Football, 2024 Olympics, and Panem et circenses
Should we be entertaining ourselves with sports while wars rage?
Amidst the Palestinian genocide and a war raging between Russia and Ukraine, the world just witnessed the UEFA European Football Championship and Copa América, and is preparing for the Summer 2024 Olympics. What’s with the timing? Politicians and countries are no stranger to using distractions to avert our gaze and attention from serious atrocities and political unrest. While I’ve always had a gut feeling that these sporting events happen so timely to distract us from horrifying current events, little did I know that such practice was actually coined and used 2,000 years ago by the Romans — Panem et circenses.
Panem et circenses in the 21st century
This Latin saying, literally meaning ‘bread and circuses’ or ‘bread and games’, is attributed to Juvenal (55–128 CE), a Roman poet, and is used commonly in cultural and political contexts. It comes from Satire X, a collection of satirical poems by Juvenal:
… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.
— Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81
He refers to the Romans providing free wheat to citizens and holding circus games, like the gladiator battles, as a means of distracting citizens from current events that may cause unrest. Sound familiar?
National sporting events and nationalism
National sporting events tend to create intense nationalist sentiments and pride. Watching your country go against another is almost like the two are at war. While Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) claims that football unites the world, I feel it creates more division than unity when football fans feel hatred or act violently against another team’s fans. FIFA as an organization isn’t a shining beacon of unity either. There are reports of rampant corruption within its ranks with high-level organised crime gangs. In a world already torn by war, violence, hatred, genocide, and territorial disputes, do we need more?
Can we justify the environmental impact?
Not only are we facing human-against-human atrocities at the moment, our planet’s environment and life are rapidly deteriorating (made worse by wars and genocides!). The Paris 2024 Olympics have received protests and petitions against destroying the reefs of Tahiti (STILL a French colony — how is colonisation still a thing in 2024?) for the surfing event. Even if the Olympic committee claims that Paris 2024 games are the ‘cleanest’ or ‘greenest’ so far, simply cancelling it would probably make it even greener.
Furthermore, putting aside that we are still holding the concept of competition sacred in 2024, must we all gather in one place from all over the world, Olympians and audience alike, to see who swims faster or performs a better gymnastics routine? Don’t get me wrong, I think the sportspeople who have trained so hard should be given a platform to excel, but is competition so important to show human prowess? It has, after all, been 1,631 years since the Ancient Olympic games and 128 since the modern version.
Anyway, there’s my quick take on why I will not be following the Olympic games and why I didn’t follow the recent football matches. We need entertainment in life but I refuse to feed into ‘bread and games’. Surely there are other forms of entertainment that doesn’t involve environmental destruction, division amongst humans, and political distraction.
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