Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win.
At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe — at any rate for short periods — that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism — that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.
At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe — at any rate for short periods — that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism — that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.
I do not, of course, suggest that sport is one of the main causes of international rivalry; big-scale sport is itself, I think, merely another effect of the causes that have produced nationalism. Still, you do make things worse by sending forth a team of eleven men, labelled as national champions, to do battle against some rival team, and allowing it to be felt on all sides that whichever nation is defeated will “lose face”.
There are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.
George Orwell, The Sporting Spirit, 1945.
When I see a gay bar saying that they are showing World Cup matches a part of me dies.
Satan made us queer for a reason, you know.
A gay football fan should be an oxymoron.
Such men are traitors, quislings.
Come the revolution they will be taken out and shot.
I hope England lose, terribly.
#TeamIran for the win!
From Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the media.
When I see a gay bar saying that they are showing World Cup matches a part of me dies.
Satan made us queer for a reason, you know.
A gay football fan should be an oxymoron.
Such men are traitors, quislings.
Come the revolution they will be taken out and shot.
I hope England lose, terribly.
#TeamIran for the win!
From Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the media.
Posts
Gosh, these 'queers should hate sport' people are getting to be as nauseating as the 'gay footballers: the last taboo' people.
ReplyDelete