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The Olympic Games or Olympics are the world's most important international sporting events.
History[edit | edit source]
Pierre Coubertin, a promoter of race pseudoscience and Orientalism, founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894. The 1904 Olympics in St. Louis featured competitions between whites and indigenous peoples in the Anthropology Days.
In 1936, Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee, prevented Jewish people from boycotting the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. After becoming president of the International Olympic Committee in 1952, Brundage continued to praise Hitler as well as the apartheid states in Rhodesia and South Africa. The Soviet Union joined the Olympics in 1952 after previously competing in the Spartakiads. Chinese delegate Dong Shouyi resigned from the IOC in 1956 to protest the defeated Republic of China's control over the Chinese National Olympic Committee. The PRC boycotted the Olympics until 1979, when the IOC readmitted it and allowed the ROC to compete under the name "Chinese Taipei."
In 1962, Indonesia refused to invite Israel and the ROC when it hosted the Olympic and created the Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO). 2,200 athletes from 48 countries, mainly from the Global South, competed in GANEFO in 1963. Because of the CIA coup against Sukarno in 1965, there was never another GANEFO.
New Afrikan athletes founded the Olympic Project for Human Rights in 1967 and encouraged a boycott of the 1968 Olympics to protest Brundage's racism and antisemitism. They never actually boycotted the games, but Tommie Smith and John Carlos did a Black Power salute on the podium and the OPHR banned Rhodesia and South Africa from the Olympics.
Because of the Sino-Soviet split, China and many Global South countries joined the USA's boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. The Soviet Union and its allies boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, whose militarism led to the 1992 Rodney King rebellion.
China launched its bid for the 2000 Olympics but narrowly lost to Australia with a 45-43 vote. China hosted the Olympics in 2008 and again in 2022.[1]
International Olympic Committee[edit | edit source]
A tenth of the International Olympic Committee's members hold hereditary royal titles, and its only honor member is Henry Kissinger.[1]
See also[edit | edit source]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Charles Xu (2022-02-01). "Beijing 2022 and China’s Challenge to Sports Imperialism" Qiao Collective. Archived from the original on 2023-04-08.