The World Cup and International Solidarity
The ruling class has it... do you?
One reason I generally dislike international sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup is they bring out a kind of fandom I do not like or even really understand. These events create millions of short-term fans who get super invested for a few weeks, only to drop whatever interest they had for the next four years. There is no season to follow, where you build a connection to a team or a player – a fan’s allegiance is simply a question of national identity. In this sense, these events show the dangers of nationalism.
It’s always a little tricky condemning nationalism or patriotism; if you’re not careful, you’ll sound like an asshole criticizing people for loving where they’re from. And the impulse to reflexively support people from your country is pretty harmless when it amounts to rooting for soccer players, so I’m certainly not going to tell anyone who does enjoy the World Cup that they shouldn’t watch, or root for whatever country they feel drawn to. But there’s a reason socialists have historically identified with the international working class, and have resisted these types of nationalist sporting events.
But, as I wrote last year, it can be tough to resist the excitement of these events, and articulate the arguments against them. Luckily, FIFA President Gianni Infantino did it for me this weekend…
In case you missed it, the day before the opening of the 2022 World Cup, Infantino gave a strange, rambling monologue where he attempted to deflect criticism of this year’s tournament, which is taking place in Qatar. It would take too long to list all the reasons for criticism, but two of the biggest have been 1) the country’s use of an abusive migrant worker system in order to construct the stadiums and infrastructure for the World Cup; and 2) the country’s criminalization of the queer community as it hosts a tournament that is supposedly welcoming of the LGBTQ community.
So when Infantino said, “Today I feel gay… today I feel a migrant worker,” he was, on one level, merely doing the normal PR thing that powerful people do, where they make vague gestures of sympathy towards marginalized groups without actually doing anything to help them. But on a deeper level, Infantino was illustrating how nationalism divides us. That is, he was showing how viewing people primarily as citizens of their country is used to obscure their membership in a class.
As Infantino said:
“I think for what we Europeans have been doing for 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people.”
Statements like this are always viscerally annoying, because they scan as technically correct, but are still wildly misleading or disingenuous. In this case, it is of course true that European imperialism is one of history’s great moral crimes.* But framing the current conflicts in Qatar as a conflict between “we Europeans” and the Arab people is deeply dishonest. Indeed, the Thani family, which rules Qatar as a hereditary monarchy, were complicit allies of several European powers in the age of colonization. To this day, Qatar’s rulers are a key Western ally for imperialism against the Arab world: During the Iraq War, the US Central Command was hosted in Qatar. In return for this, their Western allies in the ruling class will cover up their human rights abuses.
*Although I’m not quite sure where Infantino is getting “3,000 years” from, unless he’s still really upset about the Sea Peoples hypothetical invasion of Ancient Egypt.
It is also particularly ironic that Infantino started his remarks by declaring, “Today I feel Qatari,” given that “Qatari” doesn’t even describe ~90% of the people who live in Qatar, who are migrant workers from other countries and whose lack of political power leaves them vulnerable to exploitation like the kind widely documented ahead of the World Cup.
But by framing this as a conflict between “the West” and “Qataris,” Infantino can make it seem like racism or imperialism or Western hegemony to imply that maybe workers shouldn’t die in 125 degree heat to build soccer stadiums that will be used once, or that gay people shouldn’t be jailed for their sexuality. This is a very convenient framing for powerful, capitalist interests like the ones FIFA represents. But it should be resisted.
When Infantino says “we Europeans” or “we in the West,” he wants his Western audience to identify with that “we.” In the same way that American soccer fans look at the US Men’s National Team and reflexively identify with those players, Infantino wants them to look at Donald Rumsfeld and Henry Kissinger and identify with them as well. Then perhaps we’ll pause before criticizing any other world leaders – after all, are we so morally pure? Meanwhile, while you’re busy debating morals, FIFA executives can take their bribes and go home. Do not fall for this!
International solidarity begins with this simple fact: You are not your government. That doesn’t mean you can’t have pride in your country, or love where you are from, or root for the Americans. So long as you remember that your interests are more aligned with a worker born around the world than with a billionaire born down the block.