Progressive agenda will be a winner

In the right-wing world of Donald Trump, New York City mayoral candidate is Zohran Mamdani, an immigrant with cultural roots in East and Southern Africa

- Donovan E Williams

have not been able to watch a single match of the football Club World Cup. I have glanced a bit at some games or caught up with the scores on social media.

It is not just the crass commercialism of the enterprise. While the world cup has been taking place in the United States, the self-styled "home of the brave and land of the free", the US's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been staking out parking lots at malls and court houses and rounding up anyone who they think looks like an immigrant.

There are reports of citizens, or those who have applied and are waiting for asylum, being arrested. Students who have participated in the Gaza anti-genocide protests have been labelled as terrorists and a danger to the US government. In this time, the US government agreed with the Israeli government's unprovoked bombing of Iran and called it self-defence. The US government itself conducted a midnight bombing of Iranian nuclear energy sites, claiming that they were weapon sites.

And what has now become normal is Israel, with the approval of the US, continuing to kill and shoot at Palestinians in Gaza who are scrounging for food and water. The world does not bat an eye when it is reported that a 100 people have been killed in Gaza in a day.

Yet there has not been a single protest or even a measly statement by Fifa officials, club owners or football players against the US government's destructive actions. Players have been known to take off their shirts, revealing happy birthday messages to loved ones or their religious commitment, but not one of them have had the courage to exclaim support for the people who are the racist targets of ICE or the people of Palestine. I wonder if the Club World Cup will have a 1936 Berlin Olympics Jesse Owens moment? Owens' success in the sprints and long jump disciplines famously trashed Hitler's racist Nazi philosophy.