Capitalism, Race and Democracy

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5. This week on Capitalism, Race and Democracy.
6. There are 48 teams.
7. Most of them are from the Global South.
8. Nine out of the 48 teams are from Africa.
9. As Trump generally called those countries,
10. whole countries, by the way.
11. Professor George Wright discusses capitalism,
12. Trumpism, and the ongoing North American FIFA World Cup games.
13. Then what, to the slave, is your Fourth of July?
14. I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days in the year the gross injustice
15. and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
16. To him your celebration is a sham, your boasted liberty an unholy license, your national greatness
17. swelling vanity, your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless.
18. Journalist C.C. Campbell Rock reads Frederick Douglass' speech,
19. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.
20. From Pacifica Radio, this is Capitalism, Race and Democracy,
21. a collective effort by producers from Pacifica stations and affiliates across the U.S.
22. I'm your host, Thomas O'Rourke.
23. The corporatization of soccer under the corrupt FIFA has been ongoing for decades.
24. This is more evident than ever with this summer's World Cup games playing now in cities across North America,
25. though with the bulk of the games in the U.S. under the racist, reactionary Trump presidency.
26. Professor George Wright, an expert on class, race, and sports, spoke to Pacifica's Steve
27. Zeltser about the nature of FIFA during this North American iteration of the quadrennial
28. World Cup.
29. This current World Cup is a perfect synthesis, if you will, of capitalism, politics, and
30. sport.
31. And when we're talking about politics, we're talking about the age of Trump, or what I
32. like to refer to as Trumpism.
33. I think everyone listening to this has a general impression of Trumpism and Trump and much of the politics of Trump.
34. Obviously, this so-called faux America First project has been, with a Trumpist characterization, has been very, how should I say, chauvinistic, imperialist, fascist, not very nice to most of the world.
35. And the closer you are to be non the more vicious that process has been although certainly Europeans and Canadians have been subject to Trump abuses as well So within that sketchy outline we see that the World Cup is situated within that context
36. One of the things that's kind of unique about Trump and his presidency is the U.S. bid,
37. the bid for the World Cup took place in 217 and 218 while Trump was in his first administration.
38. and a decision was made to have a joint bid, including Canada and Mexico, in competition
39. against Morocco, which had a lot of support at the time, by the way, for its bid. And Trump,
40. that went fairly smoothly. But in the second Trump administration, things have not gone
41. as smoothly based on the realities of Trumpism.
42. There is a lot that can be said,
43. but I'm going to just comment on a couple things.
44. The president of FIFA is a fellow by the name of Gianni Infantino,
45. who has several nationalities behind him,
46. but we could argue that he basically is an Italian.
47. He has been very aware of Trump and Trumpism.
48. And so I think the first thing when we talk about the World Cup within the context of Trump
49. is how FIFA has patronized Trump to be able to hone in into this space, into the United States,
50. to be able to have a World Cup competition that minimizes Trump's input in all of this.
51. So at the centerpiece of all of this was FIFA came up with its first Peace Prize.
52. So it gave Trump a medal a year or so ago.
53. And we know Trump loves to receive awards.
54. Okay, so that was an example of how FIFA has tried to operate to hone in a space to minimize any problems that Trump might provide.
55. more specifically
56. there are a number of issues
57. that
58. laden the second Trump administration
59. as well as the first
60. and we'll just note two that stand out that are relevant
61. to the World Cup. One has to do with issues of
62. immigration and targeted countries
63. that the Trump administration has singled out.
64. For example, there are some 39 nations in the world
65. that face either full or partial travel bans, for example.
66. Four of those nations were competitors
67. or are competitors in this current World Cup.
68. That's Haiti, Iran, Cote d'Ivoire, or Ivory Coast,
69. as well as Senegal.
70. All four of those nations received harassment to varying degrees related to visas, delays at transport hubs, particularly airports coming into the country.
71. either all of the team members and or individuals members of the teams Also some officials from some of those countries were not sporting officials were not allowed to come in the country and receive visas
72. And also, some spectators from those respective countries
73. were not allowed in the country as well,
74. particularly Iran and all of this.
75. So in Los Angeles, the Iranian team,
76. Now related to another major issue
77. and that's the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression
78. on Iran has also come into
79. this competition as well
80. Iran qualified to compete
81. in this World Cup
82. this is the fourth World Cup in a row
83. that it is qualified to compete in the World Cup.
84. And owing to the U.S. war, Israeli war against Iran,
85. a couple things have to be noted from the very outset.
86. The team has not been able to compete or practice together
87. since the outset of that war back in February.
88. And secondly, members of the Iranian Sports Federation,
89. and for that matter, the Iranian government,
90. did debate whether they were going to participate in this World Cup or not.
91. They obviously decided to do that.
92. I'm not privy to the specifics of that discussion.
93. I hope I'm able to find that material at some point in the future.
94. I do want to note that back in the old days, there were boycotts quite often for sports events.
95. For example, you may recall that the United States boycotted, excuse me, the Soviet Union.
96. No, the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics along with 56 other countries in protest to the Soviet Union's intervention into Afghanistan.
97. Four years later, the Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Olympic Games along with 11 or 12 other countries as well for slightly different reasons.
98. More of the Reagan evil empire type, second Cold War climate that existed at the time.
99. So it would not have been unprecedented for Iran not to come to this World Cup championship.
100. But they did decide, and I'm pleased that they did, to be honest with you.
101. A next issue has to do with, initially the Iranian team was scheduled to be based in Tucson, Arizona,
102. which would have made it somewhat convenient they would be in the United States.
103. But the Trump administration refused to allow them to spend a night in the United States.
104. So they were forced to move their base camp to Tijuana, which meant that they had to fly from Tijuana to the respective competitions, two in Los Angeles and one in Seattle.
105. And they were told that they couldn't stay in the country more than 24 hours at any point in time, and that immediately after the competition, they had to fly back to Tijuana. So a very constricted context for the Iranian team, which obviously affected them psychologically, physically, training-wise, sleep, etc., etc.
106. So they were at a significant disadvantage. At the same time, I did watch all three Iranian
107. matches and they were highly competitive
108. and very vigorous and I was rooting for them the whole time What also has to be noted that is kind of interesting and that is that two of the matches were scheduled to be in Los Angeles
109. Excuse me.
110. And Los Angeles has the second largest population of Iranian people, short of Tehran.
111. and many of them are pro-Shah, anti-Islamic Republic politics, perspectives.
112. And there was this prospect of protests in the stadium at SoFi Arena,
113. events outside the arena, etc., etc.
114. they did petition to be able to have the Iranian flag that existed under the Shah's regime.
115. It went to court, as I understand it. FIFA tried to have it banned, but the court said that they
116. had the right to fly the flag within this stadium. So it was a very politicized environment.
117. But I do want to stress very strongly, as the competition took place, the Iranian team competed.
118. the mass number of people in those stadiums were rooting for the Iranian team.
119. You didn't hear any boos.
120. You saw all kinds of cheers and support.
121. So I thought that was a very interesting development,
122. and I hope there'll be more commentary on that in the future.
123. To final up on Trump's notes, views about Trump's role in all of this,
124. FIFA has also given Trump the permission to hand out the World Cup trophy
125. to the winners the last day, which will be July 19th,
126. which could turn into a circus as well.
127. I will say in general, watching the World Cup as closely as I have
128. and monitoring events through various media sources,
129. Trump is more or less backed off during this competition
130. and has not been as vile as we expected him to be.
131. Why that's the case, I don't know. We can only speculate. But we can say that this competition has gone off kind of Trump-free so far. But my final comment is, being a very passionate lover of sport,
132. I find the juxtaposition between Trumpism, its white nationalist, racist, fascist agenda, anti-brown and black and yellow immigration perspective, to be on one side of the perspective and the realities of the World Cup completely opposite.
133. it, meaning there are 48 teams. Most of them are from the global south. Nine out of the 48 teams
134. were from Africa, okay, as Trump generally called those countries, whole countries, by the way,
135. and there they were competing. Many of those teams made the round of 32, by the way. Some of them,
136. I haven't seen the results the last day or two, might make the quarter, the round of 16, for example.
137. Most of those teams were integrated with different colors.
138. Obviously, if you're from Senegal, most of the guys were black Africans.
139. But the French team, two thirds, three quarters of the French team is black.
140. The German team is black players.
141. The Austrian team today, there are two black players on the Austrian team.
142. Britain's two-thirds of their team is black
143. I mean
144. The brown, the Mexican team, Ecuadorian, these are brown people.
145. It's completely opposite.
146. And people, the fans, no matter how much money they've spent for their tickets,
147. they're overjoyed by these competitions.
148. And they're learning about the humanity and the diversity of humanity.
149. So in many ways, the World Cup is in counter distinction to Trumpism.
150. And it's not necessarily translated directly into politics, but related to ideology and consciousness, etc.
151. I think it's a dramatic phenomenon, a very important phenomenon to try to assess.
152. My final comments are back to Bill Gilbert and his framework based on his article, Troubles from a Gleaning Times.
153. One of the things that Gilbert argues in his article is that no matter how big sport gets, how capitalist it gets, how corrupt it gets, there can still be high sport.
154. And I guarantee you, for anyone willing to sit in front of your screens or possibly even to get a ticket to go to one of these competitions, you are seeing sport at its highest form.
155. It is mind-boggling.
156. what we're watching. A few things that stand out. There are four or five of the greatest
157. football players that have ever played football. The consensus is the greatest football player of
158. all time was Pele from Brazil. But we have Lionel Messi. If he's not better than Pele,
159. he's just as good.
160. Kylian Bessé is from Argentina.
161. Kylian Mbappe, he's the John Coltrane of football.
162. Erling Haaland from Norway is unbelievable.
163. Harry Kane from England, etc.
164. All of these will go down in history
165. in the pantheon of great football players.
166. Pele, the Brazilian Ronaldo, Maradona from Argentina, Johan Cruyff from the Netherlands, the Portuguese Ronaldo, etc.
167. These are masters of their craft, and to watch them is just absolutely mind-blowing.
168. I also want to add, there is a non-striker that plays for France that is an absolute genius as well, and his name is Olici. Just watch him play, and you will just be overjoyed by the beauty of the sport.
169. And then finally, the team that will probably win the competition, and that is France. It is a masterful football team that is mind-bogglingly good. Not just all 11, but Coach Deschamps can bring substitutes into the team that are just incredible players.
170. So in spite of the corruption, the capitalism in Trump, there's pure joy that can be generated from this competition as well.
171. But never forget the analysis at the same time.
172. Those are the words that I want to say. Thank you.
173. And the composition of the American team.
174. I mean, Trump has argued as a racist and a fascist
175. that black brown people Asian people are not as good as whites Yet this game has the fact that the brown black
176. all the people of the world are part of this
177. and it goes against a racist, fascist ideology.
178. It goes against a racist, fascist ideology.
179. I mean, it is 180 degrees opposite to Trumpism.
180. And it's right here in the midst of Trump.
181. It's absolutely mind-boggling.
182. And the U.S. team itself is, I don't know,
183. I haven't counted the kids, but at least half, if not two thirds of the U.S. team is African-American.
184. Or there's one young man who's German.
185. It just happens to have an American father.
186. And they recruited him in 2022 to be on the team.
187. You know, my only frustration is this great, great celebration of the in the United States through its media of the U.S. team.
188. And even chants during the stadium of USA, USA, USA.
189. It does have portend of Germany in 1936 to a little bit.
190. But when the U.S. has to play in the quarterfinals, if they get through the next game, they will have their comeuppance.
191. And Trump will not be giving the World Cup trophy to the U.S. team.
192. OK, I'll put money on that one.
193. That was Professor George Wright talking about capitalism, Trumpism, and the ongoing North American FIFA World Cup, whose finale is scheduled for July 19th at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
194. The website SeekGeek lists a ticket to that final game starting at $9,924.
195. Shakira, we are ready.
196. Come look at the beautiful game
197. We're washing away all the blame
198. You talk about human rights laws
199. We silence the fans with applause
200. A ticket to cover the lies
201. We're selling you the peace prize
202. Just cheering and ignoring the signs
203. A trophy to hide the war crimes
204. Pay up, cash in, profit money, let's go
205. Pay up, cash in, profit money, let's go
206. All the rights and wrongs
207. All the smoke and the screams
208. We cover up it all, cover it all
209. And do it again
210. It's FIFA versus football fans
211. Yeah, we ruined the romance
212. To be selling the dream at the top of our game
213. Cash rules!
214. Red card!
215. That was War Cup.
216. This is Pacifica's Capitalism, Race, and Democracy.
217. I'm Thomas O'Rourke.
218. You're listening to Pacifica's Capitalism, Race, and Democracy.
219. I'm your host, Thomas O'Rourke.
220. Next, independent journalist C.C. Campbell Rock from New Orleans
221. reads Frederick Douglass' speech,
222. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.
223. Frederick Douglass was born an enslaved person in Maryland later escaping into freedom and emerging as one of the leading abolitionist voices in the 19th century In June 1852 he delivers this Independence Day address to the Rochester Ladies Anti Society
224. It became one of Douglass' most famous speeches,
225. criticizing the chasm between America's founding principles and the institution of slavery.
226. In the speech, Douglass lamented that Independence Day wasn't a day of celebration for enslaved people.
227. At the same time, he urged his audience to read the United States Constitution not as a pro-slavery document, but as a glorious liberty document.
228. Here, then, is Frederick Douglass' speech to what is July the 4th to the slave.
229. Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today?
230. What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?
231. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us?
232. And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offerings to the national altar and to confess the benefits and express
233. express devote gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
234. Were to God, both of your sakes and ours, that an affirmative action could be truthfully
235. returned to these questions, then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful.
236. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him?
237. Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge
238. such priceless benefits?
239. Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's
240. jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs?
241. I am not that man.
242. Fellow citizens, above your national tumultuous joy I hear the mournful wail of millions whose
243. chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilee
244. shouts that reach them.
245. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day,
246. may my right hand forget her cunning and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.
247. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme
248. would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and
249. the world.
250. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery.
251. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view.
252. Standing there identified with the American bondsman, making his wrongs mine,
253. I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
254. What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?
255. I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
256. I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies.
257. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism a sham, your humanity a base pretense, and your Christianity a lie.
258. It destroys your moral power abroad.
259. It corrupts your politicians at home.
260. It saps the foundation of religion.
261. It makes your name a hissing and a byword to a mocking earth.
262. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and
263. endangers your union.
264. It fetters your progress.
265. It is the enemy of improvement the deadly foe of education It fosters pride It breeds insolence It promotes vice It shelters crime It is a curse to the earth that supports it And yet you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor of all your
266. hopes. Oh, be warned. Be warned. A horrible reptile is called up in your nation's bosom.
267. The venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic. For the love
268. of God, tear away and fling from you the hideous monster and let the weight of twenty millions
269. crush and destroy forever.
270. Fellow citizens, there is no matter in respect to which the people of the North have allowed
271. themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon as that of the pro-slavery character of the
272. Constitution.
273. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful
274. thing but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious
275. liberty document. Read its preamble. Consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? While I do not
276. intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat
277. singular that if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding
278. instrument, why neither slavery, slave-holding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it? I hold
279. that every American has a right to form an opinion of the Constitution and to propagate
280. that opinion and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one.
281. Now take the Constitution according to its plain reading and I defy the presentation
282. of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles
283. and purposes entirely hostile to the existence of slavery. Allow me to say in conclusion,
284. Notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, and the doom of slavery is certain.
285. I therefore leave off where I began with hope.
286. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence,
287. the great principles it contains, and the genius of American institution,
288. my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.
289. That was independent journalist C.C. Campbell Rock
290. reading excerpts from Frederick Douglass' speech
291. delivered July 5, 1852 to a group of abolitionists in Rochester, New York.
292. And that concludes today's edition of Capitalism, Race, and Democracy.
293. We thank all of Pacifica's sister stations and affiliates that contribute to the production of this show.
294. Today's program was produced by the Capitalism, Race, and Democracy Collective,
295. with contributions from Steve Zeltser, Anne Garrison, Polina Vasiliev, and myself, Thomas O'Rourke.
296. You can find this and all previous episodes at our website, capitalismraceanddemocracy.org.
297. Make sure you click the subscribe button.
298. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, at PacificaCRD.
299. I've been your host, Thomas O'Rourke.
300. Thanks for listening.
301. Thank you.
302. .