Post No.: 0842
Furrywisepuppy says:
International sporting competitions are always political because countries and borders are themselves political rather than are natural constructs. Countries don’t arise from nature but as a result of groups of people forming separate political entities.
Sportswashing is the practice of using sport to boost the tarnished reputation of an individual, group, organisation or nation. Ways to do so include by hosting, purchasing, sponsoring or participating in a major sporting event or team. The sponsor wishes to become associated with the positive qualities of those they put their name to (although what could inadvertently happen instead is that, in the eyes of some, the latter can become associated with the negative qualities of the former!)
Major sporting events are frequently used as opportunities for promoting jingoistic propaganda, especially amongst the so-called superpowers or those that aspire to become so. The Nazi Party had such an aim during the Berlin 1936 Summer Olympics, and the USA and USSR constantly treated such events as extensions of who was nationally superior to who during the height of the Cold War. The Team GB symbolic animal is a lion, even though they’re not and were never native to Britain(!) Hosting an Olympic games is often a propaganda exercise for any country because the homeless are often displaced from the host city for the duration of the event because they present an undesirable image to the world!
There’s probably no bigger geopolitical sporting event than the Summer Olympics, which attracts over 3.5 billion pairs of eyeballs from across the globe. The occasion only happens once every 4 years (and for some athletes it essentially boils down to 1 day every 4 years when they’ll have to perform at their peak!)
After the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics, Great Britain started to publicly fund (via the National Lottery and exchequer funding) its athletes to succeed in future Olympic games. This demonstrates that sporting success isn’t only down to genetics but environmental factors like opportunity and money – which is often accused of being a form of ‘financial doping’ because not all countries can invest in such national programmes to the same extent.
And the language we tend to use when our representatives win is we call them ‘heroes’, as if they’re soldiers coming back victorious after a war. Well, when our representatives win, we say that ‘we’ won as a nation – but if our representatives lose, then ‘they’ let us and themselves down(!) Also, if we or ‘we’ win, we might gloat and point out that it must be embarrassing for the losers – but it we or ‘we’ lose, we’ll rationalise that it’s not just about the medals(!)
The 2022 FIFA World Cup was mired in allegations of sportswashing the Qatar government’s human rights record, poor treatment of migrant workers and persecution of LGBT people. This attempt at washing the country’s image may have backfired though because it precisely focused the world onto the above issues with Qatar when the country wasn’t really on most people’s radars until the country decided it wanted to command the world’s attention as host of a major tournament!
Unless regulations prevent them – brands, like for confectionery, fast food and soft drinks, also routinely sponsor sports events, teams or players so that such unhealthy foods and drinks become linked with healthy athletes and physical competitions, and also so that spectators feel like consuming such products whenever they’re watching sport. So people who like watching sports aren’t necessarily sporty!
Of course it’s not just sportswashing. There’s greenwashing, where individuals, corporations or governments attempt to portray an image of caring for the environment yet their hidden actions show evidence to the contrary.
Greenwashing techniques include stating vague or unsubstantiated environmental claims, and using buzzwords like ‘eco’, ‘natural’, ‘bio’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘green’ – words that seldom relate to any objective standards. If you cannot find independent evidence for a company’s claims then that’s suspect. Advertising standards authorities might only act to ban a misleading advert after receiving complaints though.
A small part of a company’s activities, or part of their supply chain, may be ‘green’ but they’ll make it sound like the entirety or majority of their operations are ‘green’ in their adverts. One brand or product may be ‘green’ but not the parent company or entire product range as a whole. Recycle labels are slapped proudly on packaging even though they’re not commonly recycled in their most likely destinations.
Greenwashing happens with many carbon-offsetting schemes, where the pledges to grow trees are broken and the saplings aren’t really planted, or even if they are then they’re neglected and so they soon die, or if they do manage to grow into trees then they’re cut down again, which means that the carbon doesn’t stay locked on the ground if the wood gets burned or rots. Burning wood creates more greenhouse gas than coal per unit of energy extracted too. And offsetting often only pushes the problem down the road anyway.
Many organisations conduct in diversity-washing, whereby they pretend to care about diversity (like hiring more working-class people in the financial industry) but it’s just a PR exercise. All they’re looking for is that photograph of people from different ethnicities to put on their brochures. There can be competing interests in certain job sectors between promoting diversity versus preserving the image that ‘higher class’ people are automatically more trustworthy, smarter and deserving. This does show though that we all must do our part to change this cultural assumption – when we, say, want to hire a lawyer, and we’re unsure of who would be best, we must not assume that the poshest-sounding lawyer will be the most competent; and other prejudices.
There’s also rainbow-washing, where for-profit corporations display lots of rainbow-coloured imagery in their marketing in order to show that they’re allies or in support of LGBTQIA+ causes, but then they do little in reality to further that cause like regarding their employment policies. Basically, whenever one pretends to support, or merely superficially supports, a worthwhile cause or major event in order to elevate one’s image and come out looking clean, it’s an example of washing one’s reputation.
Some brands have been called out for trying to associate themselves with social movements in inauthentic or tone-deaf ways, like Pepsi and Black Lives Matter.
The practice of washing one’s reputation in general, or ‘reputation laundering’, is age-old – from slave traders funding hospital wings that they’ll put their names on, to criminals donating to elite schools that their children will then receive favourable treatment in when they attend them. Non-binding pledges are made that sound great for public relations purposes but they lead to scant all in practice.
PR companies and image consultants are employed. Law firms are used to aggressively combat any allegations made against them. And they will influence governments through lobbying, political donations and political connections.
Competition between competitions may be healthy, but many already-rich-enough professional golfers have been willing to overlook the major atrocities committed by the main backers of the LIV Golf tour because of the lure of obscene amounts of cash! These players still care about their own reputations and will try their best to not seem like money-focused sell-outs – but they’ll do this by rationalising their decision by saying things like, “We’ve all made mistakes” (as big as murdering dissident journalists?!) or, “We’re sportspeople, not politicians” (as if that means that one’s decisions aren’t expressing any moral positions) or, “We need to get on the inside in order to highlight the problems of the hosts or investors” (as if one cannot do that from anywhere else – one loses even more credibility if one accepts money to do a job for those hosts or investors). Rationalisations help to clear our consciences and alleviate feelings of guilt no matter how immoral our actions are.
So washing one’s reputation attempts to hide the unfavourable parts of one’s public image behind something favourable; whereas rationalisations attempt to justify one’s questionable actions by reframing them as good or not that bad.
People and organisations tell BS or lies to try to protect their public reputation of appearing honest and trustworthy(!) This is all why it’s difficult to get the true extent of dishonesty out in the open. We virtually all do it, although to varying limits. Not only do people not wish to tarnish their own reputations by admitting to their own dishonesties, but people can themselves internally feel that they are honest individuals because they can always rationalise their own behaviours away – whether it’s even stealing, lying or cheating!
One example of a rationalisation effectively follows along the same kind of logic as ‘I’ve saved a lot of people before thus I’m allowed to kill several of them now and again without having my reputation questioned’ – for example, ‘I’ve helped raise a lot of money for charities thus it’s morally okay if I aggressively dodge my taxes!’
‘Other people do it too’ or ‘if I don’t do it (the bad thing) then someone else will’ are such doggone lame arguments – but believing in your own BS allows you to deliver it with confidence, and people are more drawn to trusting those who appear confident in what they say.
However, the primary purpose of rationalisations is to convince the person who thinks it, not so much to convince other people that the arguments are sound. It’s about finding a way to sleep better at night whilst continuing to do what selfishly serves oneself, or whilst justifying why one doesn’t need to atone for a past display of excessive avarice. Justifications override any guilty feelings and allow one to carry on believing one still has an upstanding moral and social reputation. Sometimes enough other people will believe that too, especially if they’re part of the ingroup or benefit from the deception.
So ingroups may protect their own members even when their own members have committed wrongs towards others (blue lies). This can happen with police forces protecting police officers from misconduct allegations, or sports organisations protecting coaches from sexual abuse allegations, for example. Actively covering up allegations or keeping silent and hoping a story will soon blow over can be to protect the group’s overall reputation, due to blind loyalty, or because of a threat of ‘snitches get stitches’.
Sometimes people alternatively overcompensate if they know they’ve done something wrong – for instance they might drive too slowly if they know they’ve drank too much alcohol and shouldn’t be driving at all, or we often do feel suspicious of a partner who all of a sudden becomes more generous to us than usual when there’s no special occasion or overt reason to explain it. However, we still must seek for hard evidence of any wrongdoing. Moreover, some people don’t ever feel guilty for their hidden misdeeds to ever act in this overcompensatory manner; and we’d rather be with someone who attempts to make amends to clear their fuzzy conscience than be with someone who has no conscience to make amends at all!
Rationalising our mistakes away can be beneficial for our own personal mental well-being (well it’s paramount for our health to be able to sleep well at night!) but it can lead to justifying immoral behaviours. We can rationalise our guilt away by arguing that ‘the victim deserved what happened’, ‘they’re better off not knowing the truth’ or something like that. Hence what makes us personally feel better may not be good for the moral fabric of society as a whole. Therefore feeling guilt or shame is not a reliable indicator of deserving to feel guilt or shame because some people are overly harsh on themselves whilst some others are too efficient at excusing away or washing over their immoral behaviours.
Woof! If you can think of any other reputation laundering or washing examples then you can share them with us by replying to the tweet that’s linked to the Twitter comment button below.
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