What the Bosa/Kaepernick Double Standard Tells Us About the 2024 Elections

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On Sunday October 27, 9 days earlier than the presidential election, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy was being interviewed after a win in opposition to the Dallas Cowboys. As Purdy spoke to NBC sideline reporter Melissa Stark, All-Professional defensive finish Nick Bosa crashed his method into the shot and, wanting into the digital camera, pointed at his Make America Nice Once more hat.

Although Bosa’s interruption was stunning, it was hardly surprising. Bosahas lengthy loved peacocking round as an open Trump supporter in a world the place gamers largely preserve their political views to themselves.

However Bosa flaunting a polarizing political slogan on Sunday Evening Soccer, probably the most watched tv program in the US, proper earlier than a presidential election, was merely a bridge too far even for the conservative, albeit controversy-verse, league workplace. Bosa was fined $11,255 for violating the league’s uniform and gear guidelines, however on condition that he makes $34 million a 12 months, the 49ers trustworthy most likely gained’t have to arrange a GoFundMe.

As Bosa skulked round in a MAGA hat, his red-and-gold uniform delivered to thoughts one other athlete who performed for a similar franchise. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, then the San Francisco quarterback, additionally used his NFL platform to talk out for a trigger through which he believed. However he was not agitating for MAGA coverage initiatives equivalent to a violent mass deportation program or the best to shoot protesters or second-class citizenship for ladies. He was kneeling for an finish to racial inequity and police violence.

Colin Kaepernick was a part of a burgeoning motion in 2016. It was a motion uninterested in merely asking to not be shot. As an alternative, it popularized concepts equivalent to “defunding the police” and confronting crime by giving more cash to disaster intervention groups and psychological well being counselors. The motion Kaepernick gave image to imagined a world with out prisons. And it scared the hell out of the Democratic Celebration.

Removed from working towards this mass youth motion, the get together sprinted within the different route. That meant Kaepernick was left adrift, his legs reduce out from underneath him, when he began protesting. He additionally was with out political assist. As Republicans put Kaepernick’s kneeling picture in overtly racist fearmongering advertisements, the Democrats both ignored him or snarked on the protest. Even the late Supreme Court docket Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg received in on the act, calling Kaepernick’s protests “dumb and disrespectful” and saying, “I’d have the identical reply should you requested me about flag-burning.” After the 2016 season, he was blackballed from the league. No $11,000 fines for Colin. Simply the potential earnings lack of hundreds of thousands.

Kaepernick’s lack of a political dwelling mirrored the rising response to the bigger motion, as open doorways began to slam shut for Black Lives Matter activists. Most payments to “defund the police” stalled, and Joe Biden undermined the motion by thundering “fund the police” in his first State of the Union deal with, in 2022.

This story of two soccer gamers and two fates brings to thoughts the phrases of French political determine Jean-Luc Mélanchon. The person that Reuters not too long ago known as “The towering firebrand of France’s hard-left” had his personal tackle our elections. Mélanchon, who counts his political enemies in bulk, mentioned,

“The US couldn’t select the Left: there wasn’t one. When there’s no extra Left, there’s no restrict on the Proper. When there’s no combat over programme, the election turns into a casting train. Trump’s win is the unstoppable consequence of this case.”