The echoes of the Olympic opening held in Paris last weekend are still reverberating.
For the first time in history, the ceremony took place outside a stadium, with athletes from over 200 countries parading in boats along the Seine River for a distance of 6 kilometers.
More than 300 thousand people watched the dance, music and acrobatics shows in the city.
It was a long, pompous, boring program, with a backdrop of French history, art and culture. History was certainly still there in Paris, but it was hard to understand what had happened to French art and culture.
The program, concluded in rainy and gloomy weather, has generally received much criticism. But if France chose such a show, there is nothing to say. Paris 2024 is not the first time that Olympic openings have featured extravagant displays highlighting the host city or country.
However, these spectacles that are put in front of us, no matter how glamorous, should not prevent us from seeing the reality.
While calls for freedom, equality, and fraternity echoed through Paris that evening, the gap between the messages intended and the reality was disturbing.
While calls are made to live together with our differences under the name of fraternity, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party, which turns its back on those who are different, received the highest number of votes in the European Parliament elections in France just two months ago. While France declared that Paris had opened its doors wide to Olympic athletes, in fact almost a third of its citizens were demanding that the doors be locked to those who are foreign.
Moreover, these sentiments are not confined to France alone. Across much of Europe, fears of the other, the foreigner, or the refugee have long been sowing seeds of hostility instead of fraternity. Haven't the thousands of people who were pushed back and left to drown in the depths of the Mediterranean while trying to take refuge in Europe, fleeing the hells of war and indescribable poverty, been victims of Europe's selfish refugee policies? Didn't the Europeans make those wretched and racist regulations that people seeking asylum would be imprisoned in camps at the borders and that Europe would eventually be able to get rid of them by paying a fee per head?
The designers of the opening did not include this culture of Europe - which is forgotten too quickly for some - on the stage.
And what about equality?
The emphasis on the need for different sexual preferences to exist equally with others in society was perhaps the most memorable part of the opening. Of course, I am not going to object to that. But what about income inequality? What about the fault line between the rich and the poor that is getting deeper by the moment?
I'm not sure if the architects of the opening ceremony were aware that the global inequalities today are nearing the levels seen at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century. But the poorest half of the world, who own only 8 percent of global income and struggle to survive on $100 a month, were not present at Paris. Meanwhile, the richest 10 percent, who pocket more than half of the income and own 80 percent of the world's wealth, took center stage with their product placements. As a result, the ceremony resembled more of a pool party of the global multi-millionaires who have disproportionately seized a vast portion of global wealth over the past few decades.
On the other hand, while the world’s richest 10 percent are responsible for at least half of the global carbon emissions, the inequality suffered by the bottom 50 percent, who have to pay the price of global warming through natural disasters on the one hand and methods such as carbon taxes on the other, was also absent from the program. It was neither the time nor the place to talk about these things, anyway, as the lights of Paris were turned on full blast for the party.
What about peace? What happened to the doves, the symbol of the Olympics?
Perhaps Paris has become so distant from the wars that she can no longer remember them. Maybe, while watching on the screen, she has turned them into video games played by others in her mind.
In Paris, there were no 40,000 people who died in Gaza. Nor were there over 15,000 children who lost their lives to a shell or to starvation in the midst of the war.
Many conflicts, wars, and tensions in the world, inherited from Europeans, including the French, found no place amidst the festivities in Paris.
In Paris, peace was once again left to John Lennon. The lyrics of the final song lingered in the air, just like the hot air balloon that carried the Olympic flame.
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
…
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
(Imagine, John Lennon, 1971)
