The IOC in the Good Old Days

geoffff

Sports historians and others who may have pondered how easy it was for the custodian of the sacred Olympic ideal to organise a publicly racist Olympic Games in 1936 should read this just published essay by Peter Martino of the Gatestone Institute   The piece is here but this is not a movie so I'll tell you the ending now.

Jewish* athletes were banned from the German team of course but the Games went ahead anyway. I'm tempted to say of course. It was the temper of the times and also it helped that the President of the IOC at the time was a Nazi and that if his wife survived the war should have been hanged in Belgium as a traitor. Maybe she was. I couldn't be bothered checking.

Let's be clear about this. This is not Samaranch. This is another one.

Allow me to introduce Henri de Baillet-Latour,  President of the IOC from 1925 until his death in 1942. What a nice man. Officially nice according to the IOC.

Here's a fun fact. When the American member of the IOC, wrote a letter to Baillet-Latour urging the IOC to cancel the Berlin Olympics in protest against "the contempt of the Nazis for fair play and their sordid exploitation of the Games." became the only person ever to be expelled from the IOC.

That man's name is worth remembering. Ernest L. Jahncke. His successor was more amenable to the idea of the Jew ban. His name is not.

Here's another fun fact. Henri de Baillet-Latour was exactly as he sounds. A Belgium aristocrat. Give him a monocle and you could have him solving murders. Just like the present guy. Count Jacques Rogge. The man who decided there would be no moment of silence in memory of the murdered of Munich of 1972 at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics despite the imploring of so many and the whole world knows why. 

It is because they were from the Jew state.

He said that if there was a moment of simple respect shown during the ceremony for the Eleven of Munich then many Muslim countries would not participate or show up or something. So what?  I expect there are people who could not even fake sympathy  for a murdered black as well. Or woman. We are talking about something pretty ugly after all 

All this does is confirm the suspicion that this is just part of the propaganda war against Israel and the Jews

The post at the Joint that has  attracted the most attention is this one.

In it the Joint  has argued that this raises something at the very  core of any Olympic ideal worthwhile showing up for. It's universality. No exceptions. Once that unravels then you may as well officially introduce drug cheating for all the Olympic spirit is worth.

Some will say the Israelis are there under their own flag so why not everyone else. This is glib and they must know it. If the Israelis were not there then the Jew haters have won. The Israelis have a duty to be there and besides that is not what the Joint is so modestly proposing.

The proposal is that Australia, and other countries, do not participate under their national emblems unless there is an appropriate moment of due respect shown at the next opening ceremony of the Olympic Games for the murder victims of 1972. The IOC had an opportunity to put this to rest forever at the London Olympics. They chose not to.  Instead they chose to politicise the Olympics in the ugliest way possible.

They should compete under the Olympic flag.  As many as possible all under the same flag.  Let the countries and athletes that can't bear the thought of showing some public respect for murdered athletes because of their nationality, race, religion or for any other reason show their faces by showing their flags. 

The rest of the world has the opportunity to show that the universality of sport, untainted by bigotry, is something that should be preserved at all costs. Otherwise the sport is not worth preserving .

If we can't reclaim the IOC let's at least reclaim the Olympics.

[cross posted   Geoffff's Joint Bar Grill]

hat tip   Blank Pages Of The Age   
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* They included the German high jump record holder. Never forget that it is they who define who the "Jews" are. In 1936 the Nuremberg Laws  applied. Modern Iran adopts the same definitions. So does the Muslim Brotherhood. This is no accident.  


You can be a Jew without even knowing it yourself.