Today, Explained - The 2020* Olympics

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

*Are being held this summer in Tokyo. And it’s a mess. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Have you seen Akira? It's this sort of iconic movie from 1988. Wikipedia calls it a Japanese animated post-apocalyptic cyberpunk action film. It takes place in a dystopian, futuristic Tokyo. In one early scene, you see a sign advertising the upcoming 2020 tokyo olympics as in this movie accidentally predicted where the 2020 olympics would land except for you know what happened in

2020 but it gets even more interesting in the movie that 2020 tokyo olympics billboard has some graffiti underneath it, and it reads, meaning, just stop it, or just cancel it. And that, too, mirrors real life. Since the start of the pandemic, people in Tokyo have been protesting the Olympics, saying, just stop it. So it appears that the Tokyo Olympics are going to press ahead, even though we are in the midst of a serious global health pandemic.

Jules Boikoff, he's a professor of political science at Pacific University in Oregon. He represented the U.S. Olympic soccer team in international competition, and he's really into the Olympics. Author of four books on the Olympics, maybe? We checked. He's definitely written four books about the Olympics, and he's been following the Tokyo Games closely. And for me, it's a chance to slow down and think about the Olympics more generally. A lot of what we're seeing in Tokyo is actually not necessarily Tokyo problems, but they're Olympic problems that get imported into each and every

host city. It just happens to be Tokyo in this case and under pandemic conditions. And the pandemic continues to be a real source of tension around these games. With the Tokyo Olympics just over 10 weeks away, IOC President Thomas Bach canceling a planned trip to Japan, citing the surge of COVID-19 cases there, with a state of emergency recently extended in several parts of the country. The Olympics are experiencing major mayhem right now.

Medical officials in Japan and across the world are clamoring for the Olympics to be cancelled. Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee and local Tokyo organisers are saying that the Games will in fact go on in Japan, where cases are surging, where they're in the midst of their fourth wave. Less than 2% of the population is fully vaccinated. And the build-up continues to be dominated by two questions. Will they go ahead?. Will they go ahead?

And should they go ahead? There's a lot of pushback in Japan, as well as around the world, from medical professionals, scientists, and even some athletes are starting to wonder aloud whether it's right to push ahead with the Olympics. Tennis star Naomi Osaka represents Japan. Here's what she said when asked

whether it was appropriate for the Games to go ahead. Yemi Osaka, Japan's Olympic Champion For me, I'm an athlete. And of course, my immediate thought is that I'd want to play the Olympics. But as a human, I would say we're in a pandemic. And if people aren't healthy and if they're not feeling safe, then it's definitely a really big cause for cancer. At the end of the day, this is all about the athletes. How are the IOC and Tokyo planning on keeping them safe? Is it one big bubble, a bunch of small bubbles? They're still working out how they're going to do their bubble system. But no matter how you slice it, it's sort of going to be like one El Bubble Grande because there's 11,000 athletes that are going to be coming in. You're going to have to figure out a way. There's been a lot of concern from athletes as to how they will be housed. Will they be housed by sport? That way, if there's a breakout of COVID, one sport could be sacrificed and maybe have that canceled for these Olympics, as sad as that would be for those

athletes. One other thing, they are limiting the amount of people that they're going to allow into the country. Previously, there was supposed to be in the neighborhood of 180,000 people, officials that would come into Japan for these Olympics. Tokyo organizers have announced that instead of 180,000, it'll be more like 90,000 or fewer. So for some, that is comfort. For others, they're like, what? 90,000 people? And that does not include the athletes, which is about 11,000 for the Olympics, 15,000 when you include the Paralympics. And so tens of thousands of people will be coming into the country. They have measures in place, such as not using the public

transportation system if you're an athlete, trying to buy your meals takeaway instead of going into restaurants, and basically staying within the confines of the Olympic Village, having testing all the time, every single day, and those sort of measures that are designed to make it a safer space for Olympians and everybody else in Japan. And we know people in Tokyo are protesting these games. Do we have any idea how many people are for or against them? Well, back when Japan won the Olympics in 2013 from the International Olympic Committee, they were popular. The games of the 32nd Olympiad in 2020 are awarded to the city of Tokyo.

But over time, they've become less so with the spending that has happened. Originally, the Olympics were supposed to cost $7.3 billion, and instead they're costing more like $30 billion. And so slowly over time, support has eroded. But really the thing that chipped away the most support for these Olympics among the general population in Japan is the rise of the coronavirus. Around 60% of the population in Japan prefers full throttle cancellation of the Olympics. Let's move on. We've sunk our costs, we've spent our money, and we're willing to take the losses and move on to a safer day. Wow. So the majority of people in Japan would prefer they just take the L, so to speak. Has the IOC commented specifically on the fact that the majority of the people in

Japan don't actually want these games to take place this summer? You know, they have, actually. There was one of the spokespeople for the International Olympic Committee, a gentleman by the name of Mark Adams. As with all organizations, we have to pay attention to public opinion, but not be totally driven by it. And I'm sure you can imagine how that went over in Japan. What do you think is keeping the IOC sort of committed to this line that they've drawn in the sand here that, you know, they're going to hold these games in the summer of 2021 come hell or pandemic?

Yeah, I mean, I'm only being a little facetious when I say there are three reasons, money, money, and money. And it's important for us to note that more than 90% of the International Olympic Committee's revenues are derived from two sources, broadcasting revenues, as well as corporate sponsorship revenues. 73% of the IOC's revenue come from broadcasters, big-time broadcasters like NBC and smaller ones around the world that pay for the rights to broadcast the games. The striking vista of Copacabana Beach on a Friday evening in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,

where tonight, amid a mixture of... Another 18% comes from corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola, Alibaba, Panasonic, and other big behemoth corporations. Visa, proud sponsor of the Olympic Games, and the only card accepted there. Where you see a little bit of friction is between the Japanese organizers and the International Olympic Committee when it comes to whether there should be fans in the stands. They've already said that overseas spectators will not be allowed to enter the country and attend the Olympics. But it's still an open question as to whether they're going to allow people in Japan to attend the games. Why it's a little bit frictive between those two groups, the International Olympic Committee and the local Tokyo organizers, is because

this was supposed to be a big source of revenue for the local organizing committee. Around $800 million was supposed to go to the local organizers. And so, yeah, money really talks. And I think that's a good place to start to understand why we're trying to push ahead or why the International Olympic Committee is trying to push ahead with the Olympics in the midst of a global health pandemic. Apart from the money, is there a certain sense of pride on the line here for the city, for the games, for the IOC? There's definitely some pride within Japan, people I've spoken with there, who would be proud to pull off this major, complicated, audaciously impractical event

in the midst of a pandemic and also i think it's important to note the geopolitical factors involved here less than nine months down the road beijing is slated to host the 2022 winter olympics and being somewhat of a geopolitical adversary to japan that gives japan a little bit of extra incentive to try to pull these games off not just hand the torch right over to their geopolitical foe. Quick break, then we'll talk about the geopolitics of the Olympics. Thank you. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames.

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So Jules, a funny thing about these Tokyo Olympic Games is that less than six months after they end, we'll get another Olympic Games? Yeah, that's what it seems like. Less than nine months away, we have the Beijing Winter 2022 Games on the docket, opening in early February 2022. And Beijing has a somewhat complicated history with the Olympics. Oh, absolutely. Human rights observers are up in arms over the fact that China has been persecuting ethnic Uyghurs. Not one, not some, but every single provision in the United Nations Genocide Convention violated by the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. There's the longstanding issue of Tibet. There's evidence that Beijing is forcing hundreds of thousands of Tibetans off their land

and into so-called vocational training centers that are set to resemble labor camps. There's the recent crushing of dissent in Hong Kong. This morning, anti-government protests in Hong Kong reaching a new level of violence, as police now say they arrested over 260 people in just one day, most are students. So this has been a long-standing issue, and when in 2001 Beijing was attempting to persuade the International Olympic Committee to allow them to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, they said at the time, the leaders of the bid and people in China, that hosting the Games would jumpstart democracy. It would be a human rights heyday for the country. But unfortunately, nothing of the sort has transpired. And so you

have all these human rights groups that are up in arms calling for various types of boycotts. For example, one set of about 180 human rights organizations called for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics. So you won't send diplomats there. There's another version that asks athletes to boycott the Olympics. Just this week, there was another set of human rights groups that have argued that we should just have a full-on boycott, including athletes, including diplomats, including everything. Because people who study mega events and sport mega events have pointed to this phenomenon called sports washing, where a country who is a human rights violator uses the Olympic Games to make themselves look important, make themselves look like a typical member of the international community by hosting a big mega event, by standing in front of the cameras, by announcing the games. And so there's been a lot of pushback against this notion of sports washing as a way of sort of brushing these human rights violations under the historical rug. So sports washing allows countries to sort of brush aside their politics, their abuses, because people get wrapped up in the games. What's the reality?

What's happening off camera when a country lands the Olympics? the militarization of public space, you have gentrification and forced eviction, and you also have greenwashing, talking a big green game, but then not following through with your environmental promises. Tell me a bit more about each of those, starting with overspending. Projected costs for the entire Olympics have ballooned by about twice that of the original amount bid, according to certain estimates. And that has some people asking, is it worth it? The Tokyo Olympics were supposed to cost $7.3 billion, and they're going to cost more like $30 billion, but it's not Tokyo alone. The previous Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea,

doubled the amount that they were supposed to spend. There was the Sochi Olympics, which was supposed to cost $12 billion, but ended up costing $51 billion. So you get the picture. It doesn't matter where the Olympics happen. There's cost overruns. And the second was that this militarization of public places. This is an ITN newsflash from the Olympic Village in Munich, where early this morning, armed Palestinian guerrillas raided the sleeping quarters of the Israeli team. The gunmen shot dead two Israelis and are now holding 20 athletes and six officials as hostages. Because the Olympics have become so

big, they've actually been a terrorist target. And of course, after the September 11th attacks, security has become a huge issue around the Olympics. The thing is, the security forces in the host country essentially use the Olympic Games like their own private cash machine, getting all the special weapons and laws that they'd never be able to get during normal political times. And in fact, when a host city agrees to host the Olympics, the national legislature must pass a law that harmonizes the local laws with the IOC dictates, the International Olympic Committee dictates. So, what we're seeing in Tokyo, for example,

is they passed a law in 2017 that enhanced the surveillance powers of the government in ways that were horrifying to human rights observers in terms of free thinking and having private space. They're also going to use facial recognition systems at every single venue in Tokyo, even though they are proven to be racially biased. And what you see a lot of times at the Olympics is they bring in new equipment and technologies, laws that become the new normal for everyday policing afterwards. And what we also see is that when terrorists don't show up, and of course we don't want them to show up at the Olympics, those same devices, weapons, laws are there to use against protesters who are expressing their displeasure with various elements of the Olympics or society

more generally. Tell me more about forced evictions. Another home is turned to rubble and dust. In years to come, the demolition men of Beijing will look back on this as their golden age. But many local people remember it as the time that Beijing sold its soul. When Beijing hosted the Olympics in 2008, 1.5 million people were displaced to make way for the Olympic venues and games. 1.5 million. Same for South Korea that hosted the Olympics in 1988 in Seoul. More than 700,000 people were displaced for those games. You also see a whole lot of gentrification where the so-called revitalization of the areas around the Olympics

means that people who used to live there can no longer afford to do so anymore. So, take the 2012 London Olympics. The five boroughs around the Olympic area were massively gentrified and a lot of people who'd been living there, their families for generations were forced to move because of the higher prices that accrue because of the development around the games. And lastly, this sort of false promise of a greening Olympic afterglow or something like that? Greenwashing has become endemic to the Olympics. They're supposed to be the greenest, most sustainable games ever. But a quick look at the list of partners and sponsors for London 2012

tells a very different story. The way the sponsors are chosen were the ones with the deepest of partners and sponsors for London 2012 tells a very different story. The way the sponsors are chosen were the ones with the deepest wallets and the least consciences. This is basically an 11 billion pound public taxpayer funded advertising campaign for some of the worst corporate criminals in our world today. The people at the International Olympic Committee talk a big green game, but follow through is almost always lacking. I lived in Rio de Janeiro in 2015. I was a Fulbright research fellow there in the lead up to the Olympics. Then that they were going to clean up this place called Guanabara Bay, which where a lot of people go swimming or go around in their boats and where there are going to be Olympic events. In the bid for the Rio Games, it was promised that 80% of the water that filtrated into Guanabara Bay was going to be cleaned. And it was going to be a big upgrade, a huge legacy, if you will, for the

Olympic Games. Unfortunately, by the time the Olympics rolled around, that did not happen. And so, I think that just stands in for the larger whole of greenwashing. We're seeing in Tokyo, where they used the horrific triple whammy disaster in Fukushima, the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that happened in March 2011 as a sort of slogan for these Olympics they've been called the recovery games when you talk to people living in Fukushima and you ask them about the idea of recovery their response is always the same they politely laugh as if hosting the Olympics was going to help jumpstart the recovery in the area well I traveled to Fukushima in July 2019 and I talked to everyday people on the streets. I talked to journalists there. I

talked to elected officials, and they were so mad about this recovery games slogan. They actually told me one person after the other that by hosting the Olympics in Tokyo, it actually diverted resources from the affected areas down near the nuclear facility that could have been used to help with recovery, but instead they were actually slower because of the Olympics. So greenwashing is definitely something that's become normalized with the Olympics, and we can see it at work in Tokyo as well. So you've got profligate spending, you've got militarization, gentrification, forced evictions, and environmental catastrophe. Why do it at all? about now for at least the last decade, that the Olympics are actually quite popular still. So long as they're not happening in your city, they're popular. I mean, and that's, again, goes back to the athletes and how amazing the athletes are. In terms of what's happening in Tokyo, well, the shine is definitely worn off and they're ready to shrug off these games and move on,

take their losses. And what we're seeing globally is that more and more cities are no longer game to host the Olympic Games. This happened with many cities in Norway, in Switzerland, in Austria. And they decided, nope, we don't want these Olympics. And that only left two cities remaining. And that was Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan. Neither of them exactly bastions of democracy. And the International Olympic Committee went with the organization they knew in Beijing because they had hosted before. And that's why Beijing hosts the Olympics in 2022, because everyone else said thanks, but no thanks. So what does that mean for the future of the Olympic Games? Does it mean we're going to see

more and more games and countries with really poor humanitarian records? Or could the IOC use this new reality of countries not even wanting to compete for these games to maybe step up and make some changes in the organization? Sure. Well, the International Olympic Committee will tell you that they have made changes in terms of the bidding process. They've tried to streamline it and so on. They issued a series of recommendations in December 2014 because of all this pressure that I'm talking about from local anti-Olympics groups or from people that were just skeptical of the games. But I really view the Olympics as essentially like a once-reliable car that is breaking down

right in front of our eyes. And instead of slowing their roll, popping the hood and looking underneath, they're actually, the International Olympic Committee, have essentially affixed a piece of duct tape over the Czech engine light that's winking wildly on the dashboard. They've kind of just plugged their ears and tried to press ahead, making use of countries like you're suggesting that are eager to use the games to sports wash to get rid of their local stained reputations when it comes to human rights or other issues los angeles is certainly doing a different version of sports washing they're slated to host the 2028 olympic games and yet there's a humanitarian crisis in plain sight in los angeles known as

homelessness you know So there are still some places that are willing to take the Olympic Games on, but that's mainly because they're driven, these bids are driven by elites, political and economic elites in the host country that tend to benefit. I mean, the Olympics are the ultimate exercise in trickle-up economics. There is a lot of money sloshing through the Olympic system. It just tends to slosh upwards into the hands of those who are already doing quite well. Is this machinery just too big to stop? Is it too big to fail, too big to slow down? It doesn't feel like, despite all of these controversies, things have changed very much, or that anyone's that

eager to change them? The International Olympic Committee always had this escape hatch of non-democratic countries that were happy to host in order to sports wash and sort of spruce up their reputation on the world stage. Perhaps the Tokyo 2020 Olympics are showing us that no, the Olympics aren't too big to fail. I mean, I look at Tokyo as sort of like when you inject dye into a body so that you can better see the organs and the bones inside of a body. That's what we're seeing right now with the Olympic movement. What's happening in Tokyo, the postponement, the pushback against hosting these games, is very much like injecting dye into the Olympic body.

And right now we're seeing with ever more clarity the imperfections that plague the Olympics. And I think this really presents an opportunity for those who care about the Olympics to fix them up in a way that's actually meaningful, not just to do these little things around the edges, but to actually push real deal change that shifts the way the money flows through the system, that gives the local hosts more autonomy and more benefits. And it really spreads the Olympic good feelings to everybody in the host city, not just those who can afford a ticket, not just those who are benefiting because they're involved with the Olympic machine in some way. This is a momentous opportunity and one that I haven't seen in the entire time I've studied the Olympics intensely for more than 10 years

to actually make real deal change. Jules Boykoff is the author of a number of books about the Olympics. One of them is called Nolympians, inside the fight against capitalist mega sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and beyond. Another is Power Games, a political history of the Olympics. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Power Games, a political history of the Olympics. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. The team includes Emily Senton, Victoria Chamberlain, Miles Bryan, Muj Zaydi, Halima Shah,

and Will Reed. Our engineer is Afim Shapiro. Our supervising producer is Amina Alsadi. And our brand new editor is Matthew Collette. Liz Kelly Nelson is the veep of Vox Audio. Jillian Weinberger is the deputy. Laura Bullard checks our facts.

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