No, but governments with authoritarian tendencies, especially those with a nationalist streak, put a hard focus on international sports competitions as a matter of national pride. Starting with the Nazi German Olympics being the first televised event in human history, look at the Russian doping scandals, or how the Hungarian prime minister has a gigantic stadium in his tiny home village.
Competing in sports is okay. So is being an obsessed fan. When the government becomes an obsessed fan, that’s when the weirdness starts.
President Xi Jinping, reportedly a big football fan, once expressed his hopes to turn China into a “global football superpower”.
It is not okay to say this in an official capacity.
Russia, North Korea, Eygpt, Saudi Arabia, China, and many more to name but a few. These democratically-elected human-right-loving governments heavily invest and spend out of their own pockets into national sports for two reasons:
1- Force ALL their athletes to spread national propagonda and pride of how amazing their country is.
2- Distract the oppressed confused angry youth to watch and criticize sports and athletes to distract them from the country’s corruption and human right records.
Russia waged several wars and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Dagestani people, and controlled Chechniya and all it governments, yet we see Khabib and other Dagestani UFC fighters cuddle up to Putin and Ramazan Kadyrov, when they know inside how much harm they did to their own people, but they were bought with millions of dollars. I can provide several examples showing the same exact thing with every country I mentioned. These governments intentional involvments in sporting leages have been documemted and have been happening since ever.
Are you implying that sports aren’t popular everywhere or that everywhere is a dictatorship?
No, but governments with authoritarian tendencies, especially those with a nationalist streak, put a hard focus on international sports competitions as a matter of national pride. Starting with the Nazi German Olympics being the first televised event in human history, look at the Russian doping scandals, or how the Hungarian prime minister has a gigantic stadium in his tiny home village.
Competing in sports is okay. So is being an obsessed fan. When the government becomes an obsessed fan, that’s when the weirdness starts.
It is not okay to say this in an official capacity.
No I didn’t imply neither of those. Please read these articles because its a global phenomena and have been going forever:
https://news.ku.dk/all_news/2022/10/dictatorships-use-sporting-events-as-a-smokescreen-for-political-repression/
https://hrf.org/a-history-of-sports-dictators-part-3-post-wwii-soft-power
Russia, North Korea, Eygpt, Saudi Arabia, China, and many more to name but a few. These democratically-elected human-right-loving governments heavily invest and spend out of their own pockets into national sports for two reasons: 1- Force ALL their athletes to spread national propagonda and pride of how amazing their country is. 2- Distract the oppressed confused angry youth to watch and criticize sports and athletes to distract them from the country’s corruption and human right records.
Russia waged several wars and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Dagestani people, and controlled Chechniya and all it governments, yet we see Khabib and other Dagestani UFC fighters cuddle up to Putin and Ramazan Kadyrov, when they know inside how much harm they did to their own people, but they were bought with millions of dollars. I can provide several examples showing the same exact thing with every country I mentioned. These governments intentional involvments in sporting leages have been documemted and have been happening since ever.