The World Cup is designed to showcase a regime heading in the right direction. And that safeguards existing power relations
Ever since it won the right to host the 2022 World Cup, Qatar has been the subject of sustained critical scrutiny. A spotlight has been shone on the Gulf emirate’s repression of women and LGBTQ people, and its punishing exploitation of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers. But the picture is incomplete. The fact is that the roots of Qatari repression extend well beyond Qatar, connecting the emirate to the supposedly liberal states of the west.
Much of the discourse around the World Cup has carried the implication that abuses in Qatar are an outgrowth of a local conservative “culture”, as juxtaposed with more enlightened “western values”. In fact, the persistence of monarchical rule in the Gulf is the result of more than a century of collusion between local elites and the west. If we are serious in our objections to the abuses found in Qatar, then we need to consider how Qatari authoritarianism sits within a much wider system of power, violence and exploitation.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/zwX0ZIi
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