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      in US Politics

      ‘They do not bend the knee’: US right courts UFC as NFL nods at social justice

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      ‘They do not bend the knee’: US right courts UFC as NFL nods at social justiceConservatives see Dana White’s UFC as an ideal market to engage with a valuable demographic: young men Last week, Republican senator Ted Cruz posted a photo of himself alongside UFC legend Chuck Liddell. The photo, which showed the two men posing with raised fists, was the latest example of a politician using an athlete’s star power, in this case to pander to a younger demographic. It also underscored the American right’s ongoing love affair with the UFC.Over the past few years, UFC has become synonymous with rightwing politics due to its well-documented relationship with former president Donald Trump. As previously reported by the Guardian, the organization effectively became the sports arm of the Maga regime and was an ideal platform for Trump to espouse his political agenda.Jake Paul’s war on Dana White has escalated to diss tracks. What’s his endgame? Read moreUFC president Dana White was among Trump’s most boisterous supporters, having campaigned for the former president as far back as 2016. White has since defended Trump’s policies, produced a documentary on him Combatant-in-Chief, and even used his relationship with the former president to defy government mandates at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.During the 2020 presidential election, Trump deployed several UFC fighters as campaign surrogates, placing them in front of crowds at rallies in swing-states such as Florida in order to secure a key demographic that forms the majority of mixed martial arts’ fanbase: young men.And though Trump lost the election, Republicans continued to flirt with the UFC in order to benefit from the organization’s popularity.UFC fighters and executives have become regular guests on conservative shows such as those hosted by Sean Hannity and Candace Owens. Over the past few months, Owens has invited fighters like UFC lightweight Beneil Dariush to discuss the woes of communism while White was brought on to discuss the supposed importance of keeping politics out of sports.“It’s America,” White told Owens in April 2021 when asked about the UFC’s supposed political apathy. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. And you shouldn’t have to go to work and listen to that shit.”While White’s assertion is tenuous at best due to his own history with Trump, his comments endeared him to conservative audiences dissatisfied with the rise of social justice narratives in leagues such as the NFL and NBA. By taking saying the UFC does not support so-called “woke politics,” White is essentially positioning the organization as a fitting alternative for the American right. This, in turn, has warmed conservative pundits and politicians to the organization, which they now view as a market for their ideology.Among the politicians who embraced the UFC over the past year is Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who invited the organization to host UFC 261, a capacity-crowd event in Jacksonville, Florida, in April 2021. DeSantis, who is viewed as a contender for the Republican nomination in 2024, has been criticized for using his state’s limited Covid restrictions to increase his political clout. Hosting a capacity-crowd UFC show during a particularly difficult period during the pandemic was a clear show of defiance.“This is going to be the first [indoor] full-throttle sports event since Covid hit anywhere in the United States and I think it’s fitting,” DeSantis said to a cheering crowd at the UFC 261 pre-fight press conference. “Welcome to Florida. You guys aren’t the only ones looking to come to this oasis of freedom.”It is worth noting that UFC 261 was celebrated by the likes of Steve Bannon, as well as user wrote on a QAnon Telegram channel with more than 20,000 subscribers. “Watch UFC.”UFC fighters have also stepped into the political arena in recent months. In December 2021, lightweight contender Michael Chandler spoke at Turning Point USA’s Americafest event alongside conspiracy-monger Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr, and alt-right personality Jack Posobiec.Chandler first made his political leanings clear when he questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election, tweeting at the time “is Joe Biden really just taking the mic to talk about how ‘patient’ we have to be and how ‘long’ we are going to have to wait AKA we are going to contest these results…hard #wakeupsheep.” The fighter deleted the tweet shortly thereafter.Other UFC fighters such as Colby Covington, whom the Guardian described as the athletic embodiment of Trump’s politics, continues to strengthen his ties to prominent conservatives such as Trump Jr and Owens. In fact, Owens revealed that it was Covington who helped her become a fan of the UFC and that she plans to attend his upcoming fight against fellow Trump loyalist Jorge Masvidal at UFC 272 next month.“I will definitely be there [at UFC 272],” Owens said on Full Send podcast. “100% will be there. I love Colby.”Owens previously called for the UFC to replace the NFL as America’s national pastime, a term that was once reserved for baseball. “[The UFC] is exploding right now and it’s because they do not get involved in politics. They are not woke and they do not bend the knee,” Owens said, adding that the UFC is the “only real sport left.”It is perhaps no surprise many on the right identify more with the UFC than the NFL. Although the league is currently being sued for racial discrimination in a high-profile lawsuit, it has at least paid lip service to social justice in recent years, particularly after the police murder of George Floyd. According to a recent survey, approximately one-third of those polled stated that they were less of a fan of the NFL now than they were five years ago. The poll found that those who did not approve of the NFL’s current stance on social justice were disproportionately Republican, and that 45% of those who identified themselves as Republican believed the NFL was doing “too much” to show respect for Black players. Whether this disapproval is actually making a difference to the NFL’s bottom line is debatable. Viewing figures for the 2021 regular season were up 7% on the year before, so some Republicans are clearly still tuning in.Nevertheless, since the NFL’s policies no longer coincide with Republican ideals, the American right has since shifted much of its attention to the UFC, a hyper-masculine sport that is popular among young men.As Republicans forge ahead with shaping the GOP’s post-Trump future, they will continue to rely on the UFC as an ideological incubator and a breeding ground for future supporters.TopicsUFCMMAUS politicsUS sportsNFLReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Let’s Go Brandon: the Nascar driver who became a hero in an unwinnable culture war

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      Let’s Go Brandon: the Nascar driver who became a hero in an unwinnable culture war In October, Brandon Brown unwittingly became a rightwing meme. Now he is delicately treading the line between profit and politicsBrandon Brown was not an especially fearsome stock car driver, nor did he figure as the sort to crack open sport’s Pandora’s box entering last October’s Sparks 300 – a race in Nascar’s mid-tier Xfinity series. In most cases a mid-pack qualifying position would not bode well. But at Talladega Speedway, a crash-happy oval circuit where anything can happen, the best drivers are the ones who survive the carnage. And after two multi-car pile ups, Brown assumed a narrow lead with 13 laps to go. A final accident two laps later that took out seven cars sealed his first Xfinity series triumph in 114 tries. With night falling on the Alabama circuit, the 28-year-old Virginia native emerged from his Chevrolet Camaro machine in a daze for the post-race TV interview. As he breathlessly thanked his sponsors and revisited his driving tactics, some in Talladega’s packed crowd began chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” loud and clear enough to come across Brown’s microphone. Desperate to keep the interview going with her producers unable to bleep the background noise, NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast tried to Jedi mind trick her viewers. “You can hear the chants from the crowd – Let’s go, Brandon,” she said.Since then, Let’s Go Brandon has gone from awkward TV moment to harmless meme to conservative dog whistle on par with Maga hats and OK hand gestures – a way of insulting the president without triggering censorship. It adorns lawn signs and bumper stickers. One guy said it directly to Biden last Christmastime as the president and first lady were taking calls into Norad’s Santa tracker from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Another guy got kicked off a flight this week for having Let’s Go Brandon writ small on his facemask. As the slogan exacerbates the deepening political divide in the country, Brown has so far struggled in his attempts to ride the median.Caller tells Joe Biden ‘Let’s go Brandon’ during White House Christmas eventRead moreBrown laughed off the Let’s Go Brandon cheers initially, then went silent when it morphed into something more sinister. Finally, in a December New York Times interview, he expressed a wish to distance himself from the now politically charged slogan, not wanting to cost his family-run team hundreds of thousands in potential sponsorship support. “If they’re going to use my name,” Brown, a Republican, said of his fellow conservatives, “I’d like for it to be productive.”In a subsequent Newsweek op-ed titled My Name Is Brandon, he described himself as a driver “in the passenger seat of my own viral moment,” albeit a squarely middle-class one with a lot of thoughts about inflation affecting prices at the pump. (“I buy more gas than most,” he quipped.) Still, he was quick to assure readers that he wasn’t “going to tell anyone how to vote” or had any “interest in leading some political fight.”But then just before the new year, Brown appeared to quickly abandon those ideals for a two-season, eight-figure sponsorship pact with LGBcoin.io, a cryptocurrency that’s literally short for Let’s Go Brandon. The announcement unveiling Brandon’s red, white and blue repainted car called him “truly America’s driver.” But as with most things crypto, the wealth infusion – a lifeline for a family-run racing operation that came close to closing its doors – disappeared as quickly as it arrived.But instead of a cyber raider or a pyramid scheme it was Nascar president Steve Phelps who pumped the brakes on the deal out of a desire to unseat the sport from any politics on either side of the aisle, lest it turn off the new fans the sport urgently seeks. And then the invisible hand of the crypto market dealt the finishing blow. After achieving a peak liquidity pool value of $6.5m at the start of the year, the coin crashed and burned. It is now worth close to zero.The lost funding puts Brown back in the position of having to cobble together sponsors, an effort that will be obvious in the varying paint schemes and decals that adorn his car this year – beginning with the Saturday race that undercards Sunday’s Daytona 500. And Brown, who starts from the back of the pack yet again, will have his work cut out for himself throughout the season in the hustle for patronage. The Original Larry’s Hard Lemonade, a sponsor on Brown’s Talladega-winning car, dropped him in response to the bitcoin deal. “All money is not good money,” company founder Vic Reynolds cautioned in a farewell statement. Politically motivated sponsorship might seem toxic now, making it easier for Phelps to drop the hammer on Brown, but precedent suggests it’s only a matter of time before they have it both ways. Not only have drivers raced machines with Bush-Cheney and Trump-Pence livery in the recent past, but it wasn’t even two years ago that Bubba Wallace raced a Black Lives Matter car on the way to leading a campaign to banish displays of the confederate flag from the sport – although the organisation didn’t pay him for that exposure.Sponsorship dollars are hard enough to chase down in this economy. If anything, Brown may have unwittingly stumbled upon an untapped market: political zealots. If his efforts to exploit them continue to get struck down, don’t be surprised if this becomes the movement that emerges in response to Wallace’s progressive push on the way to Nascar becoming the next front in the raging culture wars – and here at least those zealots have a point. With everyone from the former president to mom-and-pops cashing in on the Let’s Go Brandon craze, it seems the only one who isn’t making much money off of this is the guy who inspired the whole thing –and arguably deserves to profit most. For now, though, Brown seems content not to push the issue while continuing the hustle for sponsorship. But, really, there’s no telling how soon he could find himself facing back inside a conference room with another would-be supporter with real money and right-wing ideology. At that point he’ll have to decide whether selling out is worth his soul and his sport’s, leaving the lid on Pandora’s box well in the dust.TopicsNascarMotor sportUS sportsJoe BidenUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in UK Politics

      ‘Enough is enough’: Gary Neville attacks Boris Johnson over ‘constant mistruths’

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      Pundit Gary Neville has launched an attack on prime minister Boris Johnson by calling for his resignation and saying “enough is enough” amid “mistruths”.Neville’s rant was published on Twitter in a video amid reports the PM will hold a press conference at 5.30pm to introduce more restrictions in England to help prevent the spread of the new variant Omicron.However, Neville has blasted the conference as “distraction tactics” after the reported Christmas party held at Downing Street last year was made public this week. The former Manchester United player said: “The reports emerging that Boris Johnson is going to announce a press conference at 5.30pm. The distraction tactic is now a predictable one. We’ve seen it for the last two years. This guy lacks integrity. He lies to us constantly. The mistruths that come out of number 10 are just constant. “Not only that but he’s the worst kind of leader. Someone who expects his team to go under with him and come out and lie for him. His ministers and his MPs are constantly forced to do that and enough is enough.”Neville went onto call for Johnson’s resignation, a similar call to that of the Scottish National Party leader in the House of Commons Ian Blackford at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.“It’s not even about a party or a social gathering on December 18,” Neville added. “Or a secret Santa or a cheese and wine. It’s about actually having a guy at the top of our country who believes he can take us all for a ride and laugh at us. “He does it time after time after time. This cannot be let go. Now is the time to get this guy out of number 10 and start bringing some standards back into politics.”Neville continued his criticism in a series of tweets with one saying “vile” and another reading “this guy is beyond help. It’s up to the @Conservatives MP’s to act . He’s just thrown his staff under the bus and he will throw you as well!”The ex-England player’s criticisms echo those heard at PMQs with Blackford’s being the strongest of the session.The MP said: “Tough decisions will again have to be made to save lives and protect our NHS. Trust in leadership is a matter of life and death. Downing Street wilfully broke the rules and mocked the sacrifices we have all made, shattering the public’s trust.“The Prime Minister is responsible for losing the trust of the people, he can no longer lead on the most pressing issue facing these islands.“The Prime Minister has a duty, the only right and moral choice left to him, it is for his resignation, when can we expect it?”Johnson replied: “The party opposite and the other party opposite are going to continue to play politics, I am going to get on with the job.” More

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      Azeem Rafiq: English cricket rife with racism, says cricketer as MPs told of ‘inhuman’ treatment at Yorkshire

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      Yorkshire whistleblower Azeem Rafiq delivered an emotional and explosive account of his harrowing experience of racism in cricket to MPs on Tuesday, with a series of new and shocking allegations that implicate a handful of high-profile former England players.During a lengthy appearance in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee he offered up a damning, and damaging, account of his life in the English game before the publication of a written statement escalated matters even further.Over the course of what could go down as a watershed day for the sport, ex-internationals Matthew Hoggard, Tim Bresnan, Alex Hales and Gary Ballance had all been subject to fresh claims of racial discrimination that paint a torrid picture of how Rafiq’s dream career turned into a battle against depression.In his published witness statement from a now-settled employment tribunal with Yorkshire, Rafiq said that Bresnan’s treatment of him led to “suicidal thoughts” in 2017, with a later apology from Bresnan described by Rafiq as “lip service”.Elsewhere he restated an existing allegation against former England captain Michael Vaughan and also aired a long list of complaints against Yorkshire’s director of cricket Martyn Moxon and head coach Andrew Gale. Neither of the pair are currently active in their posts, with Moxon signed off due to a stress-related illness and Gale suspended pending an investigation into an offensive historic tweet.Rafiq’s attempts to raise allegations internally at the county fell on deaf ears more than three years ago, but an independent panel was eventually commissioned in 2020 following a series of media interviews. Its report has been roundly criticised by those who have seen it – with DCMS committee chair Julian Knight deriding it as “a Venn diagram of stupidity” – and led to Yorkshire’s controversial conclusion that no staff members should face disciplinary action.Rafiq said he wished to become “the voice of the voiceless” as he reflected on cricket’s wider problems around race, making it clear that he felt the shortcomings go right to the very top.As well as going into disturbing details of his time at Headingley, the 30-year-old claimed Ballance’s derogatory use of the term ‘Kevin’ as a blanket term for all people of colour was “an open secret in the England dressing room”. He further alleged that another former England batter, Alex Hales, had named his dog Kevin because it was black.Ballance has previously admitted using a “racial slur” against Rafiq over the course of a deep friendship but the latter rejected that assertion. Instead he says Ballance coined the unwanted and offensive nickname “Raffa the kaffir” and would “constantly talk down to me and make racist jokes, designed to undermine me and make me feel small”. Examples involved references to corner shops, Sheikhs and being related to other Asian men.Ballance is accused of repeatedly calling Rafiq ‘P***’, an allegation that is also levelled individually at Hoggard, Bresnan and Gale.Hoggard is also said to have used the phrase “elephant washer”, subjecting Rafiq to such abuse “on a daily basis…all day, every day” and making players of Asian heritage sit together in the changing room. During his oral evidence, Rafiq credited Hoggard with reaching out to apologise.No such mitigation was offered for Bresnan, of whom Rafiq wrote: “Tim frequently made racist comments and was unduly harsh towards me compared to white British players, which became so unbearable that I made a formal complaint against him in 2017.”Bresnan later apologised unreservedly for “any part I played in contributing to Azeem Rafiq’s experience of being bullied” but stressed the accusation he frequently made racist comments was “absolutely not true”.Gale is also alleged to have used a variety of racial slurs as well using his leadership positions to subject Rafiq to “discriminatory treatment and bullying” which held back his career.The majority of Rafiq’s claims centre around his two stints as a Yorkshire player between 2008 and 2018, with notable exceptions for Jason Gillespie’s reign as head coach and a month-long loan spell at Derbyshire, but a graphic episode from his youth was also described.Rafiq revealed that as an aspiring 15-year-old club cricketer he had been restrained in a car and force-fed alcohol by a former Yorkshire and Hampshire player. As a Muslim this contravened his religious beliefs, though he later admitted he took up drinking at Yorkshire.“I got pinned down at my local cricket club and had red wine poured down my throat, literally down my throat,” he said.“I (then) didn’t touch alcohol until about 2012 and around that time I felt I had to do that to fit in. I wasn’t perfect, there are things I did which I felt I had to do to achieve my dreams. I deeply regret that but it has nothing to do with racism. The game as a whole has a problem, with listening to the victim. There is no ‘yeah, but’ with racism; there is no ‘two sides’ to racism.”Asked if he could identify a single individual who had stood up for him or called out acts of racism at the time, he was unable to summon a name, adding: “You had people who were openly racist and you had the bystanders. No-one felt it was important.”Expanding on Ballance’s use of the word ‘Kevin’, Rafiq explained: “Kevin was something Gary used to describe anyone of colour in a very derogatory manner. It was an open secret in the England dressing room.“Anyone who came across Gary would know that was a phrase he would use to describe people of colour. Gary and Alex Hales got really close to each other when they played for England together. I wasn’t present in that dressing room, but what I understand (is) that Alex went on to name his dog ‘Kevin’ because it was black. It’s disgusting how much of a joke it was.”On England captain Joe Root’s recent assertion that he could not recall any examples of racism at Yorkshire, Rafiq found it hard to reconcile his positive view of the individual with the culture that existed during their time together at Yorkshire.“Rooty is a good man. He never engaged in racist language,” he said.“I found it hurtful because Rooty was Gary’s housemate and had been involved in a lot of the socialising where I was called a ‘P***’. It shows how normal it was that even a good man like him doesn’t see it for what it was. It’s not going to affect Joe, but it’s something I remember every day.”Former England coach and veteran commentator David Lloyd issued an apology on Twitter after Rafiq indicated he had exchanged disparaging messages about him in private. Lloyd, whose employers Sky have said they are investigating the comments, wrote: “I deeply regret my actions, and I apologise most sincerely to Azeem and to the Asian cricket community for doing this, and for any offence caused.”The England and Wales Cricket Board has appointed an independent commission for equity in cricket (ICEC), chaired by Cindy Butts, charged with examining the issue of race in the game.Its call for evidence is now open, but Rafiq was sceptical about that process, stating: “Action is needed and needed now. To be honest, we are sick and tired of these equity commissions and inquiries. Sick and tired.“All we are asking for is equality, to be treated fairly regardless of the colour of our skin or the religion we follow. It’s 2021, we shouldn’t even be having this conversation. No-one has ever been a whistleblower before, no-one has ever had the courage to come forward because of the fear of not being believed. Do I believe I lost my career to racism? Yes I do.“Maybe what was written for me was this. I’m a massive believer that everything happens for a reason. I hope in five years’ time we are going to see a big change, that I did something far bigger than any runs or any wickets I got.”The PA news agency has attempted to contact those involved for comment. Michael Vaughan issued a statement on Monday categorically denying accusations he had told four Asian team-mates “there’s too many of your lot, we need to do something about it”.PA More