Europe's sins and the World Cup

FIFA President Gianni Infantino speaks at a press conference, Nov. 19, in Doha, Qatar. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk

By Scott Shepherd

Gianni Infantino, the head of football's governing body, FIFA, gave a pretty strange speech a few weeks ago, just before this year's World Cup started. It touched a nerve with a lot of people for all kinds of reasons. While he said plenty of things that merit no attention whatsoever, Infantino made one colorful claim that really sticks out to me: "I think for what we Europeans have been doing for 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people."

Obviously, this is an exaggeration. Beneath the hyperbole, however, lie several assumptions that deserve exploration, not least because, in one form or another, they recur so often in modern political discourse. Sections of society ― and of the Twitterati in particular ― accept these or similar assumptions as proven facts, leaving the underlying claims unexamined. But these unspoken arguments play a fundamental role in so many political and philosophical stances that they clearly merit consideration.

Infantino's statement implies one underlying assumption and two conclusions drawn from it: Europeans are (or have been) uniquely bad. Therefore they should 1. apologize; and 2. be silenced. While his phrasing is certainly striking ― almost poetic ― this line of reasoning is far from unique. It is usually phrased more broadly ("The West") or ideologically ("isms," "power structures"), so that it can cover a greater multitude of sins and apply in a greater range of situations. Since Infantino is Swiss and since he specifically refers to Europe, I too will focus on Europe in the article, but it would be possible to tinker with the framing and come to the same conclusions about other groups.

When Infantino talks of the things that "Europeans have been doing" in the last three millennia, he is presumably thinking only of the bad bits. If we look back to the year 1000 BC, I don't think anyone could in good faith denigrate Europe's advancements since then in agriculture, art, historiography, literature, medicine, music, philosophy, science, technology and theology. If we really did include everything done in the last 3000 years, the list would be long indeed. In fact, the very existence and framework of some fields of knowledge (science, for example) are rooted in European history and thought. That's not to mention the fact that the World Cup itself wouldn't exist without Europe.

This is obviously not what Infantino is talking about. Of course not. He's only thinking of the bad bits ― and there are plenty of them. Presumably, he was referring to crusades and world wars, imperialism and racism, systemic oppression, violence and hatred and lust and lies and so much more.

And it's true. If Europe's list of accomplishments is long, its list of crimes is just as long ― or far longer. There's no way to deny the fact that Europeans have committed atrocities. You certainly don't have to go back anything like 3,000 years to find them. Hundreds of books could be filled ― have been filled ― with accounts of slaughter, oppression and enslavement.

Europeans have done many terrible things. This is for sure. The question, however, is whether European history is uniquely bad, whether Europe as a continent has committed such grave sins that its peoples alone out of all the world should be singled out, condemned and silenced.

Strictly, the claim that one group's history is uniquely bad is impossible to prove. In order to do so, you would need to measure all the actions of everyone everywhere throughout the whole of the period in question. Even if we were accounting only for a single fraction of a second in the world's history, this would be an impossible feat. When the timeframe stretches out 3,000 years, the task becomes simply unthinkable.

And if we limited the question to the more obviously evil deeds ― murder, massacre and conquest ― there's still no way to know everything that has ever happened. People tend to cover up evidence of their crimes. And the further back in time we go, the harder it is to know what happened. Whole civilizations have come and gone with little trace of their existence.

But if by some miracle we could gather up all of history and find out every deed ever committed, the task would still be impossible: the next step would be to weigh all the various atrocities against each other and somehow compare them. Would that make sense? Is it possible to balance one unspeakable crime against another? To compare the horrors of Europe's empires with Mongolian imperialism or Incan human sacrifice or the cannibalism of Papua New Guinea? Was the Holocaust worse than the Rwandan genocide?

It is true that in the past few centuries Europe was particularly successful in conquering and exploiting people in distant lands. This does not mean, however, that the people of Europe are different from any others. Part of what it means to be a human includes doing really terrible things. This goes back to the dawn of humanity. After all, the first Bible story after the Fall depicts the second man named in the whole of the Bible ― Cain ― murdering his younger brother Abel. In a postlapsarian world, it is in our nature to sin.

Europeans certainly have done terrible things ― but it's not possible to say that they are uniquely bad. Such a claim is, ironically, an expression of the very European exceptionalism it is ostensibly attacking.

As for spending the next three millennia in a state of penitence, Infantino's timeframe is obviously absurd, but at its core lies a fair point: it may well be right for someone to apologize. But the obvious question arises: who should do so? No living person had a hand in the historical crimes to which Infantino alluded. And it is irrational to require individuals to apologize for things they didn't do. The sins of the father, after all, shall not be visited onto their sons.

There are existing organizations and governments which did participate in historical crimes. And it seems eminently reasonable that these institutions apologize for specific acts in their past. Obviously, this is tied up with all kinds of national and international politics: an apology might be construed as a sign of weakness or national self-hatred or even as a cynical political sham.

In any case, Infantino's conclusion that we should silence Europeans because of their past is wrong. And he clearly doesn't believe it himself. If he did, he would have been unable to make the statement in the first place. His statement is logically incoherent: he is attempting to give a "moral lesson" that people like him should not give moral lessons.

So why did he say it?

In the leadup to the World Cup, the predictable wrangling over politics and human rights was taking place as we could all expect. And both FIFA and Qatar were getting a pretty bad press for all kinds of reasons.

One particularly visible U-turn made just before the tournament started was the sudden banning of beer stands in stadiums. Despite the complaints of thirsty fans, it is completely fine for a country to prohibit the sale of alcohol if that accords with the will of the people there. Qatar is a conservative Muslim country after all. But if everything had been above board, this ban on booze would have been announced during the bidding process back in 2009-2010.

Indeed, the decision 12 years ago to hold this year's World Cup in Qatar came as quite a surprise: the tiny desert peninsula has hardly got a rich footballing heritage. While it is important for the competition to be held in new and diverse locations, the process of selecting Qatar was suspect to say the least.

Quoting the Mail on Sunday, the Guardian reported last week that "10 of the 22-member FIFA executive committee which voted on the deal have since been banned for ethics violations while another four have either been indicted or convicted of criminal corruption." Infantino's predecessor, Sepp Blatter, has been banned from FIFA since 2015 as a result of corruption allegations. There is no indication that Infantino himself is implicated in the historic corruption at FIFA ― he wasn't working for the organization at the time of the 2018 and 2022 votes.

More than any other one in history, this World Cup is overwhelmed by a putrid stench of cash. There are so many examples, but sticking with the issue of alcohol: the ordinary punters may be banned from buying beer, but the VIPs are still able to quaff Dom Perignon in their luxury booths as they survey the match below.

It is absolutely legitimate to condemn the double standards that led to this state of affairs; it is right for people to complain about FIFA and Qatar's many problems around the World Cup. It doesn't matter whether the critics are European or not. Infantino's speech was fundamentally about distracting everyone. The reason he made such lurid claims is that they would become a lightning rod: rather than dealing with his critics' legitimate complaints, he diverted their attention. And as I look back at this very article, I have to concede that Infantino's approach has, much to my dismay, worked.

This tactic has become more and more common in recent years. Ad hominem attacks are so powerful because they often contain obvious truths, and because questions of identity are so politically juicy now that they are the quickest way to deflect from the original topic. While there is a place for recognizing historical wrongs and attempting to right them, it's vital not to let cynical distractions steer us away from the real issue at hand. So next time Infantino or some other public figure makes similar outlandish claims, perhaps we should ignore the flashy rhetoric and peer more closely at what exactly he's trying to obscure.

Dr. Scott Shepherd (scottshepherd@chongshin.ac.kr) is a British-American academic. He has taught in universities in the U.K. and Korea, and is currently an assistant professor of English at Chongshin University in Seoul. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.