Why the Olympics matter in a fascist moment

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Why the Olympics matter in a fascist moment
Team USA deserves our attention, and watching them on the world stage is a chance to reclaim national pride

By Andi Zeisler
Senior Writer
Published February 4, 2026 12:00PM (EST)


(Salon) The boos started early in 2025, at NHL and NBA games in Canada. When the U.S. national anthem played before the opening of hockey’s 4 Nation Face-Off: boos. As the Vancouver Canucks squared up with the Colorado Avalanche, more boos. At a Toronto Raptors home game, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was booed again, though not before a round of polite cheers for the 15-year-old girl who performed it. Donald Trump had kicked off his second term as president of the United States with the unusual tactic of purposely alienating its neighbor to the north, and across the country, Canadian sports fans responded in the most powerful way they could without actually staying home: They booed, loudly and often.

“Anytime an American sports team travels abroad the next three years, they will likely be cast as villains,” predicted sportswriter Will Leitch in an Intelligencer column early in March; with the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics this Friday, we’re about to see whether he was right. Olympic history is full of American athletes who have showed up to represent the United States in times where being on the world stage is, let’s say, less than ideal. But for Team USA, this particular moment, amid tensions around an ICE presence in Milan Cortina, might feel like being the child of a hated school principal strolling into the cafeteria right after an announcement that Spring Break has been canceled.

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And the Olympics are a reminder that sport is a source of shared pride and introduces traditions from one country to others by way of new events. It’s not always a success (breakdancing will not be returning to the Summer Olympics in 2028), but 2026’s new addition to the roster of events — ski mountaineering, or skimo — is a shared practice as old as downhill skiing itself. Donald Trump seems committed to alienating and insulting America’s allies by repeatedly, loudly and inaccurately asserting that it has always been self-sufficient — insisting, for instance, that the United States handily won World War II without any help from Allies.

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In withdrawing from global alliances, insulting and attacking other nations, and making cartoonishly grandiose statements about America’s entitlement to take over Greenland by force, the Trump administration is isolating and endangering the United States in ways that aren’t going to be easy to reverse. The Milan Cortina Olympics is the first of a handful of events, including the FIFA World Cup in June and America’s semicentennial in July, where the eyes of the world will be on the United States. And the proud venality of our Dunning-Kruger All-Stars has a lot of us feeling the need to rethink what real patriotism looks like. ....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/02/04/why-the-olympics-matter-in-a-fascist-moment/