Sportswashing: Why Autocrats Love the World Cup

June 26, 2026 Mike Zonta Leave a comment

World Cup 2026 kicked off last week, as 48 countries faced off in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. With all the excitement, it’s easy to forget that just four years ago the world’s most-watched sporting event, held in Qatar, was mired in controversy over human-rights abuses, backroom dealings, and geopolitical maneuvering. Qatar’s World Cup is just one of countless examples of “sportswashing” — the use of sports by autocratic regimes “to bolster repression at home and gain influence abroad.”To learn more about this growing phenomenon, read the following Journal of Democracy essays by Sarath K. Ganji.

The Rise of Sportswashing

The staggering global popularity of soccer makes it a prime target for regimes that worry about the negative press they get for their undemocratic practices. The Gulf monarchies have led the way in getting into the wide world of sports as a means of cleaning their image.

By Sarath K. Ganji

How Dictators Use Sports to Win Friends and Influence People

Authoritarians are developing new tools to project their malign influence across the globe. The world of sports can teach us a lot about the games they play.

By Sarath K. Ganji

How Qatar Became a World Leader in Sportswashing

The government has spent billions preparing to host the 2022 World Cup. Never mind the abusive labor practices and human-rights violations. It’s betting that your love of the “beautiful game” will make you more fond of this tiny Gulf state, too.

By Sarath K. Ganji

The Journal of Democracyis published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Subscribe now for full access to our archives.

Sportswashing

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“There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart.”
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“Love believes all things and yet is never deceived.”
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“My life is not mine.”
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“Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.”
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“Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.”
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“Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.”
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“Love? What is it? Most natural pain killer what there is. LOVE.”
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“I am all other men.”
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“Man is, that he might have joy.”
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“To the man who can perfectly practice inaction, all things are possible.”
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“People will forget what you say, but they will never forget how you make them feel.”
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“We have a right to know the truth; no right to ask anything else from God, but the right to know that.”
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“Boredom is the child of self-centeredness.”
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“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that your life could have been any different.”
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“Fear is a choice.”
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“One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”
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“When people asked [Jacques Cousteau], ‘Well, Captain, what do you expect to find?’ he always said, ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t go.’”
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“Let life happen to you. Life is in the right, always.”
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“The world breaks everyone but afterwards many are strong at the broken places.”
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“Inside every head is a different world.”
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“Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took.”
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“If you’re neurotic and you think, I’m not where I deserve to be or my mother didn’t love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you’re plagued by it ’til it’s cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.”
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“If you want to be a writer, you don’t want to live in a comfortable place.”
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“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
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“Often people think that it’s a question of adrenaline, [that] it’s an adrenaline addiction. I think what they are addicted to essentially is brotherhood. It’s a very healthy impulse that is taking place in a very unhealthy place.”
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“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
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“Love well, be loved and do something of value.”
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“We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in.”
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“If things don’t seem out of control, you’re not going fast enough.”
— Mario Andretti

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
— Anais Nin

“A change in the weather is sufficient to re-create the world and ourselves.”
— Marcel Proust

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“. . . the only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten that you are divine.”
— Peter Solomon in The Lost Symbol

“Have an open-mind, but don’t let your brains fall out.”
— Jacob Needleman

“When thought races ahead of Being, a civilization is racing towards destruction.”
— Jacob Needleman in his new book What is God?

“A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.”
— G.K. Chesterton

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe

“Give thanks to unknown blessings already on their way.”
— Native American proverb at cafe in San Francisco

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
–e.e. cummings

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Consciousness, spirituality, biography, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more