Is it time to boycott the World Cup

[MOntueslite]

I know we all said this about the last World Cup. Ice have murdered a man in the street. Surely Europe can send a message and just say no.
It would be the ultimate humiliation for Trump

Just sometimes something is bigger than football.

Not gonna happen. If countries didn't pull out of the Qatar World Cup then they are not going to pull out of the US World Cup. In fact at the Qatar World Cup you had the likes of Gary Lineker, Gary Neville and Alex Scott making preaching protest noises in the run up but ultimately they followed the money and went to the tournament in the end anyway.

For the rest of the world the football is much bigger than this. Keep things in some kind of proportion please.

We shouldn’t boycott, it can legitimately be moved on the basis America isn’t a safe place.

the foreign office need to advise against all but essential travel. Etc.

A friend was invited on GB news after writing an article on exactly this, funnily enough they declined!

Not a chance. It took place in Qatar as well, which is even worse than the US. This is the first time Scotland has placed in 30 years! Of course we're not going to boycott. Please be sensible.

the former “leader of the free world” now has an armed paramilitary unit which has been told it has complete immunity, terrorizing a city. Two people have been killed with seemingly no repercussions, there are locals holed up in their homes terrified to go out to buy food.

I think a boycott is justly deserved. Who could seriously enjoy all the pageantry of the world coming together to play sport, presided over by a beaming Trump, against that horrific backdrop.

Then I would ask you – in what circumstances could we ever enjoy anything again? There’s always something equally bad happening everywhere.

This doesn’t deserve a boycott, just because it’s in a place you’ve heard of and involves a guy you don’t like.

Are you really suggesting that what is going on in the US is somehow “business as normal”? I find that absolutely staggering.

Is there some point that you think a boycott could be justified, or are you happy to go along regardless as people being executed by the government on the streets is all just “politics”?

This World Cup is effectively the 1936 Berlin Olympics. If you want to be part of the cheering crowd, you do you.

It’s embarrassing to have to say this, but America today is not Germany in 1936. Don’t be stupid.

This and the Olympics in '28 - I think the world needs to stand up and show that we can see he is pushing his people to revolt so he won't have to face another election.

Also agree that if they will kill the average American for no reason they will have no qualms killing people from other parts of the world who are visiting. It is clearly not a safe country for anyone while Trump allows untrained thugs to roam with no legal rights.

100% agree. This World Cup is NOT the equivalent of the 1936 Olympics. I'm not aware of any countries boycotting the 1936 Olympics when Hitler was already Chancellor and Jews were being imprisoned simply for being Jewish and/or Communist. Know this for a fact as my uncle was imprisoned in Dachau in 1936.

The people behind the World Cup took money from Qatar and played in stadiums built on slave labour that its suspected people died building. Prople slso still went. Football doesn't care.

It’s embarrassing to have to say this but watch the news, watch the direction of travel, listen to the rhetoric, and learn your history. Just listen to the dehumanising language used by Trump against ethnic groups like Somalis and ponder where you may have heard this sort of thing before.

Do you think there was anything uniquely evil about the population of Germany in the 30’s. There was a population made up of some people who applauded what they gradually saw happen around them as the language and violence ramped up, there were people who pushed back, and there were a lot of people who grumbled and tutted and looked uncomfortably the other way.

The lesson of Germany is that if it can happen to them, a civilised, educated country that had made huge contributions to the world, then all countries are vulnerable.

If you went back to a world pre-Trump and described to a US citizen what their country looks like today you would be laughed at - they would say it could never happen. That’s the thing about boiling frogs though.

It won’t happen

how many people were going to boycott the last World Cup and wanted teams to. A country where being in same sex relationships and women being unfaithful (judged by men) can by law have you stoned

people separate what they like to what they feel is right

and while we are seeing terrible scenes in certain areas of the US the vast majority of people are getting on with their everyday lives because they have to

if anything to will be good for the country bring some normality to a hugely celebrated sports event

Well the UK was at war with Germany in the early 1940s so that’s not the same thing at all.
and remember that Germany under Hitler hosted the Olympics in 1936. And Jesse Owens winning his gold medal did more to rattle Hitler than if USA simply hadn’t shown up.

If there’s any parallel to that era of Germany it would be to the late 1920s, and even then it’s not very close and the circumstances are very different (and much milder). This sort of talk is deranged.

Qatar went out of its way to brush its horrors under the carpet, present an acceptable facade to visitors and welcome football fans. The Qatari government is politically ambitious and understood how crucial the world cup was to its international image.

The US government doesn't care about its international image. It is actively targeting foreigners, legal or illegal. Any lawful visitors know they can be "disappeared", assaulted or even killed with absolutely no consequences for the perpetrators. From what I hear anyone who's not white is fair game for ICE, and they have even detained people with US passports.

From the "I don't care about politics", average male football fan point of view who's considering visiting the US, the situations are quite different. This time the politics could affect football fans.

Do you have any idea about how they built the stadiums for the previous World Cup in Qatar? Did you watch that World Cup?

Again, the boiling frog.

People in these situations like to imagine there is some point where they would finally say - that is my red line, this is where I take a stand. But strangely, for many, that point always seems elusive. What happens today never seems sufficiently more awful than yesterday. And what will happen tomorrow won’t be quite horrifying enough compared to today.

And so we keep edging forwards. A personality cult built around a leader who governs not with policies, but with whims and desires, with punishments and humiliation.

A leader who set up an armed paramilitary force, better funded than most armies, which is currently terrorising anyone whose skin doesn’t match their idea of what a true American looks like, or who threatens their sense of absolute power.

People shot in the street, immediately labelled as criminals and terrorists by a government that seemingly refuses to investigate or allow an independent judiciary to hold anyone to account.

It is important to remember that it doesn’t even have to be that Trump orders horrific things to happen. All he has to do is give license to people below him to do what they think they have to do, what they believe he would want them to do. He has created the environment in which truly terrible people are emboldened - they will see this as their time and they will grab it.

People are taken by ICE and flown to detention centres, far from their friends and families. The staff there are told that these people are unwelcome, they are not true Americans, in the case of some ethnic groups they are told by Trump that they are inherently bad, less than human. These men know that Trump has their back, that they are are a force for good in Trump’s new America.

They see as well that Trump himself believes that all that matters is power, and it is the rule of the world that the powerful must dominate and humiliate the weak.

What are your honest thoughts on the chances of the men, women, even children who find their way into these detention centres?

If ICE will shoot someone on the street without a second thought, how much care and dignity to their detainees receive behind locked doors?

The point of my post is that, regadless of what we might think, many football fans quite simply didn't care about the slavery, abuses and deaths beneath Qatar's glossy surface, because they themselves were safe during the world cup.

This time round football fans could suffer. That's new. That's the difference.

I don't see how the political context can be swept under the carpet this time. Certainly I don't expect ICE will make allowances for football fans.

I agree. Not safe for players or fans. KCIII visit should also be stopped (or at least he has a last min 'health issue' so Trump doesn't get his photo op). I'd quite like Scotland to nationalise his bloody golf courses too.

It would be interesting if teams (harder for fans) could have base camps in Canada and Mexico and just fly to US for their games.

I'd find it very hard if I was Scottish and had a chance to attend - I would want to go!
I am not sure that the US would be safe for fans from all countries though - ICE would struggle to identify the "real" criminals and would have to shoot everyone.

Maybe Canada would be best positioned to mount a protest by pulling out of co-hosting but there doesn't seem to be any such noises from Canada so far. Money usually talks ultimately.