2014 or Pyeongchang in 2018.

But 49 million gallons? They knew what they were doing when they handed the Olympics to Beijing. This is not a snowy part of the world. So, you kind of knew what you were getting into. And guess what? They’re using fake snow. And of course that has knock on effects. You're spraying all these chemicals into the earth. It also contributes to erosion and all sorts of other problems that environmentalists are jumping up and down about. So, people who study this issue from an environmental perspective are arguing that Beijing could be the least sustainable Olympics in modern memory. And hey, that's really saying something.

Amira: And I mean, I feel like this is the same conversation we have around a lot of mega events when we're like, they knew Qatar would be really fucking hot! And they still, you know, are insistent on having the World Cup there, despite human rights violations and labor practices, et cetera, et cetera. So, it seems like every year or every other year, whenever there's a mega sporting event, be it the Super Bowl, the World Cup, the Olympics, winter or summer; we're having these conversations about all the destruction they leave, whether it's the regular patterns that you talked about, or the unique kind of layers that we're seeing in this time of a pandemic.

And so on one hand, it feels like if you listen to this episode of Burn It All Down, I'm sure…Like, me feeling like, huh, this is all awful and I'm feeling really fatigued and exhausted by it. Of course, if you listen to our other Olympic preview, which is really athlete-centered and talking about some amazing athletic feats and some stories and people we want to uplift, it can feel a little hard to hold these things, which is something I feel like you do really expertly all the time. And so I'm wondering kind of to two questions. One, we talked a little bit last week when I saw you in Portland about what this moment feels like, and I asked you if it feels kind of fatiguing that we keep having similar conversations, or if there’s a feeling of hope in there and of possibility, in terms of where the conversations are going. And so I would love for you to talk about that.

And then lastly, I just wanted to know if you had advice for people listening who are just sorta, you know...You’ve been doing this for years and years and years, and I'm wondering if you have direction you wanted to point anyone in who are new to these conversations, whose ears are kind of piqued up, and who want to get involved or learn more. Is there something you want to recommend reading? Obviously your work, or organizations that they should look out for, or anything like that, if they want to continue to think critically about the nuances and complexities of these mega sporting events? And holding joyful moments or fun sporting moments against all of the things we'd like to burn down. 

Jules: Yeah, I love those questions, Amira. Let's start with the tough stuff, which is, yes, we have been, us three, and many other people have been raising these critiques of the Olympics for some time. But I am reminded of the fact that when I started doing this work a little over a decade ago, these ideas that are being accepted in mainstream circles today were very much seen as outside of the norm and were being boxed out of the conversation. So in a way, we are winning the social conversation, the public conversation out there. And it's not just because of us and the scholars’ hard work. It’s because of the fact that there's lots of critical journalism happening out there. It’s because there's lots of great human rights work that's happening out there. And it's also because there are a lot of anti-Olympics activists out there in pretty much every Olympic city.

And maybe that's kind of where I think that we should maybe focus our attention a little bit, because we have seen a massive uptick in anti-Olympics activism. And the way it used to work was, back in the old days, if you will, was when the Olympics came to town and basically triggered a game of activist whack-a-mole, where the Olympics would come to town, all these activists that were there working on other issues would come together, form a team, fight against the Olympics during the Games, for all the reasons we've been talking about – the greenwashing, the overspending, the militarization of public space, the gentrification and displacement of working class people. And then afterwards of course, all these activists who are under-resourced would be like, okay, Games are done. They're going to the next place. Boom. Back to our normal activism, if you will.

Well, recently we've seen a really important development on the anti-Olympics activist front. In July 2019, activists from around the world came together in Tokyo, Japan for the first ever international summit to share ideas, strategies, tactics; to strengthen the bonds among anti-Olympics activists. And you had people there from obviously Tokyo, they were hosting. But Los Angeles sent a huge contingent, probably the biggest foreign contingent. You saw people from Rio de Janeiro. You saw people from London, England; from Seoul, South Korea, Pyeongchang. Other places around the world, prospective cities: Jakarta was thinking about it at the time, so some activist came from Jakarta.

And so, they are not quitting. They're actually planning their second transnational anti-Olympic summit for this summer in Paris, because they are the next host, Paris, the 2024 Summer Olympics. And if they're not going to quit against the odds – and it's very much a David versus Goliath situation – I can't see how the rest of us can sort of throw in the towel that easily. And I think with your second question, one group that I find really intriguing and also just fun to follow is the group in Los Angeles called NOlympics LA. And yeah, I did write a whole book about them and came to know many of them quite well over time.

And they're just fascinating. They're smart, they're committed, and many of them emerge out of Hollywood and they come with tremendous skills. Like, one of the guys on the film team put out a film for Netflix, for example, Justin Gaar. Other people have worked on high level video games, people like Eric Sheehan. And they have people that have been in the Olympic cities before, people like Cerianne Robertson, and they brought all this knowledge together. They emerged out of the Democratic Socialists of America chapter in Los Angeles, so they've got people backing them. They have a huge coalition, including Black Lives Matter groups from Koreatown, groups across the whole city.

And they are not quitting. In fact, they're going to be tremendously active in the coming weeks, because Inglewood is hosting the upcoming Super Bowl, and there's been mega displacement in Inglewood as the area gets gentrified. And it's also going to be used for the Olympics, that new stadium, SoFi stadium. And so, for me, following groups like that…I know you've had Anne Orchier on the show before. Following and listening to people like Anne is definitely a place to find inspiration, but also to keep up with what's happening and staying on the cutting edge of the activism against the Games.

Brenda: It's so interesting, as you're saying, the toggling back and forth between the kind of established first-world cities and the, you know, “developing cities” that they're doing. It feels like, even as you're saying it, not coincidental that you see Qatar, US from FIFA. You see Beijing, Paris. Like, there's a kind of like way in which they're sort of trying to strategically keep a certain set of maybe liberal elite bought into these games in a western sense. I don't know. I'm just kind of fascinated. I'm just thinking that sort of spontaneously.

Amira: I mean, I think that there's something to be said that the early discussions of Qatar way back, you know, were hypercritical. And then once it was announced that the Americas would get the World Cup, a lot of the conversation that has been like, just skipping over Qatar, we're all going to pretend that that doesn't happen, because now we're imagining, you know, the games in Mexico and in Canada and on the west coast, inevitably, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, I think that it's interesting, right? How does that serve to actually mute sustained rhetoric, where you can draw this analysis from point to point to point? Because, you know, I mean, obviously that's what we do when you talk about those patterns. You know, you're talking about Inglewood hosting the Super Bowl, and we know increased militarization will come to a place that's already been heavily policed.

But we also know that when we're talking about displacement that's going to occur there, and equitably more for the LA games, that there are people who will be twice displaced from back in ’84, right? And so there's absolutely patterns. But I think you're right, Bren, that I think it's harder to sustain a public discourse on those patterns at the same level and at the same rigor when you're offset. Like, I think there's people who are very comfortable talking about human rights violations in Beijing that will feel less than doing so in Paris, right? Less so doing so in LA. And I think that's a really astute observation. 

Jules: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really easy to otherize the troubles around the Olympics and the World Cup when they're held in a place like Beijing and Qatar, and people give themselves a free pass then moving forward when it comes to critiquing Paris, and think, oh, it's going to be fine in Paris. Well, no, actually it's not going to be fine. You're seeing displacement there. You're probably going to see overspending since every single Olympics has had overspending since 1960 when the study comes out every single Olympics from Oxford University that finds the same thing.

And so the problems are endemic to the Olympics. They're not necessarily Beijing problems. Yes, there are human rights problems that are specific to Beijing, but a lot of what we see with the Olympics are Olympics problems that are imported into each and every Olympic city. And so one way to sort of see the difference…And I think when I hear you both talking, and you think about like the corporate sponsors, and how are they treating Beijing versus how are they thinking in terms of moving ahead? Basically, the Olympic corporate sponsors, which give over tens of millions of dollars to be Olympic corporate sponsors, they're pretty much being quiet about these Olympic Games, even though they have human rights provisions in their business practices and their charters.

They’re being totally quiet. They're advertising in China, as Coca-Cola is doing, but they're not advertising in the United States. They're just kind of trying to close their ears, get through it, hold their nose, whatever kind of cliche you want to use, to get through to Paris when they think everything's going to be okay. I think they're going to have an awakening at some point, that everything is not necessarily going to be okay, because the way that these mega events are talked about have changed massively in the public sphere. 

Brenda: At the same time, how is Nike gonna talk shit about China? [laughs]

Jules: Right, no, absolutely. I mean, how are any of these firms going to do it? I mean, Nike is actually benefiting from forced labor in Xinjiang province, as are many other places – Adidas, Muji, H&M. And when they do speak out, China pushes back. And they have a lot of economic power right now. This is not the same China that hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics, when they supposedly arrived on the scene there, on the world scene. This is a very powerful and confident China right now, who’s actually engaging in development work around the world and gaining allies around the world. We shouldn't forget about their Belt and Road Initiative, that they're working in many countries around the world. Not just Subsaharan Africa where it gets a lot of attention, but places like Greece. Places like Italy, where they're building up ports and other transportation networks in these places, gaining lots of friends and allies along the way.

The United States on the other hand, you know, look how many countries signed on to our diplomatic boycott the Biden administration put forth. Very few, like Canada, Australia, Britain. There are countries that aren't sending diplomats, but wanting to make it clear like Sweden did, that, hey, but we're not part of that diplomatic boycott. Because people don't want to offend this rising global hegemonic power. And of course, then these firms like Nike and others don't want to do it either. 

Amira: Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you about, these diplomatic boycotts that we saw, which were kind of like, you know, very headline-grabbing, but also like, okay? You know what I mean? Like, I think that, as you said, it's really revealing about power and where power shifts are happening. And I'm wondering generally, you know, when we think about boycotts, for a lay listener, what should they understand about diplomatic boycotts, and is it just performative?

Jules: So, I am of a few minds on this. For starters, I think the goal of the Biden administration's diplomatic boycott is to try to call out sportswashing, something you talk about on Burn It All Down all the time. It’s this idea of trying to launder your human rights reputation on the world stage using a sports mega event. We've seen it time and time again. And the idea is to call out these practices in public and lift them up in the public discussion, at least during the Olympics. On the other hand, I mean, it's not really getting a lot of support around the world, for the reasons that we have talked about. And, you know, it's kind of, as we move in closer to the games, it's kind of almost impossible to think back to like 2008 and the way things were back then, when actually that's the last time a US president went to the Olympics. 

George W. Bush went to the Olympics in Beijing in 2008. The president hasn't done that since. That’s not happening anytime soon. And so thinking about what you're offering up in comparison between 2008 and 2022, it helps us realize how far along China has come, for better or worse, and how far the United States has fallen. I mean, we are a democracy on a ventilator right now. And people in the United States know it. I'm not just being hyperbolic here. Look at public opinion polling. People know in this country that democracy is really struggling. And so when Biden and company waggle a finger out there at China, it’s falling on a lot of deaf ears.

For starters, because people are like, look at your own house. And second, because, hey, we don't want to offend China. They're helping us out right now. They're doing us a solid. They're helping build up our port, and so on. So, it is a very complicated picture moving forward in the geopolitical front. And that's the thing about these Beijing Games, is that, as listeners of Burn It All Down know all too well, sport is never just sport. And the Beijing Games are not just the Olympics. This is about something a lot bigger, and this will continue to play out between the United States and China and all these other countries after the Beijing Games are done. 

Brenda: Well, thank you so much for being with us at Burn It All Down. One of our favorite, favorite flamethrowers. We are so grateful for your time. We know you are a very sought after opinion at this moment, and so we appreciate you carving out some space for us and, yeah, thanks so much, Dr. Jules Boykoff. And thanks to my co-host, Amira Rose Davis, for captaining the ship with me.

That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. You can follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find links to our merch at our Bonfire store if you want some very belated holiday presents. And thank you to our patrons. Your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. I'm Brenda Elsey, and on behalf of all of my wonderful co-hosts, burn on and not out.