Forget ‘sportswashing’: Qatar 2022 is about military might and hard sports power


Source: theguardian.com theguardian.com

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We need a new word for this thing. Psychologists have sometimes used the phrase “semantic satiation” to describe the process where saying the word “woodpecker” 20 times in a row, or sitting in a circle reciting the phrase “straight-leg easy-fit chinos” will eventually strip those sounds of any meaning, as though the entire concept of straight-leg easy-fit chinos has suddenly ceased to exist. Something like this has happened to the word “sportswashing”. This was always a hopeful coinage, adopted on the hoof to describe governments or other entities that use elite sport as a propaganda tool. Years of heavy use,...