Faster, higher, stronger together
- By Heiko Khoo
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 11, 2012
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Muse are among the stars who have carried the Olympic torch on its lengthy tour of the UK. |
When Pierre de Coubertin initiated the modern Olympic movement in 1894, there were already a number of Internationalist organizations in existence. The Red Cross was established in 1863, for the neutral care and treatment of war casualties and the promotion of treaties and conventions to delimit war's impact. The Esperanto movement (1887) promoted Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof's common language, which aimed to break down national and racial barriers. Following the International Exhibition of 1862, which brought together French and British workers, the first International Working Men's Association was formed in London in 1864 with the objective of promoting and unifying the working class struggle in order to establish a socialist world. Karl Marx became the leading figure in the organization.
De Coubertin was closely associated with the ideals of Olympism, a belief that physical competition between the world's youth can act as a powerful tool to promote global peace and harmony.
His poem, Ode to Sport, includes the following lines:
"O Sport, You are Peace!
You forge happy bonds between the peoples
by drawing them together in reverence for strength
which is controlled, organized and self disciplined.
Through you the young of the entire world
learn to respect one another,
and thus the diversity of national traits becomes a source
of generous and peaceful emulation!
The famous linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky is among those who criticize the role played by mass competitive sport. He believes that nationalist flag-waving and cheering evokes a psychology more amenable to militarism than to pacifism. However, it is hard not to feel that the Olympic ideal - encapsulated in the opening and closing ceremonies - does encompass powerful visions of a world of common dreams, peaceful collaboration and mutual respect.
The revolutionary, rational and scientific approaches to knowledge and the future of society, fostered by the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, were the source of manifold universalistic aspirations and thinking. These transformative internationalist ideas were based on profound changes in human production.
Before the 18th century, it took 1,400 years to double global production. Thereafter, the curve of productive development rose rapidly - interlinking the world - but this process took place under imperialist dominance, where the terms of trade were controlled by the richest capitalist nations. As the conflicting interests of these powers came to a head, the Second Socialist International capitulated to nationalism and chauvinism and the workers' parties of each country supported "their own bourgeoisie" sending the workers to kill one another in the slime and mud of the European trenches of World War I.
Olympism, Socialism and Esperantism seemed doomed to fail as nations were shrouded in clouds of poison gas, and the screams of the suffering millions echoed in the ruins of civilization. Of the international organizations, only the Red Cross seemed relevant. But, just as the darkest moments are before the dawn, a truce across the English-German trenches in Christmas 1914 revived internationalist beliefs through an iconic act of fraternization. As the mutual singing of Christmas carols gave way to direct contact between opposing troops, an improvised football match took place between German and British troops, resulting in a 3-2 victory for the Germans. Here, in the midst of barbarism, was a poignant verification that Olympian ideals corresponded with a humanistic internationalism rooted in the condition of modern man.
The Third International, formed in 1919, linked together the newly formed Communist Parties of the world, but it rapidly became a tool of the Moscow bureaucracy rather than an instrument of revolutionary transformation. The degeneration of Communist internationalism was crowned by Stalin's dissolution of the organization in 1943.
The League of Nations - born out of internationalist sentiment at the end of the World War I - soon became an organ of big power interests rather than a body promoting self-determination and universal democratic ideals. For example, it did nothing to save China from humiliation and plunder, and this provoked the May 4th Movement in 1919. Later, the League of Nations was also completely impotent against the rise of Fascism.
Olympism's nadir was the Berlin Olympics of 1936, where the image of the heroic warlike energies of men, nations and races engaged in combat, seemed to fit quite neatly with the Fascist heroic ideal. The problem that Hitler faced - of "inferior" races winning some events - was, if Hitler had his way, to be eradicated in future games through racial prohibition.
In the post World War II era, transnational and multinational organizations multiplied in many domains. But powerful elites in each field often infiltrated the leading structures of these institutions and far-right anti-communist forces played a significant role in international sporting organizations well into the 1980s.
During the Cold War many scientific and cultural networks served as instruments of the two power blocks under the leadership of the USA or the USSR. The Olympics were part of a wider battleground in the cultural-political terrain; a battle which the Soviets won in terms of Olympic medals; but the West won in terms of the diversity of their cultural spectrum.
The huge success of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 stamped the rise of China firmly in the minds of the masses worldwide, emphasizing its profound on-going internal socio-economic progress and development to a world which had become accustomed to clichéd images of a China made up almost exclusively of cheap labor factories, manufacturing consumer goods for export.
London, which will host this year's Olympic spectacle, is currently the site of a plethora of cultural activities following the celebrations of the Queen's Jubilee and there is palpable excitement in the air as a result of constantly being the center of global attention. Britain played a huge role in the formation of modern world culture, particularly in terms of literature, the arts, sports and popular music. Today's London is probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world, and one can but hope that the internationalist psychology that this engenders will stimulate concepts and social movements that nurture new ideas and forms of international solidarity.
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/heikokhoo.htm
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