Ten reasons why IOC's Sun King Thomas Bach is causing irreparable damage to the Olympic movement
The IOC President sought to get close to Putin even after the Sochi Doping Games. He fraternised with Xi Jinping. He politicised the 2018 Games in South Korea, driven by the dream of the Nobel Peace Prize. All a miserable failure that dragged the Games deeper into a political quagmire. A commentary.
The IOC President sought to get close to Putin even after the Sochi Doping Games. He fraternised with Xi Jinping. He politicised the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea, driven by the dream of the Nobel Peace Prize. All a miserable failure that dragged the Games deeper into a political quagmire.
The propaganda machine is in full flow. The IOC is portraying itself and its president as victims of Russian attacks and is selling the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris as the alleged Games of Renewal.
IOC Deity Thomas Bach, his suit still crumpled from having spent so long in bed with Vladmir Putin, Xi Jinping and others, has been busy fraternising with Napoleon Macron of late. Paris 2024 will soon be history but Bach and Macron have already been paving the way for the 2030 Winter Games to be hosted in the French Alps despite the lack of a financial concept and anything resembling a convincing, let alone concrete, plan of sports venues.
You'd have thought a little IOC caution might not go amiss at a time when a French parliamentary investigation report has pilloried the nation's sports system as dysfunctional, with mismanagement, waste of money, corruption and harassment at all levels …
Andy Brown
… then again, Bach, his entourage and their following of Olympic-Movement sycophants have rarely shown any interest in acknowledging, let alone, acting upon national criminal convictions, damning reports and other judgements related to the realm of Olympic sport. Why change the habits of a lifetime!
There will be no talk of any criticism of the French sports system at the alleged Games of Renewal. The very name is all about the image of Paris and the showcase that the IOC wants to portray and broadcast to the world. It's about pretty pictures and Olympic propaganda, nothing more.
The IOC president is doing what he has always done, whether at the Olympic Games in Russia or China, during visits to Qatar and Azerbaijan, at the G20 and the United Nations, most recently in India and now again in France: throwing himself at political leaders in an unsavoury, inappropriate manner, chumming up to them, playing their game, ignoring neutrality and other inconvenient aims of the Olympic Charter.
The Olympic boss imagines himself to be on a par with presidents, princes, prime ministers and despots.
Hubris at its finest. Welcome to the realm of Thomas Bach.
There is a reason why this man is called Louis Quatorze by parts of the IOC administration.
Verbal diarrhoea in poorly constructed declarations
The IOC Sun King and his particular brand of "world view" underpin the ridiculously mendacious "Declaration by the IOC against the politicisation of sport". The document, which made headlines this week, is not really an IOC declaration. It’s just more of the Sun King lending voice to his own verbal diarrhoea in poorly constructed statements that insiders say he likes to make last-minute changes to.
Bach has driven the politicisation of sport like no other IOC President before him; he's even surpassed his Olympic foster father Juan Antonio Samaranch. Now, though, there’s a twist in the current Olympic leader's tale of contradiction: he now wants us to take seriously his lament and protestation over the very ghosts that he himself summoned.
Styless. Mendacious. Pathetic.
It was, after all, the Sun King who had his highly paid subordinates count and announce the number of meetings with heads of state and government. There was no attempt to put some distance between sport and politics.
Quite the contrary.
Each time Bach met those high-ranking politicians, IOC propaganda hit the ground running with language that became increasingly treacherous to the Olympic Charter: the two leaders was soon the phrase of Olympic choice, as if the Sun King of Sport was on an equal footing with his dialogue partners, however they came to power and kept it.
It was the Sun King who sought Putin's proximity long after the Sochi Doping Games, when the world was already discussing the state doping system. It was also Bach who praised the Sochi Doping Games …
"By living together under one roof in the Olympic Village you send a powerful message from Sochi to the world: the message of a society of peace, tolerance and respect. I appeal to everybody implicated in confrontation, oppression or violence: Act on this Olympic message of dialogue and peace." Russia, he added, could be proud of itself for laying on a Winter Games to be proud of: "Tonight we can say: Russia delivered all what it had promised. What took decades in other parts of the world was achieved here in Sochi in just seven years."
Thomas Bach, 23 February 2014, at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Doping Games
… who fraternised with Xi Jinping and presented him with the Olympic Order, who politicised the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea and, driven by the dream of the Nobel Peace Prize, presumed to play the Korean angel of peace.
All nonsense. All a miserable failure. All guaranteed to drag the Olympic Games into a political quagmire of its own making.
Now, in his latest declaration, the Sun King sits in his palace in Lausanne, this monetary mausoleum of the Olympic idea, and whines like a toddler whose toy has been taken away by a naughty big boy in the sandpit.
The Sun King stylises himself as the martyr of his IOC sect.
Sadly, many media outlets are once again falling for the IOC’s propaganda, this time in the portrayal of the Olympic organisation and its Sun King as victims of evil Russian attacks. Oh, the irony!
The business lobbyist with secret contracts, enthusiastic about money and power
Propaganda has always been the core business of the Sun King, who was a full-time business lobbyist before his time as IOC President – equipped with several secret contracts, because nobody was supposed to know which company he was lobbying for (whether Holzmann, Siemens, MAN Ferrostaal or others of which we still know nothing officially, as well as Lufthansa, Daimler and Bertelsmann, perhaps).
The fact that some of these companies were involved in corruption scandals and maintained huge corruption systems (like Adidas in sport) was always pure coincidence. In any case, the budding Sun King, who collected princely fees for his lobbyist services at the time, allegedly never knew about the machinations of his financial backers and was never involved in them. You know.
Jens Weinreich
Bach grew up in humble circumstances. He has always been interested in wealth, influence and power; too interested, in fact, as contemporary witnesses recognised and criticised him for early on. This would become the Sun King's undoing.
In his decades as a lobbyist and sports politician, he rarely engaged in open debate. The Sun King usually found other ways, means and manoeuvres but he was always a bit of a coward.
He forgets nothing; revenge is his weapon of choice when it comes to those who contradict him.
That was true yesterday, is true today and will be true tomorrow. Many know it, and not only in sport. It's a huge problem for the Olympic movement.
"Never mind Ukraine! What about me!"
Like the Emperor and his new clothes, the Sun King is now somewhat naked, truth relative in a realm where he allows himself to be stylised as a victim of evil forces.
The Sun King, placing himself at the centre of the Olympic universe, complains in orchestrated interviews, online media appointments and in numerous propaganda reports that he is being personally attacked by Russia.
You can almost imagine him in front of a mirror barking: "Never mind Ukraine! What about me!"
Consider the hypocrisy for a brief moment as we recall the 2016 Olympic Games and the fact that the IOC allowed an armada of Russian athletes to compete, but not the whistleblower and former doper Yuliya Stepanova, who risked her life for the truth.
Stepanova was not admitted to the Rio Games by the IOC for so-called ethical reasons but a two-times doper from swimming given the green light by FINA? No problem. No word of criticism. No instruction for swim bosses to think again. The Sun King even countered questions about the enormous dangers Stepanova had exposed herself to with ice-cold remarks to the effect that the IOC was not responsible for the situation certain individuals had put themselves in.
Compassion, humanity? Not a trace. Message to whistleblowers, Cassandras and advocates for athlete safety and welfare? Pray silence!
Anyone who listened to the words of the Sun King back in Rio de Janeiro will never forget the content and tone. It was terrifying.
Money makes the Olympic world go round
Yes, the IOC has since paid some money to the Stepanova family. There is enough money in Lausanne. The Sun King uses money to solve a lot of things. This includes the exorbitant salaries earned by his IOC executives. Some of them were able to double their income during the COVID crisis, even though they could hardly prove they have the qualifications you would think they would have to have in order to earn millions in salary.
Jens Weinreich
Their combined wage pot for one Olympic cycle exceeded the incomes of every Olympic IF and the vast majority of all Olympic champions.
What do they give the Sun King in return? Brutal obedience.
The IOC administration, above all those at director level, serves the Sun King first, rather than the Olympic Movement.
Just as those IOC members who the Sun King had admitted during his term of office demonstrate obedience to him. 69 of the current 106 IOC members joined the IOC during his presidency. Among them are some politicians (so much for his declaration against the politicisation of sport), princes and princesses. There are also more and more IOC members who owe their role to the mercy of the Sun King – because age rules have been overridden or because good governance basics have been negated.
That's how it is in an Olympic principality, in an unrivalled parallel society.
And it is absolutely clear what it all boils down to, as I have been describing for several years now: an extension of the Sun King's term of office.
Should I stay or should I stay?
Because this Sun King is similar in many respects to his former buddy Vladimir Putin who was supposedly never his friend – Bach and his helpless propagandists are keen on such verbal sophistry.
- Putin, too, has been asked to change the rules in order to change his term of office.
- Putin, too, holds supposed elections and simulates democracy (just don’t mention who gets to vote and in what circumstances).
- Putin also cultivates his personality cult.
- Putin also stages general assemblies.
- Putin also forgets nothing and removes his critics. The only difference between the Sun King and Putin in that regard is the choice of means used to remove those they find objectionable.
- Putin also disseminates propaganda 24/7.
And let's not forget: Potemkin villages are a Russian invention.
In the Potemkin village of Lausanne, the Sun King is now getting nervous. He might even be scared. He has always been extremely annoyed that mankind, especially that part of mankind in democratic societies, did not honour his genius with enough enthusiasm. He senses that more and more people are getting closer to the truth, lifting the veil of propaganda and realising that the Sun King looks pretty naked, despite his expensive robes.
So here are the ten reasons why the Sun King Thomas Bach is not the innovator of the Olympic Games that his propagandists, accomplices and all the non-thinkers and fact deniers sell him as.
Ten reasons why the Sun King has done irreparable damage to the so-called Olympic movement.
We will refine and expand this list in the near future and work through it point by point but there is already plenty of good research and analyses on each point below. And of course, all of you, the well-informed readers of THE INQUISITOR, know numerous other examples that should be added to this list and that do not fit in at all with the propaganda nonsense of Agenda 2020, Agenda 2020+5 and Agenda 2020 something.
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Jens Weinreich
