Now the Far-right Hates Sports

I’m not a sports fan. I’ve been known to refer to such activities as “sportsball” and I certainly agree with Noam Chomsky’s analysis of professional sports as part of the greater distraction function of capital-owned mass media. The latest trend in far-right insanity still has me scratching my head, though, and honestly, I can’t help but reflexively feel more positive toward professional sports.

Yes, the far right (the very, very far right) has decided that they hate professional sports. The biggest reason appears to be that COVID-19 restrictions have been dropped so thoroughly that they no longer have that to rally people to their cause, so they’re forced to come up with something new.

They’re being vague about what, exactly, they hate about professional sports, but if we read between the lines, the reasons appear to be:

  1. Professional athletes represent various racial, ethnic, and sexual/romantic identities. They are diverse.
  2. Professional athletes as well as the business entities that control the teams support various racial, ethnic, and sexual/romantic identities; see, for example, Colin Kaepernick, Megan Rapinoe. They support the neoliberal conception of equality — and the destruction of old hierarchies. They still support capitalism, obviously, but the far right doesn’t actually like capitalism.
  3. Professional sports have an inherent homoeroticism. All those fit, scantily-clad same-sex bodies bumping into one another. Rowr.
  4. Professional sports promote a kind of idolatry of the human form and of human excellence. Put another way, it promotes the idea that human beings can achieve greatness, can do amazing — even miraculous — things.

So, in summary:

  • Racism
  • Homophobia
  • Christian extremism

These are not the reasons why I dislike sports — not anywhere close. If anything, these are all major strengths of professional sports; they are things that contribute positively to society and culture. This right-wing take won’t convince people to give up watching professional sports, but it might encourage conservatives to feel even more angry and alienated. I feel like this strategy can’t really last very long, but you never know.

Here’s a related Twitter thread: