In 1936, the international community ignored the obvious anti-Semitism, racism and aggression of Adolph Hitler’s regime and allowed the Olympic Games to go ahead in Berlin. The Nazis were delivered a propaganda coup.
At the opening ceremony, Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said the Games were “a victory for the German cause.” The Manchester Guardian described the Games as a “Nazi Party rally disguised as a sporting event.” Three short years later, Hitler and his then-Soviet ally Joseph Stalin invaded Poland, launching the most murderous conflict in human history.
In 2014, for the first time in Europe since the end of World War II, a state tried to change international borders by force. Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Shortly afterwards, Russia invaded eastern Ukraine, launching a war of aggression that is in its fifth year and has cost Ukraine thousands of lives.
In June, the 2018 FIFA World Cup is scheduled to begin in Russia. As the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently said, “the comparison with 1936 is certainly right. It is an emetic prospect to think of Putin glorying in this sporting event.”
The parallels between the ‘36 Games and the 2018 World Cup are striking. Once again, a prestigious international sporting event is being held in a country ruled by a murderous dictator bent on destroying the rules by which the international community lives. Once again, an international sporting event will be used by a dictator to consolidate his grip on his country’s people. Once again, a dictator will use sport to try to gain international legitimacy.
The free world should not let that happen. FIFA needs to remove the World Cup from Russia and hold it in a country that does not violate international law, wage wars of aggression, commit war crimes or systematically dope its athletes.
The Putin regime’s actions demonstrate its utter contempt for the values and principles upon which the democratic world is based – in addition to invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin is supporting the vicious regime of Bashar al-Assad in its war against the Syrian people. Russia has shot down a civilian airliner, MH-17, murdering 298 innocent civilians.
The Russian regime systematically targets dissent at home, persecutes the LGBTQ community and seeks to undermine elections abroad. Just a few weeks ago, Russia perpetrated the first chemical attack on the soil of a NATO country, using a nerve agent against a former Russian spy in Salisbury, U.K., maliciously endangering the lives of hundreds of people.
Getting FIFA to remove the World Cup from Russia will of course be a tall order. The football federation is hopelessly corrupt, as has been demonstrated by the dozens of indictments of high-ranking FIFA officials by the U.S. Justice Department, Swiss authorities and others, on charges of bribery, kickbacks and influence peddling. Many of these charges stem from the process awarding Russia the cup in the first place. The former FIFA chief who brought the games to Russia, Sepp Blatter, is banned from FIFA activities for overseeing this pyramid of graft.
The international community has significant leverage over FIFA. States that respect democratic values should make clear their intention to boycott the games in Russia. If states who qualified – such as England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, South Korea, Japan, Spain – and many others – announce that their teams will not participate in a World Cup held in Russia, FIFA will have no choice but to move the event, or risk having it turn into a farce.
The free world must send a message to Mr. Putin that the threat to international peace posed by Russia will be met with a strong response. Removing the World Cup from Russia would be an important signal that Russia must change its behavior. We should not let history repeat itself. Don’t give Mr. Putin his Berlin moment.
Paul Grod is the national president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress; Andris Kesteris is president of the Central and Eastern European Council. The commentary above was published on May 2 on ipolitics.ca.