"I was reading the article about Tom Brady's Saudi sportswashing and it got me wondering: how are we, as Americans in 2025, really able to accuse Saudi Arabia of sportswashing? We are witnesses and (unwilling) participants to daily atrocities inflicted by the United States on international and on local citizens. Not to mention the American sportswashing rituals of national anthems, veteran salutes, military flyovers that accompany every sporting event, etc."
"After all, what's a NFL team but an entertaining résumé topper for an owner who makes the bulk of their money producing munitions for bombing orphanages? And imagine how President Extortion would have used a U.S. Ryder Cup comeback win to burnish his own lousy reputation. Whitewashing was damn near invented in this country, so it's a bit hypocritical to call out other countries for engaging in similar practices. They can't use golf to make themselves look nice! That's our thing!"
American accusations of Saudi sportswashing can appear hypocritical given long-standing U.S. practices that sanitize violence through spectacle. Sports rituals such as national anthems, veteran salutes, and military flyovers regularly transform violence into patriotic entertainment. Wealthy sports owners sometimes profit from weapons manufacturing, linking team prestige to industries that enable wartime harm. American political leaders routinely use sporting triumphs to launder reputations. Nevertheless, Saudi actions — including ties to 9/11 and the gruesome murder of a journalist — generate uniquely severe moral condemnation that complicates simple equivalence. Moral judgment of sportswashing therefore involves both global hypocrisy and distinct crimes that demand accountability.
Read at Defector
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]