Gstaad, Switzerland
OK sport fans, have you been enjoying the concentration camp Olympics? I’m sure the Uighurs in the Chinese gulag are riveted, especially watching the downhill, the trouble being that most of the one million Muslim prisoners have been issued with Equatorial Guinea-made TV sets, apparatuses that only show crocodiles swallowing humans.
Joe Biden, in the meantime, has steered clear of the Games and has sent a message via pigeon to the Chinese: “You’re way out of line as far as King Kong is concerned and unless you sign the Schleswig-Holstein agreement do not expect any Americans to attend the première of Madame Butterfly.” Good for you, Joe, you’ve finally woken up to the “yellow menace,” as some of us old-timers used to say back in the 1950s. Except that now they have cars instead of rickshaws, and atomic bombs. Biden also threatened to send in the Seventh Fleet if China attacked Taipan, triggering taipan Lord Kadoorie in Hong Kong to demand an explanation.
That China operates outside the bounds where human rights are concerned is undeniable. In DC it is suddenly the season for Chinese-bashing — just look at the latest bulletins emerging from the White House. Biden warned the Chinese against avarice, pride and over-eating, but also signaled to “Emperor Hirohito not to interfere with the Olympics in Manchuria.” This has impressed the Bagel Times editorial board, which described Biden’s message as “robust, full of sudden insights and profound.” Coupled with Kamala’s caution to Chiang Kai-shek, which the paper described as a “fearless and distinctive voice.”
Our very own Boris may also have stayed away from the Olympics but has sent non-stop encouragement to the GB team, promising not only Prosecco and a garden party upon their return, but also dirty pictures of Petronella Wyatt taken before he became prime minister. (For the male Olympians, that is, unless some of the females request a peek.) Boris, however, has been strangely quiet about the disappearance of Peng Shuai, the tennis ace who once upon a time played mixed doubles with him and incurred the wrath of his present wife. Or maybe it was a previous one; this writer is old and has lost count. The president of the IOC — the IOC being the World Health Organization of Sport — Thomas Bach had previously called Peng and the latter said she was fine, had forgiven Boris and was training for Wimbledon 2020 next year. Peng plans to enter the doubles with Fan Bingbing, the actress. Fan Bingbing will play the left court as her one-handed backhand return is known as the best in China. The Peng-Bingbing team is as good a bet to win as the Greek Kyrgios-Kokkinakis team that has just won the men’s doubles at the Australian Open and already had their image sculpted in marble up at the Acropolis.
The IOC is following in the footsteps of the corporations, financiers and sports leagues that do brisk business with China and end up being complicit in the regime’s crimes by remaining silent while raking it in. The high ideals the Olympics are supposed to represent have been compared to Biden’s mangling of the English language, although many activists on the left believe otherwise. When I spoke to the White House, a sweet female assistant put me through to the president himself. Hardly believing my luck, I politely asked Biden what he thought of the concentration camp games: “A pestiferous pustule poisoning is what white privilege is,” he answered, and then, talking to his wife while I was still on the line, he added: “Alimentation will do the trick every time.” He then hung up.
Athletes and teams in the Olympics receive crucial funding from corporations. When I contacted Coca-Cola headquarters about the Chinese concentration camps, a spokesman burped rather loudly, then burped again and again, and then hung up. But to be fair, at least Biden did not attend the games in Chongli, 120 miles north of Beijing and world headquarters of man-made snow, unlike George W. Bush, the war hero who went to Beijing in 2008 and gave legitimacy to the brutal crackdown in Tibet. Back then I had challenged George W. about Tibet, but all he said was that Tibet was the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, hence a legitimate target. He then called me an asshole. Such are the joys of challenging the high and the mighty.
Never mind, I can take it. And things are looking up. Chiang Kai-shek has been put on notice, as has Emperor Hirohito, and the commies in Beijing are seriously worried that the Americans won’t attend Madame Butterfly, Chopin’s latest opera that exposes Poland’s crimes against the Soviets and Nazi Germany. Time marches on.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.