Today I introduce a somewhat sensitive subject. Before reading on, this is not a forum to discuss political leanings--your own or others--but rather, it is to openly discuss the role of political content on Scorum.

The inseparable link between sports and politics is ever so clear in 2018, and as many sports fans loathe politics being in their sports, unfortunately, it isn't going away anytime soon. Quite the opposite, politics and sports are becoming even more intertwined.

Now wait, before you give a knee jerk reaction and assume this is a relatively new occurrence or a result of modern media, it is not. Consider for one moment the deep, deep history politics has played in sports for over a century.

Quick History of Sports & Politics

1936 Jessie Owens stands proud among Nazi salutes | Photo Source

It was a massive political statement to give Jessie Owens, a black athlete, four gold medals during the 1936 Berlin Olympics in front of Hitler and a stadium full of Nazi supporters, as seen above.

In 1947, it was a political statement when the MLB allowed Jackie Robinson to play in the major leagues as the first black man in the modern game.

Or in 1968 when Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the Olympic podium and gave the Black Panther salute during the anthem, drawing parallels with recent NFL protest.

Or even dating back further, Barcelona FC’s role during the crackdown on Catalonia culture amid the unification of Spain after the turn of the century. And then once again last year as new Catalonia separatist movements gain support once again.

How about the political statement Muhammad Ali made in 1968 when he refused to go to Vietnam, and the government’s disgusting response to him, banning him from fighting or working. 

That’s not even going into all the political football clubs of Europe where football and politics cannot be separated.

Or the clubs found in deep history of nationalism like Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad who only allow Basque players on their team.

How about the chilling displays of Beitar Jerusalem F.C. who do not allow any Muslims or non-Jewish Christians on their team, although there is major growing push back against this belief in recent years.

This list goes on and on and on throughout sport's entire history.

We don't even have to discuss the politics of the modern game. Anyone who follows sports to any degree knows how inseparable politics are from sports.

The point of this is not to point fingers or degrade any of those mentioned above. The point is to clearly show how sports and politics have been hand-in-hand since the conception of both. Sports is a reflection of ourselves, and as such, reflects our ideological differences.

We cannot come here and attempt to separate the two nor should we even try. The point is to figure out how politics in sports will function on Scorum and how can we address it in a productive manner or risk it dragging us down.

Consider This


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Consider this scenario for a moment. Because the close relationship between sports and politics, the opportunity to manipulate the platform to lean more politically can easily be done.

  1. Take any above photograph of either politician holding a soccer kit
  2. Make a pro or anti leaning post, highlighting both the "sport" element and political
  3. Get one single "whale" vote, either planned or organically
  4. Congratulations: you've just politicized the front page of Scorum

This could be done quite easily and to massive success and currently I'm not sure if that would break any site rules or warrant a flag. Please correct me if I'm wrong? But to me, this could be done by individuals or by political groups.

Doing the above could have a massive impact on the platform, and I think should be avoided at all costs.

Solutions

They say never offer a problem if you don't have a solution. I can suggest three with varying pros and cons:

  1. Create a new "Sports Politics" or just "Politics" tab. Doing this would make anything that appeared politically and wasn't tagged "politics" warrant a flag for falsifying tags. Scorum then could monitor that tag and how it reached the front page. Creating this would encourage more political posts because you have created the space for them, but allow the community and Dev team to monitor them, allowing users to keep any political post separate.
  2. Loosen flagging reasons or create new ones that would consider political content SPAM and therefor you could flag it. This would be done if Scorum wants to discourage political posts.
  3. Ban all political posts, making you able to flag them for no reason. This would be done if Scorum wants to take a more hard line approach.  Of course, the problem is doing this would censors a lot of legitimate discussion but would ensure politics remained off of Scorum.

Or of course, Scorum could do nothing and wait and see. This is probably the likely course of action and I understand. With Scorum being decentralized, it is largely up to the community to decide what it does or does not support. Although, as pointing out above, this can be manipulated.

My Question to You

The question I have for the Scorum community is simple: how do you feel about political content on Scorum?

I ask this question because, as our numbers grow, it is an inevitable fact that we will have to face this issue. There is already political content on Scorum but is seldom goes very big and largely doesn’t make any major waves. But I believe that is changing and how will Scorum adjust?

Keep it Civil

This is not the forum to discuss your political leanings or anyone else's, doing so will get you flagged, as that will be consider trolling and derailing the conversation. At this moment, we are solely talking about political content as a whole and how it fits into the Scorum environment.