Pierre de Coubretin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, believed that the Summer Olympics would promote world peace.
This fantastical ideal always remained on paper.
The 1936 Berlin Olympics was pure Nazi propaganda. Athletes from all participating countries were required to give the Nazi salute.
At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israeli athletes were taken hostage by Palestinian attackers and died during the rescue effort.
In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 50 Western countries boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Sixteen Eastern Bloc countries, particularly the Soviet Union, boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics for security reasons.
The 2012 London Olympics is remembered for threats to ban Saudi Arabia for refusing to allow women’s athletes, and the interim solution of wearing judo uniforms under headscarves.
Algerian athlete Hassiba Bourmelka, who won gold in the 1,500 metres at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, received death threats from her home country for running in shorts, but managed to complete the event under a police blockade.
In 1996, there was a high-profile bomb blast in Atlanta by an anti-abortion activist, and in 1988 in Seoul, Cuba, Ethiopia and Nicaragua boycotted the Summer Olympics after North Korea was excluded from the games.
In 1956 Melbourne was boycotted by the Netherlands, Switzerland and Spain in protest of Soviet pressure on Hungary, and in 1965 Tokyo was boycotted by many African countries in protest against the racist South African regime.
UEFA, who, as you know, penalized Merih Demiral for making the Grey Wolf sign, should also remember Mexico in 1968, who posed on the podium with a Black Panthers sign to fight racism, and were not punished at all.
As a result, the Olympics have always been overshadowed by politics and have become a propaganda tool, far from contributing to peace.
Paris 2024 kicks off in a way that overshadows all of this.
Russia did not participate because it invaded Ukraine, but Israel, which occupied Gaza and committed genocide, did.
No one could explain this discrepancy, but something else strange happened.
Paris was once the capital of philosophy.
From Voltaire to Sartre, from Descartes to Simone de Beauvoir, we can name dozens of names that have left their mark on philosophy.
Paris was once a literary capital.
I could name dozens of them, from Balzac to Hugo, from Zola to Camus.
Paris was the starting point of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Revolution of 1789 influenced the whole of history with its slogan “Equality, Fraternity, Liberty”.
In 2024, the same Paris arrives, not with this World Heritage Site, but with the imposition of LGBT neoliberalism.
This issue goes beyond respecting individual preferences and appears as an attempt to frame the issue in collective terms, restricting freedoms from the brain to the genitals.
France allowed a female athlete, Sylla, to attend the opening ceremony wearing a scarf, provided she wore a hat – a homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Hz.”
He recreated a fresco of the Last Supper, featuring a bearded drag queen.
Although France’s area has not changed, the arrival of Presidents Macron and Sarkozy has made us realize once again that it is a country that is gradually shrinking.
This is a sad story of going from a Paris where being different is respected to a Paris where “my normal is your normal.”
Jesus’ Last Supper was also the collapse of Parisian philosophy…
