No sign of Hitler analogies when Boris flew the flag for Beijing
BORIS JOHNSON has compared Russia’s World Cup to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, with Vladimir Putin glorying in the event and manipulating it to sanitise his regime as Adolf Hitler did.
Well, as a flag-waving veteran of Beijing 2008, Boris would know.
While sport continues to deliver its biggest festivals to tyrannical governments such as China, Russia and Qatar and while politicians continue to stand idly by when it suits them, the spectre of 1936 will always linger.
A former general secretary of FIFA, Jerome Valcke — now disgraced, but aren’t they all — admitted as much at a symposium five years ago.
‘Less democracy is sometimes better for organising a World Cup,’ said Valcke. ‘When you have a very strong head of state who can decide, as maybe President Vladimir Putin can do in 2018, then that is easier for us as organisers than a country such as Germany, where you have to negotiate at different levels.’
You can pretty much guess the German leader who FIFA would have been able to rub along with — and it isn’t Angela Merkel.
Johnson was the first minister to talk of boycotting Russia after Putin’s regime brought chemical warfare to the streets of Salisbury, but he wasn’t so outspoken 10 years ago when, as London Mayor, he was on handover duty at the Beijing Olympics.
‘We have been dazzled, we have been impressed, we have been blown away by these Beijing games,’ he told a press conference following a meeting with his mayoral equivalent. He added that while criticisms of China’s human rights record could not be overlooked he had not raised the issue at that morning’s gathering.
‘I don’t think you will necessarily achieve what you want in this context by showboating and grandstanding,’ he said, sagely. You’d pay good money for a line like that over the West End.
Fast forward 10 years and our foreign secretary could win Mastermind with showboating and grandstanding as his specialist subject.
He knew exactly what he was doing this week, dropping 1936 into the conversation. Immediately, he conjured images of the 2018 World Cup being used by Putin much as Hitler and film-maker Leni Riefenstahl used the Berlin Games. Riefenstahl’s documentary,
Triumph of the Will, covered the 1934 party congress in Nuremberg — a beautifully directed depiction of a purely evil ideology. In 1938, she made Olympia which, while ground-breaking in technique and featuring extensive footage of Jesse Owens, was still a work commissioned for propaganda purposes by, quite literally, a bunch of Nazis. Riefenstahl was touring America promoting her film when news broke of Kristallnacht, the most significant pogrom against Germany’s Jews and she was asked to leave.
Johnson is an intelligent man and knew the power of his allusion — just as he knew what he was ignoring in 2008. The opening ceremony in Beijing was as triumphant a piece of propaganda as anything Riefenstahl conjured. It was spectacular, lavish, magnificently executed, perfect to the last step, exquisitely performed.
It was also achieved with the total subjugation of the participants.
The 900 soldiers unrolling the scroll that was the centrepiece of the ceremony had to wear nappies, because they were forced to stay hidden for seven hours and not even allowed a toilet break. The three-minute umbrella dance required six months of training, for between 14 and 15 hours each day.
The young girls auditioning had to be pretty, above 1.66 metres tall and prepared to strip naked for the judges, who then measured their body proportions. Not only did Britain’s political class have nothing to say about that, some even chided the sceptics.
‘You can get big headlines back home by slating the oppressive regime,’ said Tessa Jowell, then Minister for the Olympics, ‘but there is a risk of going too far.’
Not now, it would seem. Now, no analogy is beyond bounds, no standing too grand, no show too boating. So, will England
boycott? Probably not, because it costs money. There is a risk if England withdrew in isolation that FIFA would impose sanctions, including suspension and financial penalties.
Exile from FIFA would not just take England out of the 2018 World Cup, but the 2019 Women’s World Cup and the Under 17 and Under 20 World Cups, in which England are defending champions, due to take place next year.
Suspension from FIFA could also exclude England from UEFA qualification from the 2020 European Championship, the final stages of which are to be held at Wembley, plus the World Cup in 2022.
WhErE this would leave English clubs in European competition is also unknown. It could be that English suspension is limited to the national team, but UEFA club tournaments are also, strictly, under FIFA’s remit.
There would be hundreds of millions at stake were England forced out of the Champions League.
That is after FIFA starts hitting the FA for liability costs regarding loss of revenue from commercial agreements.
An automatic fine of £190,000 would be nowhere near the half of it. Participation revenue alone amounts to £6.8m — and once FIFA have been paid out, the FA would need to address penalty clauses in their own sponsorship deals with Vauxhall, Nike and other commercial partners.
Their only, faint, hope of avoiding a catastrophe would be if they could persuade FIFA that a boycott was not a boycott at all, but a safety measure following advice from the Foreign Office.
If the FA were told that players and officials might be endangered, or that supporters were not safe, they could argue they had no option but to withdraw.
The decision would, in those circumstances, not be political, but human. If fans faced harm following the team, better for the team not to travel. The problem is, the government might still want their boycott headlines.
A grand, government- led gesture of defiance would play a lot better than an England team frightened to leave its own shores, under orders from civil servants. Can’t see Johnson fronting up beneath that banner for the cameras.
Meanwhile, on September 30, 10 teams — seven based in Britain — will contest the russian Grand Prix in Sochi, watched by Putin from his personal box, this being his pet project. No mention of that from any politicians yet and no talk of boycotts.
Maybe Johnson believes on this one, as in China, nothing will be achieved by showboating and grandstanding; not unless more showboating and grandstanding is precisely his aim.