Forging the Body of the New Ukrainian Nation: Sport as a Gramscist Tool for the Ukrainian Far Right

Since Greco-Roman antiquity, the convergence of sports and politics has been a constitutive feature of political cultures. More recently, the blending of sports and politics has been revived with racist understanding by twentieth century totalitarian regimes and has remained a central promotion tool for far-right movements across the world. Due to the multiple fractures that have erupted in Ukrainian society since the Maidan Revolution and the war in Donbas, sport has become instrumental for Ukrainian ultranationalist movements. Through their direct involvement in youth sports education, Azov’s National Corps Party and the Sokil movement seek to foster a mythified Ukrainian national revival exalting physical virtue and patriotic spirit. This article discusses how sport is used by the Ukrainian far right as a Gramscist strategy to channel dialogue with authorities, to indoctrinate youth with militaristic nationalism, and to spread a fascist-minded cult of the masculine body.

Nationalism and Masculinity

This chapter suggests that the national leader, Xi Jinping, has managed to build a new image of political leadership that corresponds with the discourse on masculinity in contemporary times. The archetypal model is constructed with the assistance of Xi’s wife and her modern First Lady image. There are multiple ethnographic vignettes highlighting the popular response to Xi’s policies and performance, and ordinary citizens’ expressions of militaristic nationalism, directed mainly against Japan. In the midst of this, President Xi is shown to have become the epitome of an able-responsible leader who shoulders responsibilities by his tough stance to fight corruption and poverty, and his call for the resurgence of national greatness. Xi’s prolific citations from classical, traditional, teachings to mundane analogies have special appeal on the grassroots level.

Weaponized Patriotism and Racial Subtext in Kaepernick’s Aftermath: The Anti-politics of American Sports Fandom

The history of sports culture and fandom has long been as reactionary as it has been hospitable to progressive politics. As the most conspicuous recent example, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s U.S. anthem protest generated intense controversy with many critics claiming that sports and politics should, generally, not mix—a condemnation that ignores that context’s already pervasive militaristic nationalism. This article offers the first nationally representative examination of fans’ antipathy toward sports’ politicization through a critical textual analysis and inductive classification of their responses to the issue. Ostensibly “aracial” rebukes to that activism could nonetheless be characterized in lineage with historically stereotypical representations of and affronts to black athletes: as threatening to society, not intellectually equipped to engage, and illegitimate as leaders.