Captain Boycott is not the skipper of a football team. He is not a golfer. He has not been invited to Washington for St Patrick’s Day. He neither sings nor skis down snowy slopes at breakneck speed. Yet his name is plastered all over the billboards for soccer’s Nations League, golf’s Irish Open, the White House shamrock ceremony, the Eurovision and the Olympics.
As the country that coined the verb “to boycott”, Ireland has an especial attachment to it but the ubiquity of the word is threatening to dilute its potency. To boycott is to ostracise; a message devised and transmitted by people power.
So much warrants boycotting these days that the catchcry has become a catch-all for eschewing everything from avocados and shampoo to Tesla cars and entire countries. Stuck in the middle is a swamp of contradictions.
Why, for instance, does the Government deem it proper for the State-owned broadcaster to boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest because Israel is participating, but not for the heavily State-funded Football Association of Ireland (FAI) to boycott its Nations League matches against Israel?
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“We are now focusing on peace in the Middle East,” Micheál Martin explained in endorsing the FAI’s intention to fulfil the fixtures. Hold on. Were we not focusing on peace when RTÉ announced two months after the so-called ceasefire began in Gaza that it would be “unconscionable” to contest or even broadcast the Eurovision?
As world leaders collude in the charade that the killings in Gaza have stopped so that Donald Trump can get on with building his Mar-a-Lago-on-the-Med, more than 600 people have died since the ceasefire began in October. That is nearly one-fifth in less than five months of the total number of people killed in 30 years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Simultaneously, Israel is accelerating its annexation of Palestinian lands in the West Bank to, in the words of its finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”. Ireland officially recognises a Palestinian state, though its procrastinating over the Occupied Territories Bill beggars the credibility of that stance.
When politicians argue that “sport is not political” to justify proceeding with the football games, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths. Sport is as intrinsic to a country’s culture as song, dance and storytelling. Culture has the ability to lift and to dash the people’s spirits, to unite and divide us. These things are part and parcel of community life and, as such, they are inherently political. Attempts to throttle sport’s conscience are but feeble politics.
Were it true that sport is apolitical, why is Russia, rightly, banned from the Olympics? Fifa also excluded it from the World Cup within four days of the invasion after Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic refused to play the Russian team.
Yet there are supporters of those bans who will feel unshackled by principle from descending on Trump’s golf course to enjoy the Irish Open, despite the American president’s bellicose threats to invade the European territory of Greenland.
What a torrid month September is shaping up to be with both the golf and the first of the soccer matches due to take place. Many of us may avert our eyes from the football clash in abhorrence at a display of respect for the flag and anthem of a state accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity but will we be as bothered by the World Cup being played in the US?
[ Going to Trump’s Doonbeg? You should be ashamed of yourselfOpens in new window ]
American weapons have facilitated the human slaughter in Gaza. The White House ordered the illegal kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, contrary to international law and Trump’s constant bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskiy has allowed Vladimir Putin to feign a willingness to make peace while he tries to freeze Ukrainians into submission by bombing their energy supplies. Will any of that intrude on our consciences when Brazil tog out in the summer, the beer is chilled and the referee blows the whistle for the off in the Land of the Free?
Some people claim boycotts make no difference. No one will even notice Ireland’s absence from the Eurovision in Vienna, they say. Well, the people of Ireland will notice, along with the peoples of co-boycotters Iceland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia. As will people in Palestine who have so often felt abandoned.
The refusal by Arundhati Roy to attend this year’s Berlin Film Festival sent conscience-pricking waves across oceans. The author and activist had been scheduled to appear for the world premiere of a film she wrote but she withdrew when the festival’s jury chairman, Wim Wenders, publicly opined that artists should stay out of politics. Within days, 80 film makers – including Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem and Brian Cox – signed an open letter to the festival condemning its “silence” on Gaza. That is the difference a noble gesture by one indomitable person can make.
The Taoiseach is off to the White House with the supplicant bowl of shamrock next month, resisting the now annual calls for him to boycott the St Patrick’s Day event. Sometimes a taoiseach’s got to do what a taoiseach’s got to do to keep the invites coming post-Trump. While Sinn Féin’s boycott will go virtually unnoticed beyond Kildare Street and Stormont, Martin will be doing purgatory for Ireland’s souls beside a racist, greedy, narcissistic liar. Who would want to be him?
A boycott is not always the best weapon. It can be a braver thing for a Taoiseach to use his Warholesque 15 minutes in the spotlight for the greater good. Unfortunately, Martin seemed not to have got that memo when he announced he will reissue his invitation for Trump to visit Ireland and he has no problem with the Europhobe potentially addressing the Oireachtas.
If Trump does turn up here, he can expect a warm welcome – of impassioned protest at his presence on Irish soil. And if that soccer match against Israel goes ahead, the FAI should give every spectator a Palestinian flag to wave in the stadium with the request that they chant “free Palestine” for the entire 90 minutes.
People power has many expressions. Boycott is only one of them.
