Under One Roof in Harmony: Olympic Games Protest Inside and Outside the Arena

There they go again. Beating and kicking and punching and fucking whipping. Spraying. Pulling by the hair, spiteful shunts. Trigger-happy security forces, full of resentment and rage at protesters – is that rage personal, or trained? Is it displacement for a whole load of shit they’ve got welling up? We might never know these swine. We recognize them though. That’s why I grew hot watching the video, wanting to tear the world apart and kick vital fluid out of the pricks…

But that’s their answer, not ours.

There’s a different kind of body language you can instantly see in the footage when a person in uniform, In Charge …of security and decency and the narrative… starts to feel Right and Rectified with every blow they hand out to an angry and loud crowd around them. Something seems to snap, and suddenly everything that’s wrong with the protesters’ viewpoint and their method of expressing it needs to be punched, to be made to hurt. Some vague and general sense of impotence has found a definite, easy target. Something in that picture has pushed the officer too far, though we can never quite see it.

It’s the terror and powerless anger of seeing vicious security personnel. Recruited and booted people who are all boiling rage. A different and offensive opinion warrants muscle, kicking colours out of the variation and shutting them and their argument up with pain. Where does the anger come from – the planned anger? Do some people join a force to get carte blanche on dishing out ‘whoops!’ injuries on people they’ve long enjoyed resenting, with group canteen/locker room relish in the aftermath? Planned hatred – can you imagine hating that far ahead, looking forward to feeling hate sometime in the near future, when you’re currently in a good mood?

The Olympic Games. There’s beautiful, crazy cats sailing through the air on boards and skis or perfecting their bodies to the ice or snow and international hopes and personal dreams seen in faces and tears and all that, and you’re still poised ready to boot the argument out of a protester. Insta-rage.

Supporters do it verbally too, of course, resenting the politization of their favourite events and national pride, maybe also resenting being made to feel guilty, or being caught out ‘not thinking enough’ while watching the Games. But that’s debate. Having a debate, arguing the rights and wrongs – that’s the whole point of holding a protest and being human and reasonable and responding to stimuli. But boots in first? Jesus. And every country does it, has done and will do. You’ll see it in Russia and Iran and Uganda and the States and here – smacks and kicks that never quite look ‘self defence’ or ‘tit for tat’ enough to reassure you that things aren’t as bad as the beardie weirdie liberals claim.

Pussy Riot were attacked by Cossacks and other Games security people as they filmed a music video in front of a Sochi 2014 billboard. “Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland," a song which took aim at Putin and the Sochi Games [explained English lyrics here]. They’d been filming for days, aggravating the security forces and being detained for various reasons. Cynics might say that the band and any protest they engaged in lost all relevance/news potency as soon as they were freed from prison in December, making their beating at Sochi quite unfortunate for Putin. It was pretty unfortunate for the band, too.

The man using the horsewhip has been indeterminately ‘held accountable’ it seems. But then so were Pussy Riot. The International Olympic Committee feels it’s "a shame if the Olympics is used as a political platform." But come on, maybe if politicians weren’t allowed any involvement in the Games, or were barred from making any mention of it in their speeches, ever (Cameron 2012, Putin 2014…), then perhaps it wouldn’t be a political event. As it is the Games is leaden with political significance. Countries are given political personalities in the coverage. If too many or not enough competitors win for a particular nation, their country is discussed as a homogenized political thing – Chinese athletes don’t do badly at the games; China does [newsreaders and Western audiences implicitly shudder at the imagined brutal, humourless training regime].

And there’s always the semantic battle for the Spirit of the Games. A sense of perfection is often described inside the arena: the perfection of sporting achievement and transnational competitiveness with no political gain or malice, a level playing field for SPORT and sporting brilliance alone. The best trained, the highest physical achievement, the greatest talent. It pits bodies and minds against each other. Ambition and aspiration tethered by nothing more than the evenly distributed physical limits of the world’s competitors. You know, that Daft Punk motto they have: “Faster, Higher, Stronger [Citius, Altius, Fortius].”

Perhaps deliberately offsetting the perfection of the arena are the problems happening off the field. There’s comedy in the Olympic village (stereo toilets?) and the troubled Games preparation (G4S), and the media coverage that will offer a quick nod to wider conditions outside in the host country – Sochi’s terrorism issues, environmental impact, gay laws; Beijing’s evictions and flattened homes, human rights record, air pollution… Enthusiastic athletic coverage from the arena always takes precedent, but everything outside is still fair game. Munich ’72 was shocking because it happened inside the arena – it happened to the athletes.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s black power salute in Mexico ’68 is such a powerful image because of the ‘sullied arena’ tension. "The nasty demonstration against the American flag by Negroes" as described by the chief of the IOC, the body that pressured for them to be sent home and banned. There were boos as they left the arena. But what made it so powerful is that they had respected the games and the arena, and their flag. They’d been those perfect competitors, those best athletes in mind and body in their quite literal field, beforehand. This is the sporting perfection everyone’s tuned in for, just with a conscience. The option was there to appreciate both if you wanted. You could have just fucking moved on to lapping up your next event if you really didn’t rate it. It was brilliant because their protest silently said everything it needed to with far less disruption to the Olympics or the evasive Spirit than the annoyed reactions that followed.

There’s always the semantic battle for the Spirit of the Games. The other people fighting for it, or perhaps just countering the aggressively neutral IOC with its own vocabulary, are those who attack the host country’s government over laws and practices that are not very Olympian (snatching at bits of the Charter here: “social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” … “preservation of human dignity” … “on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise” …). They urge those who are going to be involved in the Games to acknowledge the issues, appealing to sponsors, visiting politicians, athletes…

“These are clear breaches of the anti-discrimination Principle Six of the Olympic Charter,” said Peter Tatchell, referring to the Russian law banning ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations’ and the fat chance it gave openly-gay Russian athletes or spectators. He called for the UK government to boycott the Games and send a LGBT delegation instead, like Obama had. More Tatchell: “Gay athletes and spectators attending the Winter Olympics held in Sochi in 2014 could potentially face fines or jail sentences for affirming their support for LGBT equality" (only if they approach children, Putin later clarified).

Stephen Fry was at a protest in August:

“Just remember that what this is about is not a big abstract thing like the Olympic movement, or a big abstract thing like the nature of totalitarianism, it’s keeping in the head the lesbian being savagely raped and being told by the police go take a walk because it’s not a crime, it’s a corrective thing to make you straight. These things happen daily in Russia; the teenagers being humiliated by their friends, punched and kicked and forced into suicide at an enormous rate. That’s what we have to remember this is all about, it’s about allowing the gay people of Russia to grow up free and proud and happy and with the genuine sense of importance they deserve.”  

If you find yourself assigning ‘asking for it’ traits to Pussy Riot, or to other arrogant, inconsistent-sounding cop-pinioned protesters that turn up in the coverage of one of your favourite events, just please try to remember that you can transpose those hate-thumps in the beating video to the bodies of LGBT men and women in Russia (or the bodies of hated and grouped people in many other countries), ordinary citizens who are certainly not conspicuously making nuisances of themselves when the violence happens to them. The background’s what makes protests snag – hopefully for you and certainly for the people deploying the forces.

Take up our quarrel with the foe

Muslims clashed with police after burning a large poppy in protest at Britain's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which was timed to coincide with Armistice Day's two-minute silence.

Andy Bloxham, ‘Muslims clash with police after burning poppy in anti-Armistice Day protest’ The Telegraph, 11^th November 2010

Does it make you feel sick inside?

My stomach turned last November, but more out of anxiety towards the reactions it would produce on either side than from my own disgust. It’s like that deep breath you take as you scroll down to the comments section on a MailOnline article.

Last Armistice Day, as the two-minute silence was being observed near Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall, about twenty Islamic protesters began shouting: ‘Burn, burn, British soldiers, British soldiers, burn in hell.’ They added that British soldiers were terrorists and then burned two oversize plastic poppies (perhaps three - good old news facts). The protestors were members of the Muslims Against Crusades group. Also present were around 50 members of the English Defence League holding a counter protest. Both sides appear to have clashed with the police officers keeping them apart.

On 7^th March 26-year-old Amdadur Choudhury was found guilty of burning the poppies and fined £50. The prosecution said that the actions went ‘far beyond the boundaries of legitimate protest and freedom of expression.’ The District Judge, Howard Riddle, said: ‘The two-minute chanting, when others were observing a silence, followed by a burning of the symbol of remembrance was a calculated and deliberate insult to the dead and those who mourn or remember them.’ Choudhury was charged under the Public Order Act, which has thus labelled the chanting and poppy burning as actions likely to cause harassment, harm or distress to those who witnessed them.

You can imagine the reactions to the case and the court ruling: up in arms, in support, and most things in between. David Cameron said that that sort of behaviour had no place in a tolerant society and ‘many of us’ feel we should be making stronger statements to that end - stronger than a fine, perhaps.

The reactions to the poppy burning are similar to those that greeted the prospect of Islam4UK marching through Wootton Bassett with coffins representing Muslim victims back in January 2010. Gordon Brown commented:

Wootton Bassett has a special significance for us all at this time, as it has been the scene of the repatriation of many members of our armed forces who have tragically fallen. Any attempt to use this location to cause further distress and suffering to those who have lost loved ones would be abhorrent and offensive.

As it turned out Islam4UK cancelled the march a few days before it itself was banned under counter-terrorism laws. However, the reactions to the proposed march are interesting because, like the poppy burning case, they focus on the expectation and likelihood of outrage and thus render the protest deliberate incitement. The protests are not simply controversial activities that might offend or meet opposition on the day; they are acts that are ‘likely to cause… something’ and the organizers should or must have known that. Neither the protest nor those involved could proceed in innocence (‘a calculated and deliberate insult’ was the judge’s description of the poppy burning and chants). The protests thus become engineered acts of provocation, and by this understanding they are condemned, stopped or criminalized.

A recent ruling in the United States offers an instructive contrast to the poppy burning trial. The Supreme Court used a different set of criteria to judge a protest at a military funeral, and came to a different conclusion regarding protests that might (or rather may well) offend. On the 2^nd March it ruled that the First Amendment protects hateful protests at military funerals.

Members of the Westboro Baptist church have been protesting at military funerals. They have been present for hundreds of them, in fact, bearing signs like ‘America is Doomed’ and ‘God Hates Fags.’ They believe that, in letting American soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan, God is punishing America for its tolerance of homosexuality. You might have seen some of them on Louis Theroux.

The New York Times continues: ‘The father of the fallen Marine, Albert Snyder, sued the protesters for, among other things, the intentional infliction of emotional distress, and won a substantial jury award that was later overturned by an appeals court.’ Again, it is the self-evidence of the protest’s offensiveness - offensiveness ‘that no reasonable man could endure,’ a priori and obvious offensiveness - that is taken up here. The protesters knew that their protest would offend and so theirs is ‘intentional infliction.’ While in the UK this intentional infliction was an important factor in the court deciding on a (qualified) punishment for Choudhury, with Snyder v. Phelps the Supreme Court decided in the protestors’ favour and the ‘intentional infliction’ was the caveat to that ruling; the one dissenter to the vote, Justice Samuel Alito Jr., said he would not have protected what he saw as an intentional ‘vicious verbal assault’ on the Snyder family.

The Supreme Court ruling saw the primacy of free speech over the hateful, offensive nature of protests. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. mused on the former:

“It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain.” But under the First Amendment, he went on, “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.” Instead, the national commitment to free speech, he said, requires protection of “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

There are obvious differences between the cases, and certainly between an individual Marine’s military funeral and a nationally observed day of remembrance for those killed or injured on active service. However, the motivations behind the UK and US rulings are similar: attempting to balance freedom of speech with the insult/distress caused. For the UK, the small size of the fine (the maximum for such an offence is £1000) reflected the right to free speech, while the offence caused was strong enough to warrant a fine despite that right to free speech. In Snyder v. Phelps the right to free speech came above the offensiveness of the protest, and the ruling went with the protesters. The free speech was linked to public interest; the issues raised by the church members (if not their particular take on them) connect to wider debates within America. Giving the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Roberts noted that, while the protests might not have offered refined social or political commentary, ‘the issues they highlight—the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our Nation, homosexuality in the military, and scandals involving the Catholic clergy—are matters of public import.’

Presumably the poppy burning protest similarly raised issues of national importance, such as the UK’s military engagement abroad and the many debates surrounding it (again, it’s not the protesters’ particular take on the issues—which may well be abhorrent—but the issues themselves). However, the statements from the trial link public interest to observing Armistice Day rather than the anti war message of the protest. Judge Riddle noted the right of others to ‘express publicly support, sympathy and remembrance for the Armed Forces.’ Similarly Gordon Brown’s statement about Wootton Bassett noted the town’s significance for ‘us.’

What do the two rulings from this month leave us with? For America it is in the national interest to criticise war and America’s place in it, even if this clashes with commemorating the war dead. In the UK it is in our national interest to commemorate the war dead, even if it clashes with criticism of war. Personally I like to do both, and what does turn my stomach is a tendency in politics and media (and media politics) to use a discourse that sets off one against the other - or at best only discusses them exclusively of each other. Assuming that commemorating the war dead is antithetical to criticising war (and vice versa) is surely a mistake that the poppy burning protest made. For some, commemorating the dead is itself a criticism of war - just as, for others, it’s quite the opposite.

The newly Royal Wootton Bassett will come off the route of repatriation corteges when RAF Lyneham closes this year, so the town is presumably ‘safe’ from future protests and Guardian cartoons.