Table of Contents
Ani O’Brien
Like good faith disagreements and principled people. Dislike disingenuousness and Foucault. Care especially about women’s rights, justice, and democracy.
Another day, another New Zealand Herald article has triggered me! This one was published on Friday and I initially tried to resist writing a response, but then I thought I would leave you guys to tell me if you are sick of me picking on Herald articles. Feel free to be honest in the comments!
Read the original article here.
Alice Soper wants you to know that she has discovered, once again, that sport is political. This is her favourite realisation, because it allows her to sprint, arms open, towards whatever fashionable moral panic is currently idling at the station. And right on cue, she has leapt aboard the ICE Express, ticket clenched, eyes shining, ready to cry into the camera and post it on TikTok.
The premise of her piece is that the All Blacks are playing South Africa in Baltimore and America has immigration enforcement that is targeting people who are in the country illegally and there have been a couple of highly publicised shootings and therefore rugby is complicit in state violence. It’s not an argument so much as a vibes-based Hungry Caterpillar, chomping on ominous language and selective outrage, informed by teary-eyed white saviours, and which refuses to apply the same standards to literally anywhere else rugby has ever been played.
The obvious problem is that the All Blacks have played all over the world. A non-exhaustive list of recent locations includes England, France, Ireland, Argentina, Australia, Japan, Italy, Wales, and yes, the United States. Each of these countries has, at some point, engaged in war, deportation, police violence, border enforcement, discrimination, mass incarceration, or all of the above. Somehow, none of those fixtures triggered a call to ask whether rugby was “worth the threat of violence”.
Did Alice Soper object when the All Blacks played in France, a country that routinely deploys riot police against protesters? What about England? I am told that we English are the sole architects of centuries of colonial violence, not to mention that the government currently throws people in prison for tweeting things they don’t like. I understand that Alice herself actually lived and played rugby in England for some time.
I also assume that she objects to Australia’s offshore detention centres although that issue has fallen off the trending topics list in recent years. Should we have cancelled the Bledisloe Cup because they “turn back the boats”? What about Argentina, with its own history of police using excessive force, including using tear gas, rubber bullets, and mass arrests on protestors. And for goodness sake, no one tell Alice about the practically unparalleled restrictions of Japan’s immigration system.
Curiously, none of these other countries provoked anguished paragraphs about player safety or moral complicity. Perhaps the problem isn’t immigration enforcement per se, but the sudden discovery that America is Bad Again this season.
Next awkward question: have the All Blacks ever played in the United States before now?
Yes. They have. Repeatedly.
The All Blacks played in the US in 2016, 2018, and 2021. Under Obama, Trump (1.0), and Biden. Under all three presidents there were deportations, detentions, border enforcement, and police shootings. By the way, Obama was by far the most prolific deporter of the three.
Ditto the Black Ferns. They have played in the US, and against the US, many times.
Did Alice Soper get on her soapbox and call for a boycott by the All Blacks when they played in the US under Obama? Biden?
Obama was literally nicknamed the “Deporter in Chief”. Millions of people were deported under his administration. Detention centres were full. Families were separated and there is readily available video online of him justifying this and saying it is “unavoidable”.
Somehow, rugby matches still went ahead.
What has changed is not the existence of immigration enforcement. What has changed is the ideological framing of it and Alice Soper is very keen to show she’s read the memo.
Placing two tragic deaths involving ICE adjacent to a rugby fixture announcement and causally linking them by proximity on the news cycle is opportunistic and disingenuous. An exciting event for American and Kiwi fans has now been turned into a symbolic battleground. Players are even being urged to be fearful as though ICE is going to storm the field to whack cuffs on Ardie Savea as he staggers up from a ruck.
Soper leans heavily on the sanctified phrase “is it worth the threat of violence?” a question so broad it could cancel every international sporting event on earth. If violence is the disqualifying factor, international sport is over. Pack it up. FIFA, the Olympics, the Six Nations. You’re all done.
Speaking of FIFA, I notice that several overseas commentators have been caught out making big performances about the upcoming World Cup in the Americas conveniently forgetting they happily trotted off to Qatar and Russia. I don’t think I need to get into their human rights records.
The pièce de résistance is Soper’s invocation of 1981 and the Springbok tour, a comparison so wildly disproportionate I can’t decide whether it is insulting or laughable. Apartheid South Africa was a racially segregated state by law. The current United States is a liberal democracy with an immigration system: one you can criticise robustly without turning every visiting athlete into a moral hostage.
This is the problem with the modern activist-sportswriter genre of which Alice Soper has made herself the CEO – everything must be elevated to a defining ethical showdown, because moderation doesn’t get clicks and nuance doesn’t go well on social media. If there isn’t a boycott to demand, a warning to issue, or a historical parallel to misapply, then what’s the point?
However, although nuance and moderation might not get the clicks, I am going to nonetheless implore New Zealanders to try them. Try being a grown up who can self-regulate her emotions and form opinions without the aid of American influencers with too much time on their hands and a new found enthusiasm for the Second Amendment. Take a breath. Then another.
Now listen carefully as I tell you this: The All Blacks are not endorsing ICE. They are not adjudicating US border policy. They are playing rugby in a country they have played in before, during administrations that deported people then too. The sudden insistence that this fixture is uniquely dangerous or immoral is the result of some tragic and chaotic events becoming the thing of the moment online.
I particularly encourage you to try this radical deep breathing and moderation if you enjoy watching sport. Because while rugby might not be your thing, Soper also has her sights set on FIFA and the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Everything America hosts must go!
I fear I have not been as scathing as I would like in this piece, but I too am practising some moderation, I guess. But know this, I am sick to death of the satellite moralising, the disingenuousness, the small-minded, reductive thinking that is really just regurgitating the talking points someone else vomited into your mouth so you too can hit the approved messages. None of them, not Alice Soper, nor any of the posturing opportunists building an online following by propagating outrage porn, none of them have uncovered a new profound moral dilemma. They have simply spotted a new trend, jumped in with two feet, and made sure that everyone can see they are on board and waving the right flag.
Tedious.
This article was originally published by Thought Crimes.
