Guerrilla History - The World Cup: Sport, Politics, History, and Propaganda w/ Alexander Aviña

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

This episode of Guerrilla History comes out just in time for the start of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar!  In this episode, we bring back fan favorite Alexander Aviña to discuss the politics behind the World Cup, both historically and in this current edition.  We hit on topics of human rights, sports washing, and propaganda in both cases. We also talk about the sport itself and the prospects on the field for this edition of the biggest prize within The Beautiful Game! Alexander Aviña is historian at Arizona State University, and is author of the book Specters of Revolution:  Peasant Guerrilla in the Cold War Mexican Countryside (Oxford University Press, 2014, https://alexanderavina.com/specters-of-revolution/ ).  Find him on Twitter @Alexander_Avina, and listen to the episode we did with him on The Beautiful Game. You can support Guerrilla History by joining us at patreon.com/guerrillahistory, where you will also get bonus content!

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use

the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined unfortunately only by one of my usual co-host today. We are joined by Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing? Oh, hi, Henry. I'm doing well. Hopefully you are too. It's great to be with you and really looking forward to the discussion today. Oh, yeah. I'm a bit sick right now, but I know that this conversation that we're going to have with one of our favorite guests is going to get me back in the spirit of life generally. Unfortunately, we're not joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, who of course is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast as he had a scheduling conflict. He's currently recording something for Revolutionary Left Radio.

But as Brett admitted to us, this episode perhaps wouldn't be particularly well suited to him anyway. which we'll discuss in a little bit. We are joined by our esteemed guest, one of our fan favorites and one of our favorites as well, Professor Alexander Avina. Hello, Alex. It's been a while since you've been on the show. How's it going, guys? Thank you so much for having me back.

Totally. It was a pleasure, and I know that we're planning on bringing you back on again very soon for a different topic. But today, the topic is the World Cup. The last time you were on, Alex, I think we were talking about the beautiful game in general, which is to say football or as Americans would say soccer, today we're focusing on the World Cup itself, not only the current World Cup, but also the politics and social context of World Cups more generally in the history of the World Cup as a global phenomenon

since 1930. So as Brett said, he doesn't really know football and he had some very fun things to say in that previous episode that we did. So I highly recommend the listeners check out that episode on the beautiful game that we did about a year, year and a half ago, something like that. But yeah, we're going to be talking about the World Cup, which this year is hosted in Qatar. I should just note before I turn it over to Alex for opening thoughts that we are recording this episode on November 10th.

Many of the squads have just been released in terms of what players are being selected by their national teams for the World Cup. And we will be releasing this episode on November 18th, which is two days before the opening ceremony in first match, which is November 20th, 2022 in Qatar. So, Alex, can you give us a brief run through of what we should be looking for in this World Cup before we start talking about, you know, the social context of it and the history of World Cups generally like, what is this World Cup for people who are completely unacquainted with it?

Yeah, I think the first thing to know is that this, for the first time, a World Cup is not being held in the summer. It's being held in late November into late December. So already that marks this World Cup as unique. The second unique factor is that this is the first time a World Cup's being hosted in the Middle East. And that's been a topic of conversation since Qatar won the World Cup hosting. in some pretty, well, as we now know, it's a pretty, like, dubious, shady ways in the early 2010s.

So those are the two big ways that I think this World Cup stands out. The date, right, usually the World Cup is held in the summer. That scheduling usually gives professional players who are playing on club teams plenty of time to get some rest from their professional club duties before they transition to playing for the national teams that they are selected. to play on for the World Cup.

We don't have this time around, so if you've been following the news or if you're on social media, it's been quite frightening the last couple of weeks. If you're a football fan to just see players dropping due to injuries with their professional club teams and not being able to compete in the World Cup, which is for certain players, I think it's a tragedy, right? And for a player who's training for four years and trying to make it to the World Cup as a pinnacle of their career. I can't imagine how that feels.

So the one example that I'll highlight is the Senegalese star and Captain Sadiomane, who plays for Bayern Munich, the best club team in Germany. Last week went down with an injury. And as of recording, we don't know if he's going to be ready to compete in the World Cup, which would just be a huge hit for his national team of Senegal and for his entire country. and for the rest of us who like to watch good, creative, fun players. Yeah, and I'll pitch it over to Adnan in just a second. I just want to underscore something that Alex said for people that perhaps are listening to this episode

and don't really follow football at all. This is a tournament that happens once every four years, much in the way of the Olympics. But while many people will think of the time span of a player's career being 12 years or so, maybe 14, you know, on the very, very longest end. And teams like Germany, they make it to every World Cup. So a lot of these players will have many opportunities to play in the World Cup. Many of these nations are making, you know, their first or second appearance in the World Cup.

Players are not at the top of their game for 12 years in most cases. Like there is a window in which they are in contention for being selected by their national team and there are a limited amount of teams that make it to the tournament, 32 teams out of, you know, however many nations are represented in FIFA right now. So for many, many players, they have one shot at making it to the World Cup. You know, most players don't even get a shot at making it to the World Cup. But if you are going to get the opportunity to play in the World Cup, the odds are that you are going to have one opportunity. Players like, you know, Thomas Mueller from Germany, who's been in it for however, I think this is his fourth.

World Cup now, you know, or some of the Mexican legends that I'm sure you can bring up later Alex who played in four or five World Cups. This is not the norm. The norm is for a player to have one World Cup in order to shine. And so if you have a situation in which you're injured immediately before the World Cup without that little break where you can recover and potentially come back for it, that may be the only time that you have in your entire career, something that all players aspire to, to actually play on the global stage for your nation at the World Cup and try to lead your country to World Cup glory. So it is really just, again, to underscore what Alex was saying, I'm not really adding anything new, but just to underscore that it is an

absolute tragedy on the personal level, as well as for some of these nations like Senegal, who has a really good team. But Sadio Manet is absolutely integral to a team like that. And so the injury that he picked up, if he's not able to play, is not only devastating. stating to him. But, I mean, the hopes of the entire nation were really resting on him to be kind of that creative spark that the team would need within that core of players. Adnan, feel free to go in now. Oh, just, I wanted to just mention that I think, you know, it compares with the Olympics in the sense that it's one of these, you know, mega sports events held every four years. But in some ways, I think the World Cup is actually more popular in the sense that it is the

global game. We've talked about it before. It's the most popular game. And it is a tournament of qualifying national teams that compete with one another. And so the whole world really does watch this event of their favorite game. And just to underscore that point that it isn't, you know, many countries don't qualify. There are eight groups of four. So this year, there are 32 nations from all of the, you know, close to 200 nations that could compete and participate in their various different regional confederations through qualifying to get to this stage. My own current home country, Canada, had not qualified since 1984 for the World Cup. And this is, you know, a wealthy, you know, maybe not a large by population.

but a wealthy North American country in a, you know, kind of North American and Caribbean, North and Central American and Caribbean confederation of Concaf. But it's been very difficult for them to qualify. They happen to have a young team with a few talented players, and this is a new experience, not only to have qualified, but to actually have won, you know, qualification from Concaf. So it's a huge opportunity, and so it's being embraced very enthusiastically in Canada. People are quite excited because this is a well-liked team that has high hopes. They're in a really difficult group, so they may go nowhere out of the group stage.

But I think also the other interesting point Alex mentioned is also that it's happening at a strange time. the club football season is being interrupted here in November and, you know, I think it's a big question mark about what its consequences will be for the actual gameplay. I mean, is it going to be beneficial in the sense that everybody's in decent playing form and there's not a long gap between, you know, playing for their clubs and then going on playing for their national teams in the middle of their season, or will it be, you know, kind of poor play because national teams already suffer from not having as much opportunity for the players to work and train and play together tactically to develop? This is removing almost any real

opportunity for these national teams to get on the same program with players that play in clubs all across the world sometimes to come back together and now try and gel as a team for this very intense, you know, tournament. So that's going to be very interesting. And of course, the consequences on the club season, you know, like I'm a fan of Arsenal. And we're doing great right now. And but now we have to stop. Who knows what's going to happen in the World Cup? What's going to happen to players? And when they come back together, you know, will they have the same sort of form? So it's going to be a really quirky and interesting season. I guess interesting is one way to to sort of put it. So there's a lot to look forward to. But of course, it's happening in November

because you could not possibly hold this tournament in its traditional summer months because in Qatar, the temperatures will be averaging 40, 45 degrees, you know, centigrade. So that's, you know, 110 degrees or more, you know, Fahrenheit or around 110 perhaps Fahrenheit. So it would be impossible. There was some talk about air-conditioned stadiums, and I think even so, there still may be, you know, some, there's at least one stadium that has the capacity to, you know, air-condition outdoors, okay? If you can, you know, like, this is like a huge stadium and you're just air-conditioning the seats. I mean, it's unbelievable. So it's happening in November because it couldn't be held, you know, during the summer, which begs the question of why

in the world was Qatar chosen. And maybe that's what we'll get into later in this discussion. I'm glad that Adnan pulled back from Canada, because I thought it was going to turn into like this partisan like Canada hour, but I'm glad that you shifted the conversation away from your national team, Adon. I'll let you hop in in just a second, Alex. We'll talk, we'll definitely talk about stadiums in a little bit. And we'll be talking about why is the World Cup being hosted in Qatar also in just a second.

I just want to throw in a statistic to. kind of contextualize something that Adnan said in terms of the popularity of the World Cup. So I know many of our listeners are based in the United States and they perhaps don't understand how popular football is globally in terms of soccer for those of you listening in the United States. So just as for comparison sake, you all are familiar American listeners with the Super Bowl. If we look at the viewership of the 2021 Super Bowl, there was 91.6 million viewers. for the 2022 Super Bowl, 99.18 million. So just shy of 100 million viewers in each case.

Over the course of the tournament in 2018, the World Cup tournament 2018, which was hosted here in Russia, there was 3.5 billion people that tuned in to the tournament. And the projections for this tournament are 5 billion people. Now, the global population is just about to hit 8 billion people, as we're speaking like it's supposed to be within the next week

that the global population is supposed to hit 8 billion so 5 billion out of the 8 billion people will be watching this tournament at some point of its run like this is an absolutely like astronomical number something that you cannot comprehend the popularity of this tournament

if you are trying to even compare it to the Super Bowl like if you're trying to think of what kind of event is this Super Bowl versus World Cup and you're thinking that they're even somewhat equivalent, you are miles away from the actual popularity of the World Cup. So I just wanted to contextualize that a little bit. Alex?

Yeah, and I've seen estimates that the World Cup final will probably draw over a billion viewers just for that final match alone. So that's huge. I mean, those statistics are really useful, Henry. Now, I'm glad Adnan, you brought up the comparison with the Olympics, right? Because I think that's like one of the more red-old, like one of the easier, comparisons to make for a largely American audience in terms of what the World Cup signifies, the structure, like the length of it in terms of, you know, weeks.

But the one big difference is that actually in the World Cup, like global South nations have a shot of winning. Whereas in the Olympics, it's we see who always wins in the Summer Olympics, right? And it's almost like the Olympics, especially when you're doing like the metal count, it's like a reinforcement of like these certain global hierarchies that exist in political power, economic power, etc. Whereas in the World Cup, I mean, some of these global South nations have a legit chance to win. And for this current edition in 2022, they, you know, Brazil and Argentina represent two of the favorites, absolute favorites. So for that reason, I always, I've always, you know, obviously I'm a big fan of a football of soccer, but this is one of the

reasons also as I've gotten older and thinking about the differences, trying to politically and socially contextualize these massive sporting events, I think that's one big difference that sets the World Cup apart from something like the Olympics. The Olympics, I think, reinforce certain global hierarchies, whereas the World Cup, in terms of competition on the field, is a bit more free-flowing. Yeah, and I definitely want to turn us towards talking about the stadiums and why it's in-cuts or this tournament. But, you know, Alex, the last thing that you just said in terms of global South nations having the opportunity to actually win this tournament. In many cases, doing so.

I mean, Brazil is the most successful team in the history of the World Cup. They've won five World Cup tournaments. The next most are Italy and Germany with four each. So, you know, Brazil is on a level different than everybody else. Something that just jumped to mind, and this is perhaps just a throw away a little bit before we turn to a more pressing topic is the Little League World Series, I always find the structure of the Little League World Series really funny. For people who are unfamiliar, it's a baseball tournament for like children up to 12 years old.

And the way that it works is all of these various teams from different localities within the United States will play each other on like one side of the bracket. And then all international teams play each other on the other side of the bracket. So the United States is guaranteed of having a team in the championship match every single year, whereas like every other baseball youth baseball team in the entire world has to compete for that other spot. And of course, it's usually a team from like Japan or Taipei or there's some Caribbean teams that do pretty well sometimes. But in terms of teams from the global south, you know, they say that they get to participate because it's the Little League World Series. But the way that that tournament is structured, it entrenches the fact that the United States wins almost every tournament when they don't.

It's a country, a team from Japan or something like that that wins the tournament. But Adnan, you mentioned about stadiums, you know, when the bid for this World Cup was awarded, Qatar only had one stadium that was suitable for hosting a World Cup event. Now, listeners, you have to understand that this, there's a lot of teams in a World Cup. There's 32 teams that we're trying to get through this. this sporting event, and you need a lot of stadiums in order to host this event, like usually eight, eight massive stadiums with 40,000 plus capacity in terms of spectators. Qatar had one acceptable stadium, and it's not a huge country.

Like the population of Qatar is not big. Geographically, it's not very big. The club football scene in Qatar, while the teams are relatively rich, it's not. not exactly a, you know, like a hotbed for, for football. So Adnan, why, why is this World Cup being host in Qatar? And I'm asking you this because you're going to be there. Well, yes. I mean, I think there's a lot of reasons why.

And it's because, but fundamentally, it's because the Qataris really wanted to host it as part of their overall geopolitical. soft power, sport washing, you know, sports diplomacy efforts and goals, which is the World Cups, it's, you know, among other events that they've hosted, the fact that they've bought Paris Saint-German, you know, football club in capital of a major European country, that is Paris, they have been working on a kind of strategy as other Gulf states have as well of using sports in forms of diplomacy, extending influence, improving the image of the of the country. And they put together a bid that made all kinds of promises, you know, it was going to be the green, green, you know, they were going to build all these new stadiums and not have them be

white elephants because, A, first they were going to be, you know, green and carbon neutral. And secondly, they were going to, you know, dismantle them and send them to, you know, global South countries in need of infrastructure. And so they created this whole fantastical idea that holding it in the smallest country ever to host it that didn't have the infrastructure at the time was nonetheless still going to be, you know, something good for the world. And of course, as has come out, you know, the whole bid structure and decision-making for apportioning World Cups by FIFA, the governing body for football, you know, internationally, has come under extreme scrutiny because there's been all kinds of corruption that's been

demonstrated and proven in these decisions and how they've been made. And, you know, they manage somehow to convince enough, you know, of the decision makers to award it to Qatar, despite the geographical, infrastructural, the climate, you know, challenges. And, you know, I don't think many would have agreed if they thought that it was going to be held in November, but the bid was given to them under the promise that it would be held during the summer, but that they would somehow managed to create climate-controlled conditions enough that it wouldn't be dangerous, you know, or, you know, extremely unpleasant to even watch, you know, a match, much less to play one, which would be, you know, disastrous for people's health. They claimed that they were going

to, you know, air-condition these stadiums and so on. It's, of course, completely impractical. And as a result, they had to make all kinds of adjustments. But I think if you look at the geopolitical kind of component and dimension, you see that during that period, Sarkozy, who was president of France, for example, really supported the bid. There were certain political figures that encouraged and even instructed representatives from their country to vote in favor of this that had a lot to do, I think, with the investments that Qatar had made, you know, in France. And of course, you know, you also have to think of these Gulf states with their enormous carbon, you know, fossil fuel-based wealth as being real outlets for extra kind of capital, you know, in the global system that they circulate in places like Dubai.

There's a lot of kind of banking and, you know, other kinds of ventures that are financed through so much money. comes through Dubai, and also the infrastructural projects, you know, all these, you know, campuses, you know, university campuses. I mean, I'm a professor, Alex, and so many of the elite universities in the global north, whether it's in North America or Europe, have established satellite campuses and various other affiliations educationally in the Gulf. And that's just a small index of the way in which global capital is being funneled into these places for these huge infrastructure projects, as I mentioned. And so the building of like seven new stadiums is actually just an example of the kind of gross overproduction of infrastructure

in these unsustainable sorts of ways as a result of all this surplus surplus capital. that's circulating as a result of the sales of fossil fuels and as a kind of zone in which you can see it in culture as well. Huge museums that have been built. I'm looking forward to seeing some of these museums, but these are collectors, the people who, you know, the various emirs and so on have become big collectors of global art. They've created big museums to house them. And it's just this sort of element of excess. in the global capitalist order that is distilled in this small region of the world. So anyway, those are just some initial kinds of thoughts contextually about Qatar and how it fits

into this kind of system because FIFA itself as the organizing body is one that is dedicated to maximizing the kind of global rents that it receives from corporate partnerships, Partly because, as you said, Henry, you know, five billion people are expected to watch it. It is the biggest, you know, sport event in the world, and there's huge amounts of money as a result, huge amounts of money and influence and marketing potential as a result. So these corporate partners are very, very eager to be involved. FIFA squeezes them for huge fees and wields a huge amount of influence. as a result of being able to parlay and make decisions that are, you know, many, many billions and hundreds of billions worth in terms of when they award a World Cup.

Alex, what do you want to add? I would add, since Adnan focus on the capital part, I will say something about labor, right? So to build all those stadiums, Qatar really had to ramp up a system of procuring contract labor labor from other global south nations and they had to ramp it up right so i've seen statistics that something like 80 to 90 percent of katar's populations are actually these laborers that come from bangladesh india nepal the philippines pakas like throughout the global south nigeria um and these tens of thousands of workers beginning in the early 2010s after katar won the bid they're the ones who made who built all these stadiums who built all the and not just the

stadiums, which if you've seen photographs of some of these stadiums, these things look amazing, right, at these as monuments. But they also had to build an entire infrastructure to, you know, hosting where, you know, living quarters for the fans to just to create places of consumption and luxury and enjoyment for the, the tens of thousands of fans that are going to travel to Qatar like Edna to enjoy the World Cup. Just it was, it was, and it is a meat grinder for labor from the global south. And initially, when they started building the stadiums, there was something in place called the Khafala system, which was this contract labor system where somebody living

in Bangladesh would apply for a job through a labor contracting company. That company would provide a work visa. In many instances, these individual workers had to take thousands of dollars out so they could pay for this process. So already on their way to work in Qatar, they're already in debt. So it's like this postmodern debt peonage system that is already built into this process

of making the World Cup possible guitar. And the working conditions have been absolutely atrocious. There's estimates of something like 10 to 15,000 workers who have died from the moment they started building the stadiums till today. And there was actually so much public outcry in 2014, 15, and 16 and 17 that at least officially the Katari government said, okay, we've abandoned the kafala system, workers, you know, one of the things that workers had to do when they arrived in Qatar was that they had hand over their passports, right? So they were, and they could only work for one company. So they, since 2017, the Qatar government has instituted a series of reforms, mild reforms and reforms that did make an impact on the lives of workers who were there. But nonetheless, like this is just a meat grinder. And in many ways, like Qatar is like a hyper example of what happens in the global labor.

system to begin with, right? They have a system for it of procuring labor throughout the world because Qatar like these other small principalities in the Middle East, like they are a tiny elite population, but they depend on thousands and hundreds of thousands of workers from the global south to do everything for them. They just have, they're open about it and they have a contract system, right? In places like the U.S., the U.S. depends on a similar type of migrant labor. they just look the other way and pretend like it doesn't exist, but it's still an essential component of the U.S. economy, similar with Europe. So the labor system, even though these reforms got passed in 2017, things have gotten

mildly better, they're still not able to organize unions, they're not able to collectively bargain. They're able to switch jobs while they're in Qatar, but that's been a really incomplete haphazard process. There's been multiple reports of workers who have tried. tried to switch jobs and their work visa gets stripped and they're sent out of their country. They're sent back to their country of origin. But the biggest thing is they're not allowed to form unions, right?

So the working conditions are terrible. In the summer, it's 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It can reach to those heights. There's been reports of workers who have died due to heat stroke or dehydration, even though I was watching a documentary that ESPN put out recently where they interviewed the head medical doctor of a hospital where he said in the past 11th, years we've had no death sled due to heat stroke or dehydration from the workers which was like come on man that's just that's unbelievable um so yeah so it's it's just interesting to think about

the the labor right it's that went into making this world cup possible it's almost like bertolt breck's a poem about questions from a worker who reads like that the workers are the ones who made this world cup even possible these stadiums are built on 15 thousand dead labors. And, you know, they're living in communities outside of the cities where Qataris live. They live in places called labor city. So at least the Qataris are very clear about how this system and this arrangement of exploitation is, is arranged and organized. And again, as Adnan made the point, right, it's what makes this all possible is this carbon-based fossil fuel

economy that I think Qatar might have I think they're in the top five in the world when it comes to natural gas production so yeah that's what I will add to it is it's and this is one of the things that makes it really personal conflicting

to me right because I love I love football I love soccer I grew up playing it I'm obsessed with it I watch it all the time but this one is really challenging even though this one doesn't escape you know every World Cup

it takes there's a political context despite what FIFA may have us believe but there is like something about the labor aspect to this World Cup and how in this story this World Cup even was made to happen in Qatar that I think is a little different from the previous ones, although we can talk about some other pretty heinous examples of sports washing and other World Cups. Yeah, I definitely want to talk about sports washing in just a second. But again, just to underscore some things that were being said here, I feel like this is my main

job on the show at this point is like just to drive. home messages that you guys are putting out like really, really critical stuff. And I want to make sure that people are not missing any of this. So, Alex, you talked about how the majority of the population of Qatar is foreign workers. This is true. I was looking at the population statistics of Qatar. If we look back at 2005, which is not like a million years ago, right? 2005 is not that long ago. The population of Qatar was only 865,000 people. If we look today, it's about 3 million. And according to government estimates from Qatar itself about 85% of the population of Qatar is foreign workers. So like, just think about that for a second. Like 85% of the people living in a country

are foreign workers living there. This is something that's just crazy to think about. And they're only there to work, right? Like that's the, that's like the, that's like the apocalyptic future sci-fi aspect of it. Like, they're just there to work completely separated from civic, political, and social life in Qatar. And the working conditions. And this is another thing that absolutely needs to be underscored. So, Alex, you mentioned the Khafala system, the system of, you know, basically tying these workers to their employers. And, you know, they were entirely dependent on their employers in many, many ways. This system was in place, you know, they loosened some of the restrictions in 2016, but the system was still in place until 2020.

And now Qatar has been saying things like, we've abolished. the Khafala system. We have a more humane labor system now. Okay, well, let's just think about this for a second. Like this system of basically having absolutely no labor rights whatsoever and the migrant laborers being absolutely tied to their employers. The World Cup was granted to Qatar in 2010. That means they had 10 years of labor that was conducted under the Khafala system, six years under the really, really harsh version of it. And then four years under this like slightly relaxed Kefala system. It was only after a full 10 years when the vast majority of the infrastructure work had already been completed that they decided that they would, you know,

nominatively get rid of the system anyway and say, look how wonderful we are. Look how great we are for labor rights. Now, Alex also brought up that there's tens of thousands of laborers that have died in the construction of these infrastructure projects, not only the stadiums themselves, but hotels, roads, bridges, all of these things that are associated with hosting a World Cup. There was government sources that showed that 6,500 foreign workers from just India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka died between the awarding of the World Cup in 2021. 6,500, and that was from pretty reliable statistics from these various governmental sources. So the fact that there's at least 10,000, if not many times that, is not at all out of the question. But of course, Qatar always says, you know, he had a congenital heart problem.

Like this is why he died. It wasn't the fact that he was working when it was 43 degrees Celsius outside and he was carrying, you know, 45 kilograms of cement on each shoulder. going to, you know, put up a facility. It was this congenital heart problem that he had, things like that. And Qatar claims that they have these protections for their workers where, you know, if it's a certain temperature, they can't work. And it's entirely up to, this is, I think, based off the 2016 reforms, there was one, one statute where if a worker felt that they were not doing well under, you know, the environmental

mental conditions that they were able to stop without any punishment. But, I mean, okay, really, these people are completely tied to their employer still. And you tell them, no, really, if you think that the heat is getting to you, you can just down tools and sit there until you feel better. You know, you can get out of the heat and the shade, no matter what your employer is telling you. These people are tied to their employer. They don't really have that say.

And so it's insane to try to believe what's coming out from the government of Qatar saying, you know, no, we really care about the rights and the safety of the workers when we can see documented cases from multiple governmental sources showing that we have thousands, if not tens of thousands of migrant laborers dying in the construction of these projects for the consumption of foreign audiences. Like this is not for Qatari audiences. Like the World Cup being hosted in Qatar 2022 is not for the native Qatari's, you know, the whatever, 15% of the population that are native Qatari's. It's not for the 3 million people there, including all of the migrant laborers. It is for consumption by people like me, Alex, Adnan, and you that are listening

that are going to tune into the tournament as well as the up to 5 billion people that are going to tune in. This is for your consumption, our consumption, and these deaths and the violations of, you know, human rights, these are. are due to the fact that we're going to be tuning in, you know, it's something to consider. And beyond, right? I think, like, Qatar, I mean, so obviously the World Cup is a big deal for Qatar, but this, this system is going to continue beyond, right? I mean, they have a certain model of development that it's built on, like, perpetual construction,

right? They have an idea of where they want to go as a country in terms of, like, physical and infrastructural development, right? So this labor system existed before the World Cup bid was, was one in 2010. and it's going to exist after the World Cup is over and the world tunes out in terms of what's happening in the Qatar, right? So it's, yeah, I think these are all really, I think we need to highlight these things, right,

to provide like a broader context of what made this World Cup possible and to think about some of these important questions, right, even as we consume this product as avid fans, it's really important thing to highlight and to think about beyond just, you know, a lot of the stuff I've read online, it will take like a typical liberal bent and be like, and some of the, some of the reporting will actually accept what the Katari government is saying about these reforms. Another big issue that I didn't mention is like wage theft. So if these workers actually go and demand their wages, what some of the contract, what some of the companies will do is just kick them out of Qatar, take away their work visa and they're back in Bangladesh, minus six months of wages on top of the debt. debt that they incurred to even get that work visa to begin with. Like, these are the stories I grew up listening to it because my parents were undocumented

migrants. People would go work at a restaurant or agricultural field. And when it came to get paid, the owner would just call, you know, border patrol. And they'd take the people back to Mexico and they didn't have to pay. Right. So it's so, but I also don't want to like highlight. There are certain like unique things in this system with, when as it pertains to Qatar and these Gulf principalities.

But this is like like a like a like a like a. highly exaggerated example of what's going on globally, right? So I think this can lead us to critical positions and perspectives that we can apply to other social formations in countries. I think that that's a really important point to take up here for a second, before we turn to sports washing. And Alex, I'll kick it back to you in a second, and then we'll transition to sports washing. But you mentioned liberal coverage of these sorts of events. And I want people to guard themselves against like holier than thou liberalism when viewing this World Cup compared to other World Cup tournaments. Of course, the human rights violations in the hosting

of this World Cup are obscene. And these are things that need to be called out. I mean, we're doing that right here. We're like not beating around the bush. That's kind of the main focus of this episode is criticizing the fact that the World Cup is going to be hosted in Qatar under these under these conditions. But this is far from the only World Cup in which there was human rights violations carried out against the people that were responsible for putting the tournament on. And this is far from the only case in which there was, you know, we'll use the dreaded word regime that had many human rights violations that was being granted the opportunity

to showcase themselves to the world. And this may, you know, rankle some more. you know, less radical listeners, let's say. But the next World Cup after this is a joint bid. It's the United States, Canada and Mexico that are jointly hosting the World Cup in 20. Wait, wait, we can't criticize that one, Henry. Henry, we can't criticize that bid. Right.

This is what I'm saying. I'm kidding. We have this. No, no, I know you are, Alex. But this is like what we hear a lot. We have this like liberal holier than now. Let's criticize Qatar for the human rights. violations that they're perpetuating against their workers. And then you even have some people going

as far to say, like, let's criticize Qatar for their role within Yemen, for example. But when it comes to talking about the fact that the United States, Canada, and Mexico are going to be jointly hosting the 2026 World Cup, I have not seen any criticism of the human rights violations that are carried out by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. None, even in relatively like progressive media or things like that. Think of Democracy Now. I know I crap on Democracy Now on this show a lot. And I mean, I think that they're useful for like liberals to tune into to try to get a little bit different perspective. But democracy now, they're not a sports network, but they have talked about the Qatar World Cup and violations that have been carried out by the regime in Qatar. They have

not talked about the fact that the United States is one of, if not the biggest human rights violator globally and has been for decades, if not more than decades. And there's no criticism of the fact that the World Cup is being hosted in the United States in 2026. There's no talk about like, look at what the United States has done in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Yemen, you know, this is American bombs that are being dropped on Yemen. Look at what the United States has done throughout Latin America, throughout East Asia. They're not talking about, look at what Canada has done with. regards to the extraction and exploitation by their mining companies in the global south.

They're not talking about, you know, there's many human rights violations that we could go through and people should just go and listen to past episodes of guerrilla history where we actually focus on those issues. The point is, is that we have to guard ourselves against thinking that, one, this is the only World Cup in which there is violations taken against workers that are putting on the World Cup, but that, two, this is the only World Cup, even in the modern era. one was in Russia. I mean, really does more need to be said than that. Like, Qatar is not a unique example of a country that does very, very, I'm not going to use the E word, but very not nice things to other countries in the world that has had a World Cup host and it has been able to

showcase itself on the global stage. And the next one is another example of that. Like, let's not give the United States a pass and not give the FIFA World Cup selection committee a pass and saying, you know, we'll let the United States highlight themselves as this beacon of, you know, sports hosting. Anyway, that's just a little rant on my part. I think there's an important point, Henry. We, you know, we definitely want to avoid some of the even like orientalist critiques of Qatar that tends to pop up in some of the liberal media critiques of what's going on in in that country in the run up to the World Cup. But yeah, no, I, I, I, think we can never divorce the political, social, and economic concepts from these World Cups.

And I think, you know, especially when something, especially when a mafia like FIFA, which is the international federation that controls global soccer is involved. I mean, they're just one more node of power within the global power system, right? And they're not, you know, they're not selecting these different World Cup hosts out of some, you know, generous or magnanimous impulse, right? I mean, so I think you're exactly right. And also, every World Cup has been problematic. I mean, that's just soccer and World Cups exist within the world. There's no way to extract the joy that we feel watching this sport from broader context, right?

So this is the issue of sports washing is, you know, a lot of wonderful scholars and critical theories that I, that I follow and admire have been talking about this for a long time, right? The guy, the great Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galliano, who we talked about when we did. the first soccer episode like that's kind of like he's my guide in terms of how to think about some of these things right and we always get in any sort of sports situation we will get these messages particularly here in the u.s like when the black lives matter movement reemerge in 2020 and the NBA players threatened to go on strike there was a lot there was a big push to say just shut up and dribble right a lot of the media in the u.s and some political factions telling NBA players to just shut up and dribble FIFA just did this

a couple of weeks ago, sending a letter to all the 32 World Cup teams who qualified for the World Cup saying let's not drag football into all these different ideological battles and cultural wars. And it's like, for me, that was a sign of desperation on FIFA's part, but also it's an impossible thing. Right. So every single World Cup has had a sports washing aspect to it, depending on what angle you take. And there's questions of degree as well that we can talk about, right? 1934. 1934 World Cup was held in Italy. Who was in power in Italy in 1934, right? Benito Mussolini. That was sports washing and highlighting fascist Italy. That was then or about to, I think, I can't remember my, can't get my history straight,

but Italy won that World Cup as well. And Italy won as well, right? So Italy, right, and as they were preparing to or actually in the midst of engaging its genocidal invasions of East Africa, right, North and East Africa. In 1970, the World Cup was awarded to Mexico. Two years earlier, when Mexico became the first global South nation to host a Summer Olympics, a week before those Summer Olympics occurred, the Mexican military massacred hundreds of students in Mexico City on October 2nd, 1968. By the time the World Cup comes in 1970, the Mexican government is launching its dirty war

against armed revolutionary movements and leftist political movements in Mexico that would continue throughout the decade. In 1973, right, we have Pinochet's overthrow of democratically elected President Salvador Allende in Chile, where on September 11th, 1973, where the Chilean military literally used the national soccer stadium in Santiago, Chile, as a concentration camp. So while all this is happening in September of 1973, the Chilean soccer national team has to play a qualifying match to try to get into the 1974 World Cup. They're trying to get that last spot. Who do they have to play to claim that last spot, the Soviet Union? And they were supposed to play a match in October of 1973 in the national stadium that was also doubling as a concentration camp and as a torture camp for anyone that the Pinochet regime deemed as an enemy. So we get this scene in October, I think in November of, well, in October of 1973, FIFA actually sends people to the stadium.

And FIFA says, oh, no, everything looks good here. Here, there's nobody being tortured in the locker rooms and the showers. There's nobody being held in the stadium. The game can proceed. And the Soviet Union, in an act of solidarity, refused to send their soccer team to play in the sham match in November of 1973, where you actually had the Chilean national team line up. The referee blew the whistle and a forward dribbled the ball across the field, scored the goal. And that's how Chile was able to go to the 1974 World Cup.

And the Soviet Union refused to participate in this farce. In 1978, I think it's one of the most egregious, at least from the perspective of Latin American historian. In 1978, the World Cup was awarded to Argentina. Then, in the midst of other than maybe Guatemala, the site of the worst Cold War dictatorship in Latin America. The Argentine military took power in a bloody coup in 1976. They would remain in power until 1983. And they really used the 1978 World Cup as a huge exercise. in sports washing.

You had their leader was a general who invited Henry Kissinger to be a guest of honor because apparently Kissinger was a huge soccer fan. And the, this general, General Rafael Videl, I had the audacity to say, we are playing this World Cup under, quote, a sign of peace. While his dictatorship was in the process of disappearing more than 30,000 people, when people who were being tortured and held in the nation, mechanic school, a few blocks away from El Monumental Stadium, people being tortured could hear people cheering from the soccer stadium. And just like in 1934, Italy, who won the World Cup in

1978, Argentina? Right. So this, these things, this is a, this is, what's happening in Qatar in 22 is not an aberration. It's, it's systemic, right? It's part of something that with very few exceptions has characterized the World Cup as a sporting event from its inception in Uruguay in 1930. That is a brilliant retailing of the history, the dirty history, you could say, of World Cups and, you know, military regimes and dictatorships and so on. I mean, I think one thing that's interesting to get back to connecting what you were just discussing with what Henry mentioned about some of the kinds of double standards in attention that's portrayed around the award of hosting of the World Cup and the fact that we don't, you know, nobody's organizing

a boycott of the U.S., Canada, Mexico World Cup because of the egregious human rights abuses of the U.S., Canada, etc. But that is that, you know, when we talk about it, sports washing as a concept, it seems to be that authoritarian or fascistic, you know, countries are condemned as sports washers, whereas when it's, you know, kind of hosted by, you know, liberal capitalist democracies of the global north, we talk about kind of like soft power and cultural diplomacy. through sport and the way in which you're, you know, projecting a positive image of a society and the values that sport can, you know, bring people together. Suddenly we get all of these pines to, you know, the Olympics and the World Cup is like bringing

people together and we can celebrate athletes getting to know one another and political conflicts potentially being mediated by, you know, new connections being formed. And it really seems to me that in all these cases, there's actually much more of a connection between the use of cultural forms of power, that they're all sort of sports washing in their own sort of way. And that is, you know, something that's interesting about these cultural forms, about sport in general, about the way in which, you know, it is sort of the bread. And it goes back to the Romans, you know, bread and circuses, you know, and it reminds me, for example, if we were thinking about World Cups, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, where this was seen as momentous because it was the first one on the African continent in much the same way that the Qatar is, you know, the first in the Middle East. But that was seen as a real kind of reward, you know, for the post-apartheid, you know, government and society of South Africa. Africa to sort of reward them with a World Cup to be the first African hosts. And yet, in some ways, it really was a marker of South Africa's integration into the neoliberal global economy.

And, you know, so many things about the way in which it was actually administered. I've read quite a few things that studied about the way, you know, whole neighborhoods were, you know, cleaned up, you know, in order for it to be acceptable and appropriate. And I think also some new elements came in of these sort of special security courts that FIFA was responsible for, where national sovereignty and the laws of South Africa and enforcement of those laws was suspended in favor of a kind of temporary political, I mean, police and judicial regime under FIFA's auspices, partly because one of the ways in which, you know, kind of conservative criticism of the post-apartheid South Africa dwelt on how dangerous it was. It was crime was rampant. And, you know, to burnish its

image and also to be acceptable as a place for global corporate. capitalism to, you know, stage its, you know, its event, you know, for the world, they had to sacrifice so many things about local priorities, local, you know, jurisdictions in order for FIFA to, you know, be able to convince these global sponsors that you could bring, you know, your executives, you know, and people who you want to shm. moose and do all of these deals and corporate sponsors to make South Africa, or at least spaces within South Africa, you know, acceptable to this kind of cosmopolitan global corporate elite that in a way you had these spaces that were restricted from real, you know, common

everyday people, South Africans from the real conditions of those neighborhoods. And it made me think, of course, it's nothing like, you know, apartheid, but that's sort of what, you know, when we're talking about Qatar, we're talking about a kind of labor apartheid, you know, where these migrant workers are quarantined away from society, from civic space, from, you know, rights, you know, politically, socially, economically. You know, and so there is a kind of, you know, apartheid that's happening in a hierarchical society like, you know, these Gulf states that is only exacerbated by, you know, preparing it in order to be an acceptable. stage for this theatrical performance of, you know, the World Cup, a great sporting competition.

And that happened in 2010, also in South Africa. And in the end, the infrastructural commitments demanded by FIFA, you know, these bids, the countries are competing with one another to attract, you know, the bid, you know, for their bid to be successful. And as a result, they make so many concessions, you know, infrastructural investments, some of which have no popular basis or role or function in society, no benefit to anybody. White elephants, labor kind of, you know, abuses, as you've been pointing out. And the actual society gets very little benefit, you know, economically, because these are all like, you know, circulating, you know, in a global kind of system and very little gets actually absorbed in the local, in the local economy.

and what does get absorbed is usually by this kind of elite that has been sponsoring the bid and, you know, benefits greatly, you know, from it. And yet, I think the other side of it is this kind of, you know, the sense of national pride to be a host. And in talking with South Africans, that we had some South African students and other students, international students from Africa in 2010, and we were holding a symposium on the World Cup in South Africa. And people were, you know, providing all of this critique of what's going on. And they said, you know, but we're so proud, you know, to have it, you know, like it means so much to us to, after years of suffering, you know, the racism, the struggle to finally be, you know, a country among countries and to be, you know, the host. And so this is what makes sports washing actually so effective is because, you know, sport really engages, you know, these emotion. these sentiments, both for, you know, people who enjoy and love the game and the competition, but also this sense of national pride to be a host.

You know, so it is a very interesting phenomenon. And I think that's part of the reason why it works is because of that emotional transfer and that sense of pride. And this is something very attractive to, you know, countries in the global south that have been suffering, you know, the inequalities of the global system, whether under colonialism or under neocolonialism and neoliberal globalization. So it's, you know, it's got its contradictions, you know, that have to, I think, really be appreciated in a comprehensive way to really understand how and why this whole sports washing system, you know, seems to work. You know, I just want to mention about the white elephants that Adnan is talking about,

just so the listeners are aware of what we're talking about when we're talking about white elephants. These are stadiums or associated infrastructure, but typically stadiums that are constructed or renovated for the usage for a major tournament that then fall into disuse after the tournament ends. And these things, you know, a lot of people don't think about the fact that there's continuing costs associated with them. There's not only these big upfront costs, But also many of these stadiums that aren't used, they continue to have upkeep costs. So unless you have continuous usage where, you know, a team is like a club team or a national team is based at that stadium is using it on a consistent basis, it's just a loss for the people of that area that are paying taxes to subsidize that white elephant that's no longer being used. The original, like, famous white elephant was the Montreal Olympic Stadium.

That was where the 76 Olympics were hosted. It took 30 years to pay off the construction of that stadium. 30 years. Now, if we're looking at the World Cups, we talked about the 2010 World Cup, the upfront cost for constructing and renovating these stadiums in South Africa was $1.1 billion up front. And if we just look at one stadium, the Cape Tone Stadium, every year after, the upkeep was $3.5 million a year. And it was essentially an unused stadium that they were having to shell out $3.5 million a year just for upkeep after that stadium was constructed. It was a $600 million stadium. Brazil, which was 2014 World Cup, they spent $4 billion building and renovating stadium.

many of those are also, I mean, Brazil is like a football crazy country, like the biggest football country in the world by most, by many metrics anyway, if not most metrics. Most of their World Cup stadiums are also not being used, at least on a consistent basis. And they're either falling into disrepair or their huge drains on, you know, public tax revenue in order to subsidize the upkeep on these stadiums. or if we look at the previous World Cup, the Russian World Cup, $10.8 billion was spent on hosting this World Cup. That's not just on the stadium,

but in terms of the infrastructure and all of that associated with the World Cup, but $10.8 billion. Now, I have personal experience with one of the World Cup stadiums. I have like dream scenario for me. The team, the football club that I've supported for however many years now, 16 years, I've been a supporter of Rubin Kazan. I'm a season ticket holder for them. Like most football fans globally don't live close enough to their team that they support,

like their number one team to be a season ticket holder for it. But I am, so I'm very lucky in that way. And Rubin, they are at a World Cup stadium, the one that was built for the World Cup. The team had historically played at the Central Stadium, Central Stadium, which is like right next to the city center. It's a very old kind of somewhat decrepit, but very cute stadium. And it has the best view of any stadium.

Like while you're sitting inside, you have the Kazan Kremlin like overlooking the stadium. And you have the Kul Sharif Mosque, which is like the landmark of the city, overlooking the stadium. So when you're sitting in the game, if the game is bad, you just look up and you have like beautiful skyline behind you.

Of like, you know, Kremlin walls, you know, the old white spire where, Ivan the Terrible had, you know, initially come in and sack the city. You have the Kulshirif Mosque, like absolutely beautiful. That's where the team historically had played, but they decided, well, that stadium is not suitable for a World Cup hosting, but Kazan is a city that we need to host the World Cup and it's a city of 1.3 million and used to be called the Sports Capital of Russia.

So they had to make a World Cup stadium. And they did. It's this gorgeous stadium, like 55, 60,000 person capacity, largest outdoor LED screen in the world. Like one entire side of the stadium is this outdoor LED screen. And now the only thing that this stadium is used, I mean, really, it's a beautiful stadium. Look up Akbar's arena. This is the name for it. And we play all of our home games there.

Our average attendance is like 10,000 people. This year, it's a little bit worse because we got relegated. last year for the first time in 20 years. But, you know, even when we're in the top division, it's like 10, 12,000 people. This year, it's going to be probably 8,000 people in a 60,000 person stadium. The stadium is like, you know, it's mostly empty, most games. I'll be going to a game this Sunday. I'm expecting there to be maybe 7,000 people at it.

In a 60,000 person, like brand new, beautiful stadium. And this is a professional team, like one of the more well-known teams from Russia. Some of these stadiums for other World Cups are not built where there are traditional, like, relatively well-known teams. Or, you know, we can just look again in the Russian context. There was one of the World Cup stadiums is in Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad is an enclave. It's like completely separated from the rest of Russia.

You have to go across the Baltic states like Lithuania, Latvia, to get to Kaliningrad. Baltica Kaliningrad has not been in the top division of Russian football for 20 years. There's not a team there that warrants a big stadium. And it's like a very swampy area. You know, the upkeep for that stadium is very expensive because the ground is not really all that stable and all of that. So, I mean, like really crazy decisions go into hosting these World Cups from the governments of these countries thinking we have to make this spectacle for people. And in the moment, it looks beautiful. I mean, anybody that watched the 2018 World Cup in Russia, there was a lot of skepticism of

whether Russia could host a successful World Cup. It was a really successful World Cup. It was a whole lot of fun, and it was a very beautiful event. But it has not panned out well since then. And that's what I want to say on white elephants before I turned it back over to you, Alex. No, I think both the processes that both of you described also happened in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup, where you had dispossession, right? You had entire neighborhoods in certain cities that were, like, cleaned out or moved for the sake of the World Cup.

Adnan, when you talked about the creation of special courts and spaces around stadiums where national sovereignty was suspended, essentially, to allow foreign brands to control those physical spaces to sell their stuff, I mean, that also happened in Brazil as well. So, Dave Zeyer and the journalist writer has a great book on the Brazilian World Cup in 2014, if you want more. on this but it's it's you know we see in a month we get to see like a hyper enactment of what capitalism looks like today and you see especially in those like states of a spaces of exception they get created around the stadium and in fan zones where the real power there is not the Brazilian government the real power there is FIFA and their global brands and in many cases the use of private security forces or well in Brazil there's their own A consolation of pretty nefarious security forces that were more than happy to participate in policing these spaces.

But I think Adnan gives us the perfect word to describe everything that we've been talking about. And this is like one big-ass contradiction in terms of everything that we've been talking about. And then like the personal connection that we feel to this massive global sporting event that still generates joy from certain people who are hosting the event. in these places to the players, to the fans, right? And that's always the contradiction that is at the heart of this for me, how to balance all this stuff out. One of the, you know, if we can, two things that I'll be looking forward in this World Cup in Qatar is, is one, I want to see if any players or teams will protest.

You know, there's already some European teams have said that their form of protest will be the captain's armbands that the, that their team captain will wear will be the rainbow the flag. I wonder if there would be any other public display of protest, which is also a part of World Cup history. In the 1974 West Germany World Cup, you had Chilean fans and people in solidarity with the Chilean exiles and Chileans were being tortured by the Pinochet regime. In a couple of games, they're able to run onto the soccer field with big banners that would say Chile C. Pinochet, no. In the 86 World Cup in Mexico, one of my favorite players of all time, the Brazilian midfielder Sokatis would wear headbands that would have

political messages in solidarity with the people of Mexico, who had just experienced a horrible earthquake in 1985 that killed tons of thousands of people. So I wonder if any individual or team will have the courage to use this massive platform in a positive way and to make a powerful political statement. And the second thing I'll be looking forward to is if this is something that I've learned again from the great teacher Eduardo Galliano, is that something that's characterized soccer from, let's say, from the 80s on, is that you have this struggle between what Antonio Gramsci called soccer as an open-air kingdom of human loyalty versus what Galliano referred to as robot soccer, right? This high-leek professionalized, capitalist,

commercialized game that is always struggling to, well, on the one hand, it wants to make profit, and on the other hand, is always trying to make this game into something uniform that really stifles player creativity. So every World Cup has an identity that falls on one side or the other of this. And that'll be interesting to see, like, what side of that struggle will this World Cup fall on? Are we going to enjoy a swaggering, swash-buckling, creative Lionel Messi playing for Argentina? Or are we going to see teams that are going to load up against Messi and just hack him down and foul him and play very defensive football?

So it's basically a creativity, individual flair and creativity versus the forces of capitals. One of the things that I'll be really interested in following. And then the personal thing that I'm really going to be interested in is my poor Mexican team. I don't have much hope for my national team. But this is the one time where I get way too nationalistic, which is another component of the World Cup. and I will root for them until the end and hope that they somehow managed to escape their group that includes the powerful Argentine.

So we'll see. Just Adnan, I know I'm going to let you hop in here with your next topic or whatever you want to talk about, really. But you mentioned Lionel Messi, Alex. And this is something I just found out today. And it's really fascinating. And it ties together messy with sports washing. Apparently, Leonel Messi is the tourism ambassador for Saudi Arabia.

I just found this out today. Yeah, Leonel Messi is the tourism ambassador for Saudi Arabia. And at the same time, he's also backing Argentina's 2030 World Cup bid. Saudi Arabia is also bidding for the 2030 World Cup. So this is a very, very interesting, you know, a contradiction, again, using that word here, but, you know, talking about human rights abuses and, and sports washing. Saudi Arabia, I think that we might have talked about it a little bit in our previous episode with you, Alex, about football. Saudi Arabia had just bought Newcastle United, a very

historic football club in England, like not one of the most successful teams in England and definitely not one of the, the ones that popped the mind immediately when people think of like English football, you know, Manchester United, Liverpool. But Newcastle United is a very historic team and like a very big team and a very well-supported team. And Saudi Arabia, or I guess I should say, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia had just purchased Newcastle United and is now pumping a lot of money into the team in order to kind of, I mean, to essentially launder their reputation there amidst their human rights abuses

domestically and internationally, you know, again, talking about. Yemen again because it's always worth keeping Yemen at the forefront of our minds. But we were talking about sports washing like Saudi Arabia is in a very big push for this through their purchase of Newcastle United and also evidently having Lionel Messi probably the world's most recognizable footballer, definitely one of the two most recognizable footballers alongside Christiana Ronaldo. I know if I don't say his name here and put him on a level footing with messy he'll be writing in and complaining to us. Don't worry, Christiano. I've got you covered. You're right there. Your level. Don't worry. Okay. But anyway, one of definitely one of the

I'm sure. He listens to guerrilla history, you know. Absolutely. For sure. Friend of the show. You know, he's definitely one of the two most famous and recognizable footballers and he's the tourism ambassador for Saudi Arabia. I mean, absolutely insane. Anyway, Edna, go ahead. Oh, well, that just reminded me that, yeah, that Qatar has suborned. Well, I don't know if we should, I mean, these were people who are doing it quite willingly for the money. David Beckham, yeah, yeah, David Beckham. I mean, I was just thinking of him as another of these global ambassadors for the Qatar World Cup. And, you know, he's been receiving quite a bit of criticism locally in the UK from human rights groups, from, you know, labor organizing groups, and especially, of course,

also LGBTQ plus, you know, advocacy groups and so on because, of course, as is known and understood, which is why the rainbow armband may be worn is because there are some very severe sanctions on, you know, homosexuality, sexual practices in Qatar and can lead to multi-year sentences. And of course, the Qatari's in order to actually host the World Cup have said explicitly that, you know, they will make sure that, you know, diverse fans, you know, will be welcome and that includes also gay, lesbian, transgender fans. But they, you know, introduced also a caveat that they discouraged anyone from, you know, showing signs or promoting, you know, their political position on this for gay rights in order

to protect people who, you know, the crowds around them might, you know, seek to harm them. And so as a result, these kinds of signs and emblems might be confiscated by Qatari police because they seek to protect them. But of course, you're all very welcome to. Adnan, let me cut in here for just a second. You mentioned David Beckham and, you know, LGBT rights. Very interestingly, just because he's like the main ambassador for this current World Cup as it stands. Like he's going around on this huge media tour, like talking up Qatar in this World Cup right now. Very interesting to consider the punishment for, you know, being an LGBT individual in Qatar.

Do you know who David Beckham's oldest child's godparents are? This is a trivia question for either of you. Either of you know? I'm afraid not. Outen John and David Furnish. Oh, well. Again, contradictions. Yeah, is he going to be inviting them to join him in his luxury box at these stadiums?

Maybe this is a question. But I mean, I think actually what's actually going on here is that, you know, there's all kinds of accommodations that are required in order to host this sort of a, a global event, and this is, as we've been talking, a venture, a really ambitious venture in sports washing. But it does come at some kind of, you know, this word contradiction constantly keeps coming to mind because what it seems to me the Qataris are most concerned about is a gay rights and politics as a political venture, right? Like, okay, you can have all of these foreign fans come and, you know, they can suspend their laws and they can choose not to enforce and so on. But what they don't want is making a political issue about it against the regime,

against the society. But this pits the government itself in some kinds of conflicts with its own society because although it's not, for example, a government-sponsored initiative, you know, this situation where you have very few Qatari's in their own country, and because of the way they've, you know, imported all of this labor, as we've been talking about, to the extent that 85% of the actual residents of this small country are from somewhere else, that, of course, there's been certain kinds of backlash over the course of the last decade, you know, from the society that is a conservative society that wants to protect its identity, its cultural values, and so on, but is now being inundated not only by the fact that structurally, most people are not Qataris, but that there's going to be this global event where millions of people are going to come on top of it. And so they have, you know, put forward a kind of sort of civil society campaign called Ithar Eidramak, you know, show your respect or manifest your respect. They say, they translate as reflect your respect to the religion and culture.

of Qatari people by avoiding these behaviors. And they've been circulating these, you know, posters or handouts, sheets, you know, with visual, you know, certain kinds of behaviors represented in a visual motif with a circle and a cross and a slash through them, right? You know, don't, you know, don't do this. So, you know, don't drink alcohol, you know, no homosexuality, no immodesty, no, immodesty, no approach. profanity, no, you know, please respect places of worship, no loud music and sounds. I mean, you're going to host a World Cup and you're asking people, no loud music or sounds, no dating. I mean, this is like a really remarkable one and, you know, take, no taking people's

pictures without their permission. So that they're projecting a kind of sense of social and cultural fear and anxiety that is this contradictory position that the society is based upon you know, a traditional kind of culture that is now dramatically exposed to this global culture that is already structurally overwhelming there. I mean, they dominated, I'm politically, socially and culturally, but yet they are also kind of confronted by the fact that, you know, in order to make this money, in order to be part of, you know, this kind of prestige event, they have to accommodate and welcome. people from all over. And this is a real, really problematic kind of experience. So there's this kind of cultural campaign to, you know, make sure that global fans aren't going to behave as global fans. It's just, it makes absolutely no sense. Do they know football fans? Like, do they know what they got themselves into? I think that's part of the problem, you know, yeah.

But the, you're right. And the irony is that they packaged and commodified and, sold those very traditions to get the World Cup. And now that they got the World Cup, they have to turn around and protect them as some sort of like a separate sphere from this massive global event, right? Well, I think that's right because, of course, the bid is also all about,

you know, marketing and commodifying in this kind of marketplace of diverse, you know, cultures in a corporate kind of sense, is that, oh, well, you know, it's a global game, so it should migrate to these different parts of the world and celebrate the, you know, particular culture and the fact that it's a football is global, but it takes on these different, you know, forms in each of these cultures and so on. That's the sort of diversity marketing model of global corporate capitalism today. So they've had to market, as you're saying, their distinctive culture and traditions as an ideal place to celebrate this kind of diversity. and yet doing so, especially for a small country of less than 3 million people, where only like 15% of them are actually Arab Qatari's, you know,

is going to be completely overwhelmed, you know, by this influx, by the forces of global capitalism. It's just such a strange situation that's worth remarking. For a concrete example, folks should look up the mascot for the World Cup. and uh i don't i don't know that like the term describe it describe it i don't have you seen it i haven't actually seen it recently so i i don't remember exactly what it looks i don't know the it's it's the head dress it's the the covering that uh the kataris wear and it's like an anthropomorphic version of it i don't know that i don't know what it's called the technical name for it right well the

The figure is called Laib, which is, you know, like player, you know, or something, you know, it's like Laib is a player. So, it's like a soccer player, but it's a soccer player that looks like Casper the ghost with a, you know, kind of, you know, kind of band, you know, on it. So, yeah, that's, that's interesting with a traditional sort of flowing, you know, white robes, you know, the Abaya, basically. so yeah that's interesting so yeah they definitely have a you know kind of quasi culturally specific brand um within the terms of these all of these mascots are really so weird all the time you know like they're these odd kind of um you know kind of supposed to be cute they always have to have very large eyes because of Alex what was the Mexico World Cup mascot it's the best that's the one I was thinking of.

I think his name was Picudito, and it was a green pepper, I think a jalapeno pepper, with a big, like a... Sombrero, yeah. Cartoonish, stereotypical Mexican sombrero and a mustache. Like, I think he had like an Emiliano Zapata mustache, if I remember correctly. All he needed was the bandoliers, and it would have been perfect, right? It's like if you told it, you found the most racist American, and you said, draw me a picture that represents Mexico to you.

This is what they would have drawn, like, a jalapeno with a sombrero and a mustache. Like, this is, this is that. Now, I know that Adnan, you have a meeting soon, so we're going to wrap up, but we want to close with our predictions for the World Cup. And Alex will start with you. So not only in terms of who do you think is like going to win the World Cup, you know, inevitably we're all probably going to be wrong because this is just how it works. But, you know, what else are you predicting to happen in this World Cup? I predict that either Brazil or Argentina will win the World Cup. My surprise team will be another South American team, Uruguay, a tiny country that always plays above its demographics and population numbers amazingly,

and they have a really good squad for this World Cup. You know, I think it's what's going to happen is what generally happens in the World Cup. You know, people, we will buy into the spectacle. We will, I will try to watch every single game that I can. I'm really mad that I won't be able to accomplish that this time. I may have to be lecturing in class and on the lectern I'll have my, myself going so I can keep track of some of the matches. But it's going to be, it's like always, it's going to be a spectacle of capitalism,

of commodification, of human joy, human tragedy, human emotion and suffering. And all of that is part of the reason why it's such a compassion. telling event and it manages to get billions of people to watch and to consume and to participate in this event. So contradiction, again, going back to where it's contradiction. On an intellectual level, everything that we've talked about today, I get it, I understand it. And then on an emotional level, I am going to watch this and I'm going to suffer 90 minutes of every Mexico's game and, you know, don't, yeah, I'm probably going to do more suffering and enjoyment. That's just the way it goes to be a fan of Mexico. But like I said, I'm a ride or die fan. So those are my

predictions. Well, I agree that it's definitely going to be absorbing. I'm going with my son, who's an avid soccer player, football player and fan. And so this seemed like an amazing father, son, absolute once in a lifetime kind of indulgence to do because it's never going to be, I think, in the Middle East again. And Canada has almost never qualified. So this is going to be a really exciting trip for us, and he's thoroughly excited. We're seeing one Canadian match against Canada versus Morocco, the one we think maybe Canada might be able to win. It's in a tough group. And I'm also going to go to some of the museums and try and, you know, learn a little bit more about, you know, what Qatar is like and how it's managing this whole situation. There's sort of

a museum that's kind of characterized as a kind of museum of slavery. It's not actually a museum of slavery, but it comes up in, you know, this sort of historical accounts of Qatar's diverse origins. And so it'll be very interesting to see how the national myth is being shaped by, you know, their own kind of confrontation, I'm sure, very partial, you know, with that, with those histories and with the current contradictions and, you know, hierarchies with this you know, labor apartheid as we were talking about. So that's going to be something interesting to observe that I will enjoy as far as the tournament itself. I always try and follow, of course, I'm, you know, going and, you know, we will support, you know, Canada because we really like the

team. But generally, I've not been somebody who supports any of the North American teams and often not really a European, although I like, you know, the Dutch just historically because they're so tragic and they play a good brand of football. But I usually try and root for Asian and African teams who don't do that great. One of the games I'm planning to go to is Ghana Uruguay. So I'm hoping that your prediction that Uruguay as a dark horse won't come true because I recall a terrible moment in the knockout phases, I believe it was a quarterfinal match where Ghana would have gone in in 2010 yeah in 2010 Ghana would have gone further than any African team ever and but Luis Suarez you know stuck a hand up and stopped a goal he got red carded but um his team

won on penalties and so he was perfectly felt perfectly justified in doing that terrible moment for the poor Ghana um so I'm looking at Senegal and Ghana um But I'm also very interested and excited by Group B because you have Iran in the same group as the U.S., England, and Wales. The coup group. Yeah, this is the geopolitics part of the World Cup. That's right, exactly. So you've got the coup, you know, I don't know what the Welsh, how they will position themselves. I'm interested to see.

Anti-British. Yeah, anti-British. I've been following a lot of, yes, very, very anti-British. They will cheer for Iran and the United States again when they're playing England. And they probably don't care about, you know, USA versus Iran. But definitely, I've been seeing some, you know, Welsh football fans. Well, if they were like, you know, Scottish, then I believe they probably would support, you know, Iran against the USA. Because I feel like they've got some political savvy there.

But, you know, I'm also, of course, you know, going to predict. one of the Latin American teams winning. I think Brazil in particular, it's a World Cup outside of the European continent. They tend to do really well. They have an incredible team. So I'm thinking maybe Brazil will win it. And I'm hopeful that it's going to be a good World Cup in terms of quality of play. I'm going to be really interested to see those points I mentioned at the outset, whether the fact that it's happening in November in the middle of the season affects the quality of the games. But yes, I will have, I will get swept up, you know, despite all of these critiques, I'm sure, you know, the games, it's going to be fun to watch some of them live in person and also even in the fan parks.

I just will have to make sure not to make too many loud noises and project loud music because, you know, who knows what can be? Or start dating people. Well, that definitely. So I'll be very brief with my predictions then because most of what you guys said is what I think as well. I mean, Brazil is probably the favorites for this World Cup. I would have thought that France, the defending champions, would have had a pretty good shot as well, but they've been decimated by injuries, which goes back to one of the first things that we talked about in here. Like their entire midfield, their entire defense is basically injured right now.

So it's not looking so hot for them. But, you know, Argentina, I think, I'll say that I think Argentina is. is going to win just because there's almost like an air of fate around Messi right now. This is going to be his last World Cup. He had just won the Copa America for the first time in his career. It was his first international trophy that he had won with Argentina. So I don't know. It almost feels like fate is on his side for this tournament, the way the things have led up to it.

But if that happens, won't he then eclipse Maradona? This is the one thing that nobody can eclipse Maradona. That's what I mean. It's not possible. I agree with you. I don't think it is possible. I think unfortunately a lot of people are going to think, oh, well, see, he did lead his country. That's just the youngsters.

Yeah. It's just the young thing. In any case, I also have my eye on group B, the England-Divron, United States, Wales group. That's just fascinating to me. But yeah, in terms of like what I'm looking forward to, none of the teams that I would have typically supported are in this tournament. I'm 50-50 Finnish Italian, so I always support Finland and English. Italy and in like international sporting events, Finland and Italy are not in this World Cup.

Finland, not surprisingly, Italy, slightly surprisingly, even though they also missed the previous World Cup. And also, I live in Russia. So like, you know, it would have been nice to cheer for Russia, but they were, they were disqualified from the qualifying campaign. So, yeah, none of my teams qualified for this tournament through various means. And so I'll just be cheering for underdogs in every game. Like, I would have been probably also thinking that Senegal had, you know, a pretty good shot of making it deep in the tournament, not winning it, but with the injury to Mani, not so sure. But I'll be looking forward to the tournament. I think that the biggest thing that I'm predicting, though, is that all of this hullabaloo about human rights and, you know, the violations of

Qatar, they're going to be forgotten as soon as the tournament starts and they're going to be forgotten as soon as the tournament is over. I don't think that there will be any retrospective. analysis of this and I think that going forward like nobody's even going to analyze the United States Canada and Mexico in the first place for the next World Cup. So that's my big prediction is like we're going to hear about human rights violations up until the moment of kickoff. And then that's it for the next, you know, until we have another like egregious example that we can have, you know, like this liberal, you know, holier than now mindset against. So that's what I'm predicting. I know, I think that that means that we have to make a promise right now that if guerrilla history

is still alive and kicking and active, that there will be in 2026 a World Cup preview that does bring up some of these issues. Yeah. And maybe even go together to one of the matches. Oh, now you're talking. Let's get together and go see a Mexico match. Well, we're going to drag Brett with us. We're going to teach Brett how to love this.

game. Well, Adnan, we will be around in 2026, and I will criticize them, as I'm sure you will at that point as well. Now, like I said, I know that you have to go, Adnan, so I'll ask you to read yourself out first. So Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcast that you do? Well, you can find me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain. H-U-S-A-I-N. You can join my course. It's still going on and participate on it, a free open online course. Yes, Fook on the Crusading Society. You can register for it by going to adnanhussein.org slash courses. It happens on Saturday, 9.30 to 11 Eastern Time. And you can listen to the M-A-J-L-I-S about the Middle East Islamic world, Muslim diasporic culture. I think we probably will have

some kind of World Cup Qatar content as well. So if you were interested in this, we'll have further discussions there and yeah just get in touch thanks so much and i also think that we'll debrief you for at least on the patreon so folks you can go to the guerrilla history patreon and i think that we'll debrief ad non when he gets back from katar about his experience there alex how can the listeners find you on twitter and what do you want to let them know about well i'm on twitter until it falls apart because that's the way it's looking i'm at uh at alexander underscore avina you can find some of my work on alexanderavina.com, and I will be tweeting my way through this World Cup. So thank you

guys so much for having me on again. As always a wonderful fun conversation. Thank you. As for me, listeners, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck 1995. There you can keep up with all of the different projects that I'm working on, including more stuff for guerrilla history. And as for Gorilla History, you can follow the show on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. You can also support the show and help us expand what we're doing. We actually have some very interesting and kind of fun ideas of how to expand the resources that we're providing and make them more accessible to a wider group of people. To make these ideas possible, you can help support us at patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, again, G-U-E-R-O-E-R-E-O.

R-R-I-L-A history. Every contribution is greatly appreciated. It helps us continue to do the show. And as I said, as we get more patrons, we will be able to expand what we're doing and branch off into more associated projects for political education purposes for those of us on the far left. So, until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you. You know what I'm going to do.