How beautiful will the beautiful game be this summer, when the World Cup has already been mired by exorbitant ticket prices, a criminal complaint against FIFA’s new president, and of course, entry and visa chaos caused by U.S. President Donald Trump’s vicious crackdown on Middle East and African countries? And are there double standards in the way Western media reacted to recent world cups versus this one?
In this new three-part, deep-dive video series, Zeteo’s editor-in-chief and lifelong Liverpool and England football fan Mehdi Hasan sets out to answer those questions.
Mehdi goes back in history to explain how some of the world’s most shameful leaders have used the World Cup and FIFA’s corrupt behavior to raise their own status on the world stage and also distract from their country’s heinous human rights violations – a practice known as sportswashing.
In this first episode, Mehdi starts off with an authoritarian whose sportswashing is not getting nearly enough attention right now: U.S. President Donald Trump – one of the co-hosts of this summer’s World Cup, despite his administration having threatened to bring rogue ICE agents to the World Cup stadiums.
Throughout this series, Mehdi is also joined by a team of expert guests, like former football player turned political scientist Jules Boycoff, Human Rights Watch Global Initiatives Director Minky Worden, and New Yorker Global Affairs Columnist Ishaan Tharoor.
Trust us when we say, you do NOT want to miss out on this new series from Zeteo!
Paid subscribers can watch this full episode, as well as the two others that will be released soon. Free subscribers can watch a 3-minute preview. Upgrade your subscription today to access this episode, paywall-free, as well as the other two episodes still to come!
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