The football World Cup starts this Thursday and the US regime has already guaranteed that it will be the most racist in history.
FIFA-appointed Somalian referee Omar Artan, voted the best referee in Africa last year and travelling on a diplomatic passport, was denied entry to the US when he landed at Miami and forced to fly back home.
The Iranian national team have been forced to relocate their training base from Arizona to Mexico, and the manager of the team, as well as various technical support staff, have been denied US visas. The US is also demanding that the Iranian playing squad enter and leave the US on the day of their games, a condition clearly meant to harm their ability to perform well in matches. Iran’s fan ticket allocation has also just been withdrawn, meaning there will be no fans from Iran in the stadiums.
Iraqi national team vice-captain Ayman Hussein was detained, searched and interrogated at Chicago’s O’Hare airport for seven hours while Iraq’s national team photographer was denied entry and turned back on landing.
The Senegalese team were treated like criminals on landing, with security not allowing them to enter the terminal and strip-searching them on the tarmac. The Uzbekistan team were similarly searched after stepping off the coach outside the Icahn stadium in New York prior to a friendly match against The Netherlands.
At least 90 fans from two major supporter groups in Morocco have also been denied visas ahead of the tournament, most under a clause citing doubts about their intention to return home, despite their documented travel histories to Russia 2018, Qatar 2022, and the Paris Olympics. Some have lost thousands of dollars in non-refundable hotel bookings.
These refusals followed the initial refusal of a visa for the Moroccan player Zakaria El Ouahdi, who plays in Europe, after US embassy staff flagged him as a risk because his father was deemed to have a suspicious beard.
The South African team waited months for US visas to be issued, leading to a public complaint from the country’s minister of sport who said they’d been “made to look like fools,” and as of this week were still waiting were four visas to be processed.
The International Sports Press Association says that many Iranian and African journalists have been denied visas needed to enter the US and report on the tournament.
All of this is making people compare this World Cup to the 1936 Nazi Olympics, but that’s really unfair. By 1936 Nazi Germany hadn’t attacked any sovereign countries, assassinated any heads of state or committed any holocausts.
Some on Twitter didn’t get this, but I expect my readers understand this as an absurdist quip intended to make a deadly serious point about the barbarity of US empire.
The truth is the US regime has committed all of these criminal acts in just the last few months, from the kidnap of a head of state, to the assassination of a head of state (and his family), to an attack on a sovereign nation because it refused to submit to empire. And the Gaza holocaust, sponsored by the US and committed by its colonial proxy using regime arms and technology, is ongoing.
So yes, the argument is sound. The World Cup is being hosted by a white supremacist regime, a regime that has outright bans on citizens of numerous global south countries whose national teams have qualified for the World Cup, including Iran, Haiti, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. A regime which has concentration-camp like facilities into which people routinely disappear, or die. A regime which constantly talks in overtly racist terms about the need to save western civilisation from non-white people and is therefore clearly not fit to host one of the world’s most preeminent, multicultural global sporting events.
Yet despite all this, compare the media focus on US crimes in the context of hosting the World Cup with the attention given to Qatar, Russia or Brazil. Where is the reporting about US human rights abuses? Where are the televised news specials about US repression and policies of mass murder? Where are the anguished op-eds about inner city gun violence? Where are the protests by national teams against the politics of the host nation?
The clear hypocrisy on show is just another indictment of valueless liberals and demonstrates how subjects of empire, whether journalists or athletes, give a pass to empire for its crimes. It’s easy to speak out from the guts of the imperial core against outsiders when you know there’ll be no consequences for doing so. It’s much harder to possess genuine principles which put you into conflict with your rulers and paymasters.
But it’s probably in many cases a lot simpler and more horrifying than this. It’s probably more likely that many in the imperial core simply agree with and support imperial violence. For many people, Qatar and Russia having draconian policies against gay people is worse than a holocaust when the victims are Palestinians, the wretched of the Earth, an essentially sub-human population in the eyes of imperialists.
The World Cup is a perfect encapsulation of the impunity with which imperialists are able to commit their crimes.
In 2017, when concerns about the US as a potential host were raised, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said “any team, including the supporters and officials of that team, who qualify for a World Cup need to have access to the country, otherwise there is no World Cup. It’s obvious. The requirements will be clear.” But now, with accredited FIFA referees and team staff being banned from attending, the cowardly Infantino says these issues are all a matter for the host nation.
No consequences or condemnation. Just the pure impunity of empire.
FIFA demanded previous World Cup hosts introduce special laws to bypass all kinds of regulations to ensure the smooth running of past events. South Africa passed a Special Measures Act demanded by FIFA, while Brazil’s parliament in 2013 passed and codified a 900-page General Law of The World Cup covering everything from criminal provisions to visa processes to press freedom. But no such demands were made of the US, with the regime able to ban anyone it wants, including FIFA referees and team staff.
The empire is granted impunity for its actions by other imperialists like Infantino who possess essentially the same politics. In their minds there is no need for white empire to pass special World Cup laws, because the governance is not just already fit-for-purpose, but infinitely superior. When empire executes power and authority, that power and authority, unlike that wielded by the periphery, is, by definition, legitimate.
Perhaps this will all be a wake-up call for the sport, but it’s unlikely, because this isn’t just about FIFA or about football. What we’re seeing with this World Cup cuts to the heart of empire and the value system which underpins it.
What we’re seeing is the racism, hypocrisy and double standards that always surface when professed liberal principles clash with imperial realities.
No, this fiasco won’t change FIFA, but it should be a reminder to us that empire is an illegitimate construct and a bankrupt project that, when ended, will end FIFA by default as well.
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