While American athletes are praised for their moral courage after taking popular progressive political stands, German soccer player Mesut Ozil took a real stand against China. His career paid the price.
Ozil’s falling out with his Premier League team Arsenal appears to have been due to a number of factors, most prominent of which being Ozil’s refusal to take a pay cut as Arsenal looked to cut some costs during the coronavirus pandemic. But Ozil’s problems started when he spoke out against China’s concentration camps for Uighurs and the international community’s complicity.
The New York Times reported that Arsenal privately considered punishing him for his comments. Both the club and the Premier League distanced themselves from the comments, and yet both jumped headfirst into the Black Lives Matter posturing we saw in America’s biggest sports leagues.
Just like the NBA, the biggest foreign market for the Premier League is China. What’s more, is that Ozil made his decision to speak out against China two months after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey caused a firestorm for supporting the protests in Hong Kong. Morey accidentally stepped in a hornet’s nest. Ozil knew exactly what he was signing up for.
While legacy media in the United States praised LeBron James for his political endeavors, James was telling reporters that anyone supporting the Hong Kong protesters “wasn’t educated.” LeBron has said nothing of the concentration camps in China — the country that helps pay his salary and lucrative endorsement deals.
Colin Kaepernick is now praised as a political martyr, the Muhammad Ali of his time, who was cut down in the prime of his career by a Trumpian sports league. In reality, he was (and still is) a mediocre quarterback with the political acumen of a college freshman being introduced to critical race theory. Kaepernick’s failures as an NFL quarterback gave way to success selling merchandise for a multinational corporation known for its slave labor.
“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” is the Nike slogan applied to Kaepernick and other socially conscious athletes who toe the political line of legacy media, the entertainment industry, and one of the two major political parties. It doesn’t apply to Kaepernick, who sacrificed nothing but a career as a lifelong backup. It doesn’t apply to LeBron or the NBA, who only believe in the money China gives them. But it does apply to Ozil, who took a stand for human rights knowing what the professional consequences would be.
