A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #6-26 - Olympics in Uniform. When Sport Becomes a Cog in the State's Wheel (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

They tell us that the Olympics are a celebration of the people. They 
speak of brotherhood, peace, merit, and individual sacrifice. But behind 
the waving flags and national anthems, the reality is different: 
high-level sport, increasingly, is a sector integrated within the state 
and military apparatus. Not a free and popular sphere, but a propaganda, 
recruitment, and discipline device. In Italy, the phenomenon is evident 
to all, even if it is rarely questioned. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, 
over 70% of Italian athletes-more than 280 out of 403-are enrolled in 
military or police sports groups. Army, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza, 
State Police: medals are counted in uniform. This is not an 
administrative detail. It is a political fact.

The Athlete as a State Official

Italy employs approximately 2,500 athletes, coaches, and managers within 
its armed forces and police forces. In many cases, enlistment is not an 
ideological choice, but a material necessity: without the "uniform," 
there is no salary, no continuity of training, no social security 
coverage. The message is clear: if you want to compete at a high level, 
you must join the ranks.

Sport, thus, is no longer an autonomous space, but a branch of the state 
apparatus. The athlete becomes a public employee, framed within 
hierarchical structures, subject to military discipline, inserted into a 
system whose ultimate goal is not collective emancipation, but national 
prestige.

This transformation is not new. During the Cold War, the Soviet bloc 
regimes developed the "state athlete" model as a tool for geopolitical 
competition. But today, in the midst of advanced capitalism, we are 
witnessing a paradoxical convergence: formally opposed models find 
themselves united in the same logic of control and nationalization of 
sport. Russia, China, Germany, and many other countries maintain sports 
structures linked to the armed forces. Italy is not a folkloristic 
exception: it is one of the most structured cases in Western Europe.

Nationalism, discipline, propaganda

The problem is not public support for sport. The problem is what kind of 
support, and with what logic.

When sport is embedded in the armed forces and police, it inevitably 
becomes intertwined with the culture of obedience, hierarchy, and 
nationalism. Medals become instruments of soft power. Athletes become 
symbols to be displayed in institutional parades. The rhetoric of 
sporting sacrifice overlaps with that of military sacrifice.

In a context where defense spending is growing everywhere, and where the 
arms race has once again become a political priority, the absorption of 
sport into the military takes on an even more disturbing significance. 
The same organizations that manage training and armaments also finance 
gyms and athletics tracks. The line is becoming blurred. It's no 
coincidence that many disciplines historically supported by military 
groups are those that serve a certain idea of virility and national 
strength: shooting, fencing, athletics, winter sports. Meanwhile, 
grassroots sports, those of the suburbs, popular gyms, and self-managed 
associations, survive with insufficient funding and chronic insecurity.

A false alternative: enlist or quit

This mechanism creates a profound distortion. Those who don't join 
military sports groups remain marginalized. Private sponsors are few and 
far between, focused on the more media-rich sports. Federations don't 
guarantee sufficient support. Thus, enlistment becomes almost 
obligatory. It's a form of structural co-optation: the state absorbs 
talent by offering economic security in exchange for membership. 
Explicit coercion isn't necessary; widespread insecurity is enough. The 
result is a double inequality: on the one hand, between athletes "in 
uniform" and civilian athletes. On the other, between sports supported 
by the state apparatus and sports left to decay. Sporting merit is 
filtered through an institutional access system. In this context, 
Olympism loses any pretense of neutrality. Flags do not represent 
peoples, but states. Anthems do not celebrate communities, but 
apparatuses of power.

Reclaiming a social and self-managed sport

If sport is to truly be a space of emancipation, it must be removed from 
military and nationalist logic. It's not about privatizing it, but about 
socializing it.

Public resources currently channeled into the armed forces could 
directly finance: independent amateur sports associations, with 
scholarships and salaries for athletes without the obligation to enlist; 
self-managed neighborhood sports facilities, accessible free of charge 
or at nominal costs; inclusive local programs that prioritize mass 
participation over Olympic showcases; cooperative networks between 
sports clubs, free from military hierarchies and police controls.

At the same time, a radical debate should be opened on the very model of 
international competitions. Why continue to organize sport around 
competing nation-states? Why not imagine transnational federations, 
territorial representations, mixed teams?

A liberated sport is not a sport without organization. It is a sport 
freed from the logic of command.

Against the Olympics in uniform

The issue is not the good faith of individual athletes, who often have 
no real alternatives. It concerns the structure that encompasses them. 
As long as the path to the sporting elite passes through enlistment, 
sport will remain a cog in the state apparatus. As long as medals are 
counted as national trophies, Olympism will be a competition between 
powers, not between people. Returning sport to society means disarming 
it. It means separating it from barracks, police stations, and the logic 
of geopolitical prestige. It means bringing it back to neighborhoods, 
schools, and community gyms.

Sport can be cooperation, mutualism, and collective growth. But only if 
it stops marching in step.

Parpajon

https://umanitanova.org/olimpiadi-in-divisa-quando-lo-sport-diventa-un-ingranaggio-dello-stato/
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