Barbaric Sport: a global plague, By Marc Perelman
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
As a totalitarian "summer of sport" looms, a gold medal to Marc Perelman for this bracingly bilious counterblast against the new "planetary religion".
Perelman (a Parisian academic) draws on Freud, Marx and the Frankfurt School critique of mass spectacle as a collective narcotic. But even the non-theoretical will relish a furious assault not just against doping, bribery and political abuse - at the Olympics or World Cup – but on the global power of sport itself. He doesn't seek reform, a return to amateur innocence. The final verdict? "There should be no sport."
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments